Sovereign Australia
THE BLOG
Brett Murrell’s daily record of the campaign — the political journey and the personal one. Written the day it happened, published here as well as on Facebook and X.
Brett Murrell’s daily record of the campaign — the political journey and the personal one. Written the day it happened, published here as well as on Facebook and X.
A full room in Rockingham, the Echidna strategy, and a former foreign minister calling Pillar I one of the worst decisions this country has made.
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Sound bites with the three majors — and the thirteen other candidates who were not asked a question. That in itself is a story.
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The PM was in Perth but not at the booth. The state Liberals printed a cut-out and called the media. Four candidates recreated Abbey Road instead.
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The first radio interview drops. Pre-polling starts again, and sixteen candidates share one car park.
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The Western dream usually means fewer people around. More time in your own thoughts, and your mind runs. Say hi to a stranger today.
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Compulsory questioning, restricted legal representation, and prison for telling anyone it happened.
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Working class electorate, small businesses, hands-on people. They have had enough of not being listened to.
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The signs go up at pre-poll — 22 departments to 7, water from the north — and an open invitation: come down and talk policy.
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First day at a pre-poll booth. Fourteen candidates, one decision on preferences, and the view that we are not enemies.
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The booth design for Secret Harbour — the whole platform, one sign at a time. Jelly beans, good tunes, and eleven days of pre-poll.
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A criminal set-up presented as terrorism, three bills passed in its shadow, and a select committee that still has not reported.
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Pre-polling opens at Port Kennedy. Sixteen candidates and their volunteers in one car park for two weeks.
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The barometer for knowing a person. Unity is the path to peace — and a postscript admitting my own frustration was dividing too.
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Three parties, one unanswered question. If the alternative will not say where it stands, it is not much of an alternative.
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A candidate turned up for his radio interview and was pulled by his own party. Sixty-three years on, the faceless men argument has not changed.
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Made it into The West by accident, walking into the shops. The tri-party showdown — and the Castle Defence memo drops.
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Why the shift to One Nation happened, why it worries me, and the eight-category breakdown showing all three lined up on the same foreign policy.
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Cards go up around town, next door to Garden Island. 2,300 Americans by 2030, a US Navy unit on the base, and nobody was asked.
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Four years of travel, and Australians have stopped talking to strangers. One stranger in four years offered me a bed. We were once the hitchhiking capital of the world.
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Infrastructure or weapons. Export power, water and compute from the desert — and the irony is the infrastructure defends us better than the weapons.
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Division is the first sign of a failing nation. The job of government is to unify — reopen the past to heal it, not to stir it.
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Bowel cancer in the young, dementia, autism. Test the food, the water and the medicine — prevent the illness instead of paying for it forever.
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Suicide and overdose are the leading causes of death for working-age Australians. One in thirty deaths. And government stays close to silent.
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Retirees do not like Pauline, tradies do. Labor is handing out gifts. And all three land in the same place on the questions that set the direction.
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A billion-dollar illegal trade that our own legislation created. Not another ban — regulate it, tax it, and let Australian growers in.
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An order granted without the accused being told, permanent after 21 days with no hearing. WA holds the Royal Commission power and has never used it here.
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Your beliefs have been fought over since you were a child. Understanding that is the first step. Questioning all of it is the second.
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The ban pushed kids off a controlled web and onto the adult one. Prohibition never removes demand — it just moves it somewhere nobody can see.
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Labor swept it under the carpet. From the Liberals, crickets. Our position is published, issue by issue, beside everyone else’s.
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Eight years building a community on a farm, and what the zoning rules taught me. Retirement villages, mine camps and prisons all do it — but try it yourself.
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Billions thrown at housing, and every party repeats the same plan. Bandaids over problems, and vote-collecting policy rather than fixes.
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32,000 people, one electorate. Fifteen issues split across local, state and national — and a question back to the people who live here.
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Get the attention, then give the winning impression. That is the whole campaign — now to work out how.
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Back in the West in time to register. Running as an independent, because the party is not yet registered. Four weeks to go.
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We grow it and ship it to Europe. Process it where it grows and it offsets ten per cent of the diesel we import.
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Without diesel the trucks stop. Everything else we argue about assumes those wheels keep turning — and nobody treats it as the first priority.
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Three parties, one foreign policy. AUASIA instead of AUKUS — and truth, integrity and accountability back in politics.
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An island nation is a castle. Submarines do not open sea lanes, they close them. The only real defence is what is inside the walls.
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Most of what our government does makes sense as positioning against our largest trading partner. The South China Sea is where a regional war starts — or where it is prevented.
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My sister Clare’s birthday — and the party becomes the Sovereign Australia Party. Truth, Integrity and Accountability; Australians and Australia first.
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A tribunal called them rocks, and that changes who owns the water. Six nations, big boats and guns — and ten years of nobody agreeing.
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You forget how big this country is until you drive across it. Green country, crops in, and a rainbow with no rain cloud anywhere.
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Brumbies at Jindabyne, and a question: before you argue about an ideology, do you understand the structure of power underneath it?
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A wall of Pacific treaties built to lock out our largest trading partner — most carrying a clause giving Canberra a say over who else the partner can deal with.
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I did consider it. But every one of them backs AUKUS, and none will ask where that alignment leads. A century of following others into war is enough.
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A country can be treated as an asset in someone else’s strategy without ever being asked whether it wants the job.
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A mutual defence pact signed in Suva. A Chinese ballistic missile test the same day. Read them together and it is not a peace agreement.
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A nation is not one pyramid with a leader on top. It is pyramids within pyramids — and if the small ones are hollow, nothing above them stands.
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Seventy days in the Duat, then Sirius blinks on at dawn. The ancients set their calendar by it — and ours has drifted from the sky it was built on.
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Even if the United States wins a war with China, Australia loses it. Submarines cannot answer a war decided by blockade rather than battle.
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Three second-hand boats, five unbuilt, a yard that does not exist — and a question nobody answers: can eight submarines escort the tankers we need to eat?
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Nobody in question time is rewarded for saying “that is a fair point, here is what we could do.” They are rewarded for the clip.
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Go and watch question time in person. These people run the country — and for a long time nobody was watching them. Now we have the result.
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Once a war cannot be won, the logic of force collapses. Arming harder buys nothing a blockade cannot take away.
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We were told the number. The real cost runs further than money — it is what we tie ourselves to, and what we give up to get it.
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Three seas closed in three years, and not one reopened by the navies sent to reopen it. Nobody asked whether we wanted the boats.
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When the Nullarbor flooded, the West ran short in days. That was weather, not a war — and everything here runs just in time.
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A former prime minister with no election left to win, saying plainly what serving members will not.
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Two days in question time, a corridor of prime ministers, and a memo on what Hormuz teaches us about a war in this region.
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Organise a group. Meet regularly. Bring the people who are worried about this country into the same room. Peaceful, inclusive.
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Independence, a public oath to Australia, and a Royal Commission into AUKUS. None of them costs anything — and all of them would be resisted.
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A million in every capital, a million in Canberra, and a meeting place in every town. Peaceful, and staying until they listen.
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An ordinary man who spent his last three and a half weeks carrying the wounded down Monash Valley, until it cost him his life. He was twenty-two.
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Where it started. Nobody asked us about AUKUS — and this country should be a unifier in the region, not a divider.
Read →The record runs from Day 1, the day I arrived in Canberra, to the current day. Read from the bottom up to follow it in order. The daily posts also run on X and Facebook.