Well, there’s a little over a week left until the election, and it’s been relatively tame so far.

In every election, we hear stories of dirty tricks and malicious damage to corflutes and the like.

The offenders tend to fall into several categories:

1. Rival factions within the same party. As the Greens don’t have corflutes, this does not apply to them, but in previous elections this has been rife in the Labor and Liberal parties.

A recent example is a post on Mark Parton’s Facebook page about him having 90 corflutes smashed in Tuggeranong. Another post on the topic indicated that the likely culprits may well have been a rival group in his own party. I hear similar stories within Labor.

2. Corflutes being destroyed by supporters of other parties. Now, it’s been a windy few weeks, so many corflutes have simply been blown over by the wind. However, my colleague Alan Tutt reported to me that a great swath of corflutes in the southern part of Belconnen had been not only knocked over but, in many instances, damaged and moved, often 100 metres or so away. He told me that all parties seemed to have been affected, except the Independents for Canberra corflutes. Seems a tad suspicious, but no proof as to who did it. Last election, when the Belco Party first stood candidates, we suffered some being stolen / vandalised by some Labor supporters and one lot of young Liberals as well. Tutty actually knows of a Labor supporter having a go at his corflutes in Hawker, and is just trying to get concrete evidence before going to the police. So that guy is now on notice.

3. The third category are (usually) young people who are not necessarily political but just like to knock over corflutes (often with their cars) for the fun of it. That’s why you see in this election so many corflutes in front of signposts and trees. This group is a bit like the craze about 50 years ago when a lot of young blokes would drive their cars on the footpaths to knock over garbage bins.

Other instances of dirty tricks include:

• Taking the other side’s material and leaving yours (when letterboxing or door knocking). A young Green was spectacularly caught doing this the other day, and had to apologise.
• Distorting something your opponents said in the past. In this election, the classic case is in Ginninderra when the Labor party dug up some posts passed on by Liberal candidate Darren Roberts, which on closer examination revealed him liking some sentiments around the Voice debate that reiterated comments expressed by the impressive Jacinta Price – herself a proud Indigenous woman. More recently, a syllabus written by Peter Cain MLA about 20 years ago on Indigenous education to be taught in Christian schools, which also looked quite innocuous. Talk about a storm in a teacup! Mr Barr and Co. must be desperate.

In general, however, I think this election has probably seen a bit more tolerance from candidates and parties of others’ views, which is a good thing. Corflutes, letterboxing and doorknocking are all part of the democratic process, and we should respect all candidates’ views and actually commend them for putting their hand up.