ODDBALL OPTIONS REDUCED TO DAVE

Where have all the oddball parties gone?

What happened to the good old days of the yogic flying, transcendental
meditating Natural Law Party, or the grass-roots support for any party with
marijuana in its name?

All Campaign Notebook could dig up this time was the "Dave" party, whose
candidates assume the middle name Dave and advocate replacing Parliament
with continuous Internet democracy.

"It wasn't like our people sat down and said "f the election, let's have a
smoke'," said Paul Roth, a Perth lawyer who contested Brand in the last
Federal election for the Australian Marijuana Party.

"But basically the party doesn't exist any more. After several attempts to
have some sort of influence, the party has failed to achieve what we
intended."

Nearly 25,000 people voted AMP in the last State election. In Ballajura, the
party polled better than the Greens or Democrats. But Mr Roth will not try a
fifth time for a place in Parliament.

"Nobody sat down and made the decision (not to run this time), but people
did not get moving and motivated," he said. "We came to the agreement that
we would have to form across-the-board policies and that was an
impossibility."

He could not recommend another party to pro-marijuana voters. "The campaign
has been a Dutch auction on law and order to see who can be the most severe
and brutal," he said.At the last State election more than 5500 people voted
for the Natural Law Party, which promised to use yogic flying and
transcendental meditation to fix health and crime problems. Dr Byron Rigby,
national head of the NLP, said it was making a point by not running this
time.

"We feel the information has been delivered," he said. "We are not offering
ourselves for election because to us that is a distraction; rather, we are
spending our time doing what we talk about."

As old parties disappear, new ones arrive. Except Dave is not a party, it's
a franchise.

Andrew "Dave" Chambers said he would campaign in every election for the rest
of his life as a Dave franchise. Under Dave, the candidate was just a
conduit to Parliament for the electorate, which used live digital technology
to make all the candidate's decisions.

"Dave is a process to achieve digital democracy," Mr Chambers said. "Dave is
a concept, an idea about re-inventing democracy to better serve society. The
most common complaint in the letters page is that politicians lack
accountability and the public lacks input."

The name Dave did not stand for anything, it just gave the idea some
personality, he said.