LNP bungles court challenge

Tories are of course losers, but usually with experience comes a kind of grace, a kind of attitude towards perpetual defeat that prevents a loser from becoming a sore loser, Not so for the LNP candidate for the seat of Chadsworth Andrea Caltabiano. After losing by around 100 votes, she has gone to the court of disputed returns and asked them to install her as the member, alleging every sort of fraud she could think of, not against another political party, but against the public generally and the electoral commission.

Bungle #1

Immediately afterwards, Caltabiano claimed double voting, a failure to distribute postal forms, and the independent electoral commission of striking eligible voters off the list. The Supreme Court, faced with only 'generalized allegations' and an absence of specific claims - let alone evidence - promptly threw the matter out today, asking the Tories to come back with evidence.

Bungle #2

The matter was suspended later in the day after it came to light that the LNP - presumably having so little faith in this vexatious complaint - hadn't even bothered to put down the $400 deposit required by the court when lodging documents. After this was revealed the Tories claimed they had misunderstood the clearly and precisely spelt out requirements for lodging the forms, odd from a candidate that listed her main concern going into the election as "declining rates of literacy".

For a party that campaigned so hard on court reform for harsher penalties on criminals, you'd think they would stop wasting the courts time, or, failing that at least comply with court fees.

Read the full debacle here.