CampaignsDownUnder is a blog about election campaigning in Australia and New Zealand. It’s mainly about interesting snippets of recent campaigning history and how I interpret it through my own individual prism. It started as a Masters Thesis a few years ago, then fell over. It was then updated as a Literature Review a year later. Then fell over again. A couple of children and a new job later it was planned to rebuild it but that fell over as well. Now it’s a blog, but as far as blogs go it is the strongest blog in this swamp and should be even better soon. Just give me a few more months to find a groove and spend less time on the food blog, which when there isn’t an election on, is far more interesting, and sociable.

Eventually this blog will be peppered with famous quotes and sage advice about political campaigning. Here is the first quote, which is directly related to the most important quality of any successful political representative: persistence.

“Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show ’em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one… stayed up! And that’s what you’re gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands.”

Everyone knows there is no money to made in blogs, so you should know that during the day (and most evenings and weekends) I earn a living as an authentic Labor Party apparatchik. Unlike the Tory myth about faceless men in the Labor Party – I have enjoyed several years of being anything but faceless, through local and social media in Canberra and beyond. Google will happily back me up on that assertion. If you wish to contact me about this blog you can email me at elias.hallaj@gmail.com or find me on twitter @Elias_Hallaj … it goes without saying that my views and thoughts on this blog do not represent the policy or official position of ACT Labor but are mine alone. As I started writing the original thesis around 2008, many of my views are also somewhat out-dated and need a more modern perspective. but that’s also common problem for many thesis and books about this subject. If you find an error or an out-dated concept, please let me know. Having a blog also allows me to evolve my thoughts and experiences and hopefully it will help me get back into the thesis at some point in the future, maybe after all my kids have finished their schooling, around 2036 🙂