Senator Humphries has been officially given the nod by the electoral commission to retain his place.
His office has now sent out the sort of media release normally associated with a sore loser:
THE TRUTH BEHIND THE GREENS SPIN CYCLE
Despite the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the dodgy polls, and the blatant fear campaign run by the ACT Greens, at the end of counting they are 25 000 votes short of a seat in the Senate in the ACT.
What must be galling and disappointing to Greens supporters is that they were duped by a cynical campaign that promised near-certain victory but delivered the lowest swing to the Greens in the country. The hubris and dishonesty of this campaign by the Greens was simply breathtaking.
Even if this race had gone to preferences, the Greens would still not have come close.
Even with every single Labor preference, they would still be thousands of votes short of gaining the seat.
To tell their supporters that they needed less than 2000 votes to win when in fact they needed more than ten times that amount is a deception of genuine believers in the Greens’ mission.
Greens supporters would rightly be very angry at a campaign that employed a deceptive trick against their own supporters. They would also be angry and confused with a candidate who:
— backflipped several times over education policy
— drove a V8 4WD yet took photo ops on electric bikes
— didn’t know if she had private health cover, but campaigned against it
— denigrated the Australian Christian Lobby
— swore at the media, and
— flagrantly wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars on a campaign based on fear and mistruths and spin.I am proud to serve every Canberran in the Senate once again, to stand up for local solutions and to be honest about who I am and what I stand for.
10 September 2010