Both the Liberal and Labor candidates vying for the seat of Strathfield in the upcoming NSW State Election have previously run in and lost Honi Soit elections.
John-Paul Baladi, the Strathfield Liberal candidate, ran on the ticket Cream for Honi in 2019. While he appeared on the ballot paper, Baladi was notoriously removed from Cream after comments he had made in the University of Sydney Catholic Society Facebook group were published by Honi Soit. In those comments, Baladi appeared to defend the disgraced Cardinal George Pell and, if elected, pledged to censor an Honi Soit cover featuring Pell as much as he could convince his fellow editors to allow. Cream went on to lose in a landslide, getting just 37% of the vote, compared to Fit for Honi’s resounding 63%.
Around 27 years before the Fit v Cream showdown, Jason Yat-Sen Li, the Strathfield Labor candidate, ran on the ticket Communicats in 1992. While they would later lose to The Naked Truth – the self described “best looking Honi” – many of their members have enjoyed significant success post-University. Besides Li, the sitting member for Strathfield and a USyd Pro-Chancellor/Senate Fellow, Arthur Spyrou, the current Australian Ambassador to Greece, was a Communicats ticket member, as well as the late legal luminary Sandy Dawson. The Naked Truth was almost equally as impressive, featuring the current Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury Andrew Leigh and the former NSW Minister for Women Verity Firth.
As far as Honi Soit can tell, this is the first time in Australian political history that two failed Honi Soit election candidates have contested the same seat. There is no record of the remaining three Strathfield candidates having run in Honi Soit elections.
Honi has reached out to Baladi and Li. Baladi seened our message.
