Assange isn't really suited to lead a party with a democratic governing structure

Mild understatement... Assange is best suited to leading a sect.

My introduction to preferential voting was as a guest of NSW Young Labor in the early 1980s (at that time, I was president of NZ Labour Youth). Concerning elections within the ALP, it was not a pretty sight, and left me with a profound and lasting distaste for the system.

The people I hung out with were predominantly of Marxist-Leninist cast. One exception was Anthony Albanese, Rudd's ephemeral deputy prime minister. He had just been elected Immigration officer on the university executive, and was a target of ridicule in our ethnically-diverse group because he didn't even speak Italian. Within our circle he was known as "the bourgeois moralist".

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}