Fred Nile loses his right hand man

Christian Party vote is down

NSW voters preferred the Greens, One Nation and the Animal Justice Party to the Christian Democrats whose upper house member Paul Green has lost his seat as the final election results were called today.

It came down to the last three seats for the minor parties to find out their fate. The Christian Democrats, Animal Justice Party and Keep Sydney Open were in the mix for the final three seats. The Animal Justice candidate won the prize.

Mark Latham, the ex-Labor leader turned One Nation candidate will be joined by his number two, Rod Roberts.

Fred Nile, the leader of the Christian Democrats will be on his own. He has usually had a second member of his party with him in the upper house (where half the 42 members are elected at each state election), elected at the elections where he has not had to stand. CDP’s second member has included Niles’ late wife Elaine and Gordon Moyes, who defected to the old Family First party. Losing this seat is a major setback for the CDP.

Paul Green will be remembered as the architect of  the Modern Slavery bill passed by the NSW Parliament last year.

21 seats in the Legislative Council were decided at the March election. The Coalition scored eight seats, Labor seven, the Greens two seats, Shooters, Fishers and Farmers one seat, One Nation two seats, and the Animal Justice Party one seat.

Another casualty of the NSW State election was the Australian Conservatives (AC) party. While the Christian Democrats scored just over half a quota at 2.17%, the AC party only received .55% or .12 of a quota.

Given the simplified voting system in the Senate, both parties are unlikely to be successful in the federal election.

Both the right and the left hand sides of the ballot paper were congested. Former Senator David Leyonhjelm’s Liberal Democrats received about the same number as the CDP, with One Nation and the Shooters and Fishers proving to be the more successful conservative grouping. On the left hand side, the Keep Sydney Open, Flux, parties failed to get a quota.