Blatantly Partisan Party Review XXVI (federal 2025): ungrouped independents in Western Australia
There are two types of independent candidates on a Senate ballot. Grouped independents are groups of two or more people running together (either without party endorsement or with the endorsement of an unregistered party) who get their own column on the ballot, including an unlabelled square above the line. Ungrouped independents are people standing solo, without any mates, and who therefore only get a square below the line in a shared column with any other ungrouped indies, located at the furthest right end of the ballot. Parties who only nominate a single candidate rather than a slate of 2+ candidates (or as part of a slate of 2+ candidates from multiple parties) also find themselves in the ungrouped column, but there are no such cases this year.
The ungrouped column has no square above the line as the candidates are unaffiliated with each other, which means that it is impossible to vote for ungrouped independents if you vote above the line. This is one reason why you might consider voting below the line: either you want to vote 1 for an ungrouped independent, or you’re a completist like me who wants to express a preference for everybody on the ballot. Fundamentally, to receive a square above the line, whether you are party-aligned or independent, you need a friend. I am routinely amazed how many people waste their time and money standing as ungrouped candidates.
This federal election, there are two ungrouped candidates in Western Australia, down from six last time. Let’s see who they are.
Ky Cao (website)
Economist and entrepreneur Ky Cao arrived in Australia in 1979 as a refugee from Vietnam. After beginning his career in economic consulting, he founded Perth Energy and managed it until his retirement in 2016; AGL acquired Perth Energy in 2019 and it provides electricity and gas to commercial and industrial customers (WA has a highly regulated residential system, with Synergy the retailer in the South West Interconnected System). Now, although he founded a solar farm in Vietnam, he pushes the furphy that any Australian action on climate change is immaterial (as if “bigger polluted are doing nothing so we shouldn't either” is a sensible argument) and he thinks that “the more you know the less you worry about climate change”. It’s safe to say that the average climate scientist doesn’t agree with Cao.
Cao is a fan of laissez-faire capitalism: as he puts it, he “believes deeply in Australia’s free market, open society foundations” because in his view competition protects citizens and fosters economic competitiveness, liberty, and “collective wisdom”. Unfortunately, a lot of his views are based on misconceptions. He argues that Australia’s productivity has collapsed because of “bloated regulations” and because “Australia’s tax burden is too high”. This is hogwash. Our productivity is positive; yes, it has slowed in the past decade but it remains positive. You can hardly say it is a “collapse” when productivity has not gone backwards for decades. And Australia’s tax-to-GDP ratio is consistently below the OECD average; we are a low-taxing society. Now, I actually support his proposal to raise the tax-free threshold to $45,000, but not for the reasons he advances. And I oppose his other proposals to reduce taxation; if we instead raised our taxes to match the OECD average, we could do so much to raise people from poverty, provide better schools and hospitals, fund alternatives to the car, and so on.
Overall, Cao pinpoints China as the source of problems for Australia and the globe. He is mad that “China has abused U.S. goodwill”, as if the US hasn’t just tanked global goodwill from friends, allies, and ambivalent countries alike. I’m hardly enthused by Chinese attempts at securing hegemony, but Cao offers little beyond fearmongering. He is mad that major economies have not acquiesced to US demands: “The U.S. offered free trade. Other countries responded with distorted trade. This time, Trump forces all nations to make a choice.” For Cao, we should acquiesce to Trump. Anything less than full acquiescence to US policy is for him acquiescence to China. Obviously, Australia should not take Cao's counsel to become a Trump lackey on the global stage.
Recommendation: if you vote below the line, give Ky Cao a weak or no preference.
Kim Mubarak (website)
Interestingly, both ungrouped candidates for WA arrived in Australia as refugees, in Kidima Mubarak Kim’s case from Uganda. He is a serial candidate, running as an independent at state and federal elections since his first tilt at the state seat of Balcatta in March 2013, and since then he has usually contested lower-house seats in Perth’s north. In 2014, he boasted in Al Wasat that at the 2013 election for the Division of Stirling he “did much better than neo right-wing political parties” despite having “no sugar daddy or vested political interest groups” (he beat Family First and Rise Up Australia but not Palmer United or Australian Christians). In that ad, placed ahead of WA’s special election for the Senate, he described himself as “Western Australia’s leading multicultural, civil and political rights advocate”. It seems he maintains this self-belief despite receiving only 109 votes at that election. His best results to date are 2.62% for Stirling at the 2016 federal election and 3.5% for Girrawheen at the state election this year (albeit last in a field of six).
Mubarak’s website is somewhat out of date and it is certainly… individual. The homepage suggests that he is standing for the Division of Perth, but he has ended up nominating for the Senate. A link titled “how to vote” does not take you to the single-sided and succinct how-to-vote card that you might expect. Instead, it goes to an extraordinary 20-page document from the 2021 election that has 157 individual numbered points and concludes with a recommendation of a second preference to the Liberal candidate while otherwise providing an open card. The “manifesto” page covers fundamentally the same ground. It's dizzying.
The "news" page contains an extraordinary number of "serious complaints", "urgent complaints", and the like (pretty much the entire second page right now), addressed to everyone from the governor-general to the prime minister, the UN secretary general, the International Criminal Court, and returning officers of the AEC, among many. Some are sweeping complaints, others relate to his business importing matoke bananas and many are personal matters such as assertions that White South Africans are stealing security lightbulbs from his home. A lot of content in the news and manifesto alike relate to a personal injury claim where he feels he has not received justice—whenever it arises, it is discussed in tedious detail that has no relevance for prospective voters.
He has proposals for more community involvement in politics and the judiciary, based on his reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He wants state governors and all judges to be elected, a mechanism for the public to recall unpopular elected members mid-term, and an “independent concerned citizens court”, which seems like a half-baked and honestly troubling idea for a parallel legal system. I wondered if this suggested influences from conspiracist circles, but he goes in some quite different directions to that crowd. For instance, his covid rant is not the usual denialism but an expression of gratitude to Scott Morrison for federal financial assistance and accusations that Mark McGowan's government did not provide enough face masks or any financial compensation for costs Mubarak incurred during the first lockdown.
Mubarak acknowledges the State of Palestine and claims to be “the First Young Politician to recognise the indigenous people in our Constitution”. He claims that major parties running African and other multicultural candidates is “Due to my perseverance, shaking our institutions like a Mango tree”. But he also accuses the major parties of "clever racism and and cheap political games against the Black people", including that the Greens connive with Labor and the Liberals against him. This year he likes Legalise Cannabis and Australian Christians (even though he is Muslim) because they preferenced him favourably in Girrawheen.
As I said, the “how to vote” and “manifesto” sections have not been updated since 2021. The only content that accurately describes his tilt this election as an independent for the Senate is a pop-up about “a fair go for all” and “more money for sports”. Please enjoy (respectfully):
Recommendation: if you vote below the line, give Kim Mubarak a weak or no preference.
Summary: If you vote above the line, you are not missing out on a chance to help elect a great candidate. Neither option is great. Ky Cao seems the more competent of the two, but that he would not use his competence for positive ends. Mubarak is a classic ungrouped candidate with peculiarities and grievances that underpin a bemusing platform.