Questionnaire Information

The Justice Project will be ranking candidates and parties in the 2004 Federal Election on their support for refugee reform. We have designed a "grass roots" campaign that will be run by advocates in their own electorates. It is non party-political.

Working with expert pollsters and other refugee advocates, we have developed a questionnaire to determine candidates' commitment to reforming refugee policy.

In the House of Representatives we are focusing on electorates with margins of 8% and less. To see a list of electorates targetted, go to Results .

Volunteers in each electorate are interviewing their own candidates. If you would like to get involved go to Volunteers .

The results of the questionnaires will be sent back to The Justice Project in Melbourne where they'll be independently processed and issue Ranking Cards for each electorate. The Ranking Cards will include rankings for both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The Ranking Cards will be uploaded onto this site into the Results section when all candidates have either been interviewed or refused to answer the questionnaire.

As the majority of Australians vote above the line in the Senate, we are taking a different approach. We are examining each party's policy against our own position. (See Overview ) and will rank them accordingly.

We encourage people to use the Ranking information in their pre-election campaign activities.

Download a Copy of the Questionnaire

How the Questionnaires were scored

When completed questionnaires from candidates were sent back to The Justice Project's office in Melbourne . They were then forwarded to a company which processes polling data.

There were 21 questions on the questionnaire where the possible answers were AGREE, DISAGREE, DON'T KNOW; or YES or NO.
For questions 1 through to 20, candidates scored either one or two points for Agree and Yes responses and zero for Don't Know or No responses.

The Candidate's total score out of a possible 31, was converted to a percentage and that figure is shown next to the candidate's name on the ranking card.

When a candidate was approached to answer the questions in good time, but has not answered the questions, this has been noted next to their name on the ranking card.

Questions 22 and 23 provided an opportunity for candidates to comment generally on the issues.

Where we were unable to contact a candidate, and therefore they did not have a good opportunity to respond, this was recorded next to their name. All candidates were sent a registered letter explaining that a volunteer would be approaching them to complete the questionnaire.

The Justice Project Inc - P.O.Box 2595 Fitzroy, Victoria, 3065

info@thejusticeproject.com.au