Marijuana party has high hopes
Bill Clinton famously said he did not inhale but asking a candidate for the Help End Marijuana Prohibition Party if they have smoked pot is a little pointless.
But James Moylan, who has emerged as an outside chance of snaring a WA Senate seat for the HEMP Party, says he enjoys a joint once or twice a week.
Sitting in a cafe in the NSW hippie haven Nimbin, Mr Moylan, 51, rates his odds of pulling off a shock upset at one in six.
He thinks they would be even higher if the HEMP party had not been betrayed in preference deals at the last minute by other minor parties.
Seasoned political operators feel that following the Australian Electoral Commission's release of the preference tickets lodged by the parties that HEMP has done the best at harvesting preferences from left and right-wing parties. If it can survive long enough in the count, HEMP also stands to get any surplus votes from Labor before the Greens.
In a twist on family values, Mr Moylan's running mate is his 19-year-old daughter Tayla, a business student.
HEMP polled just over one per cent in September but Mr Moylan denied his election would show up how farcical the Senate voting system had become.
"I'm not a mug," he said.
"All of the other parties are taking us seriously because we are what we say we are. People come to our Parliament for a whole host of reasons and if I did make it, it would have meant enough Australians had looked at me and then other parties had looked at us."
He rejects the cliche the party's membership is a bunch of ageing hippies, pointing out he is admitted to practice law in Queensland (his current full-time job is national campaign director for HEMP).
"We're a grassroots organisation," Mr Moylan says without a touch of irony.
