Let's all talk about the Senate some more!

Alright, I've finally tracked down enough information to decide how I'm going to vote for the Senate on Saturday - there's still a few gaps, but I have a basic outline of most candidate's positions (if any). If anyone has any info on Norman Walker or Joseph Kaliniy, though, please let me know - I have no idea who they are, so at the moment, I'm preferencing them just behind the Liberals, after all the major parties and just ahead of the real crackpots (DLP, CEC, One Nation).

sener4senate has links to every party and candidate's website on his journal - check out his policies while you're there.

yak_boy has a good post up on why senate preferences are important.

If you're still planning on voting above the line, please - PLEASE - check the group voting tickets out first. There's nothing wrong with voting above the line - I voted above the line for the Greens last state election - but make sure your preferences are going where you think they're going. Parties often make unexpected and unannounced preference deals - eg, Vic Labor and Family First in 2004.

Let's kick the bastards out on Saturday!

The Lady Vader, Chief of State

Been re-reading old Star Wars novels, and a thought struck me - when did it become common knowledge that Leia is Vader's daughter?

It's not something that's ever formally mentioned, which is a shame, because it would be interesting to see how the galaxy reacted. Still, there's enough hints that one can roughly pin down the time frame of when the truth got out.

It's reasonable to assume that the information that Luke and Leia are siblings got out fairly early - they've got no reason to hide it, though I can't remember any mentions in the early novels that make it explicit that its common knowledge. On the other hand their father's identity would not be common knowledge; Leia is pretty adamant about keeping that detail quiet in The Truce at Bakura, and there's no reason to assume that Luke or Han would start blabbing about it against her wishes. Still, it clearly wasn't kept secret forever, since her relation to Vader is well known by the time of The Black Fleet Crisis.

I'm betting it came out about the same time as The Jedi Academy trilogy. That Leia named her third child Anakin implies she's come to terms with her ancestry by then. Meanwhile, in I, Jedi, Luke tells his students  - who were apparently unaware - that Vader was his father; presumably he had Leia's permission to do so. I suppose it's possible he was just so caught up in the excitement of founding the new Jedi order that he temporarily forgot he was supposed to keep that detail a secret... anyway, it doesn't matter. Once he let that slip, there's no way of keeping it quiet again.

Anyway, this raises - to me - an interesting issue. Did the galaxy learn that Leia is the daughter of Darth Vader before or after she was named Chief of State? I think it has to be shortly afterward. The news that Darth Vader had children, and that one is now a member of the Republic senate would be huge news, and if it was already well known that Luke is her brother - well, then Luke's students would have to be pretty dim not to have put one and one together already if the news about Leia had already come out.

So here's a political scandal for you; shortly after Mon Mothma is poisoned by an Imperial agent, and with Kyp Durron's rampages seemingly demonstrating that the Republic is either unable or unwilling to punish those who commit genocide with superweapons, its suddenly revealed that the Republic's new Chief of State is none other that the daughter of Darth Vader!

There's got to be a story in how the New Republic dealt with that public relations nightmare...