Do we like Mark Baker?
Our score: 4 out of 10. His votes went against same-sex couples' entitlements and reproductive autonomy, he backed renewables, and there is little else on record to say more.
Mark Baker is a Liberal who won the Tasmanian seat of Braddon at the 2004 federal election, knocking off Labor's Sid Sidebottom. ABC's electorate profile puts it down to “a 7.1% swing generated by Mark Latham's unpopular forests policy”. So he arrived on the back of a local forestry fight, not a personal landslide.
It didn't last. Sidebottom returned at the 2007 election and took the seat back, which makes Baker a one-term MP. There is no big scandal to tell here: no court case, no allegations, nothing from the established outlets we could open. That is not a clean bill of health, just a very quiet paper trail from nearly twenty years ago.
On asylum, the same record shows him consistently voting for regional processing of asylum seekers and against closing the Nauru and Manus Island centres. Where you land depends on whether you read that as border policy or as the treatment of people seeking safety. It is a contested area, but it is one more vote that cuts against what this page cares about.
Not everything points the same way. He consistently voted for increasing investment in renewable energy, a full 100% agreement on that policy. He also attended 269 of 288 possible votes and never voted against his own party, so he was a reliable party man rather than a maverick.
On the good-person side, the cupboard is bare, and we would rather say so than pad it. We found no charity work, kind acts, staff or co-star stories, or interviews we could open. A shrug is the honest result, not a pass and not a fail.
So the verdict is cautious. Nothing from him in his own words, and no dodgy company turned up, but a voting record that went against same-sex couples and reproductive autonomy doesn't fit the house rule easily. With so little else to weigh it against, we call it mixed and leave the judgement to you.