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A variety of election stuff

A whole heap of stuff about tomorrow's election in no particular order:

ChilOut (Children out of detention) have their election guide to policies on refugees. They are running a campaign to hand out 20,000 flowers of hope tomorrow.

A Just Australia (now RefugeeGuarantee.com.au) has rankings for candidates and whether they have signed AJA's Refugee Guarantee.

The Justice Project has done candidate rankings on refugee policy in marginal seats and some others of interest. In Griffith, Kevin Rudd is not ranked because he did not answer their questionnaire. Likewise, John Howard in Bennelong and Peter Costello in Higgins.

ChilOut and The Justice Project both lean towards support of the Democrats and the Greens on refugee policy.

ComparePolicies.com.au is a handy database of candidates and their parties' policies, and in some cases their individual stances.

The Australian Muslim Electoral Taskforce has issued voting guidelines in marginal seats and for the Senate which favour the Greens and the ALP.

Greenpeace Australia has an election guide to environmental policies. While not giving an endorsement, they state that the ALP's policies are superior to the government's on environmental matters, but the Greens (not surprisingly) seem to come out on top.

The Wilderness Society has a graphical report card on the parties' environmental policies on their VoteEnvironment.com.au website. The Liberal Party is condemned after Howard's cynical Tasmanian forestry announcement on Wednesday (the one where he announced that 17000 hectares of unloggable forest would not be logged). They also express concern over the lead Liberals4Forests candidate in NSW.

The Australian Jewish News' editorial ("An election too close to call") focuses on the electorates of Wentworth and Melbourne Ports, but does not give a recommendation. In Melbourne Ports, both the sitting ALP member and the Liberal candidate are Jewish.

And finally, this quote from Christopher Shiel's Back Pages:

Michael Clarke and Peter Costello have supplied the requisite omens. With Costello playing the '96 role of Ralph Willis, Back Pages predicts that, like Clarke yesterday, the young Australian Labor leader, Mark Latham, will make history in his first big election test tomorrow.