From ye olde Australian:

Ex-One Nation head vies for Gallop ’s seat.
20/2/06
Paige Taylor

A FORMER One Nation state president who resigned amid allegations that she was a closet white supremacist has re-emerged among 11 candidates vying for the seat vacated by former West Australian premier Geoff Gallop.

Financial controller Sue Bateman was dismissive yesterday of the former premier ’s battle with depression, saying the average Joe did not have the luxury of becoming depressed.

Ms Bateman, whose personal website offered a link to racist chatroom Stormfront, quit her role as a regional president with One Nation last September following accusations that she was a prolific online racist under the pseudonym Suebdoo2 - the same name she uses for her email address and to trade on eBay.

But Ms Bateman vigorously denies the claims, maintaining that somebody else must have called themselves Suebdoo2 on the Stormfront site and that a hacker must have placed the racist link on her website.

One Nation state president Ron McLean said yesterday Ms Bateman enjoyed the party ’s full support.

He said the party accepted her explanation that she had only visited the Stormfront website as part of her research into organisations and political parties.

The by-election for the Perth seat of Victoria Park was called following Dr Gallop ’s decision to quit politics after revealing last month that he was being treated for depression. He had held the seat for 20 years.

Labor candidate Ben Wyall is hoping to avoid a swing against his party, which holds a comfortable 15 per cent margin.

Launching the campaign of Liberal Party candidate Bruce Stevenson yesterday, Opposition Leader Mall Birney pushed the law and order barrow.

Mr Birney reaffirmed the Liberals’ support for mandatory jail terms for people convicted of serious assaults on police officers and called on Premier Alan Carpenter to reject his previous support for trials of heroin injecting rooms.

The large field also includes four independents, a candidate for the Daylight Saving Party, candidates from Family First and the Christian Democratic Party of WA and former Greens federal senator Dee Margetts.

Marketing consultant and musician James Dunn, 26, is the candidate for the single-issue Daylight Saving Party.

Party president Tom Cunneen said the by-election offered the opportunity for the party to continue to call for the introduction of daylight saving and said it would not be doing any preference deals.

“We ’re offering a real candidate who would work very hard for the people of Victoria Park,” Dr Cunneen said.

“We will promote the cause of daylight saving but vote with the party in power, so a vote for us currently would be a vote for daylight saving plus the Labor Government.”