Meet Max Dicks, the man using his funny name to get into the Senate
He’s got the funniest name in politics – and this little-known independent Senate candidate is ready with all the d**k jokes.
It’s 8.45pm on Friday night and I am at St Kilda Cellars watching little-known independent Victorian Senate candidate Max Dicks deliver his first-ever stand-up comedy performance. He is one of several acts on the bill.
“This is my first time, so be gentle,” Max tells the crowd. “But that is right, my name is Max Dicks … I was bullied horrendously in school … There was much debate about whether my middle name was ‘Has-No’. Max Has-No Dicks. So, naturally, I rebuffed this suggestion.
“My weapon of choice? Tears. Tears, and cries that I do in fact have a penis. As I grew up, my mother used to joke that if I’d been born a girl, she would have called me Ophelia. Ophelia Dicks.”
Midway through the set, the 31-year-old makes his big reveal to the crowd, opening his jacket to show a T-shirt that reads: “Vote 1 Max Dicks.”
“I’m trying to be a politician,” he says. “I actually gave it a go last federal election. People saw my massive sign and they thought, ‘He’s trying to become a comedian.’ I’m not actually that funny, but my name is. Speaking of my name, that is the way I’ve been trying to promote myself. I’ve been telling everybody to Google Max Dicks.”
‘Vote 1 Max Dicks: It’s in your hands’
After the show, Max and I walk down Fitzroy St in St Kilda looking for a taxi. He is in a rush to be at Marvel Stadium in time to stand outside campaigning as the Bulldogs vs Collingwood game ends.
Earlier in the day, I had contacted Max to ask if I could sit down with him for an interview. He did not have time for a sit-down (“I just don’t have enough hours in the day right now”), but invited me to tag along with him and chat as he walked through the city late at night.
I find out that Max, a 31-year-old locksmith, has taken six weeks of annual leave to focus on his Senate run, during which time he has been campaigning every day, 16 hours a day.
His preferred method of campaigning is to walk through busy areas holding a large sign. One side shows a picture of his face with the words, “Vote 1 Max Dicks: It’s in your hands” plastered underneath. The flip side shows the same picture with, “Google Max Dicks. You won’t be disappointed.”
The sign gets attention, which gives Max an opening to talk about why he is running for Senate and what he believes in. Max has figured out this works best late at night when people are waiting in line at nightclubs or out with their friends. He spends every night this way, leaving the city at 2am on weekends or midnight on weeknights.
Max holds his sign now as we walk down Fitzroy St, pausing to display it to people sitting at restaurants and bars. When anyone smiles, laughs or calls out to him, Max hands them a “Vote 1 Max Dicks” business card and says, “It is my real name, and I am trying to get elected.”
“What do you actually want to do?” a man outside Freddie Wimpoles bar wants to know.
Max launches into a spiel I will hear dozens of variations of as the night goes on.
“I would like to improve voter literacy; I feel like the two major parties deliberately make it hard to understand and engage with politics. I would like politicians to meaningfully engage with us outside of the election cycle; once every three years isn’t good enough. I would like to make society more caring by improving emotional intelligence [through education], and I’m a young person, I care about the environment. I want to have kids one day and I want there to be a world for them to grow up in.”
After Max and the man have a short chat, I chime in with, “Do you reckon you might vote for him?”
“Mate, with a name like that I’ll definitely vote for you!”
There are many more conversations along Fitzroy St – the people here cannot get enough Dicks. It takes Max and I half an hour to walk 700m along the street, where we succeed in finding taxi.
In the taxi, I have Dicks all to myself for the first time. He tells me he had never thought about getting into politics when he was growing up in Warrnambool, but when he became more mature, he thought it would be a good way to make a positive change in the world.
“What did your family and friends say when you told them you were running for Senate?” I ask.
“Makes sense.”
“They said that?”
“It wasn’t their exact wording, but nobody was super surprised.”
Max explains he had always been strong-willed, opinionated and outgoing. Friends would probably have described him as argumentative.
“I don’t like bullies,” Max tells me. “I don’t like people who force their opinions on others, and things like that. So, I would regularly argue with most points of view, because I often wanted to understand why somebody else believed something. Sometimes I’ll argue something just to hear the other side of the argument, even if I don’t believe it.”
“You mentioned in the comedy set you were bullied at school. When did you start feeling less sensitive about your name?”
“I still feel strange,” he says. “Like this election, I walked down a shopping mall with a Vote 1 Max Dicks shirt on and I felt awkward. Just wearing my name on a shirt, walking down a shopping mall. I feel awkward doing that in normal everyday life,” he says. “I don’t normally bring it up.”
“But what about all the Max Dicks jokes you’ve been making?”
“I’m only bringing it up because I’m trying to get elected and it’s the most marketable thing I have.”
Campaigning on the whiff of an oily rag
We arrive at Southern Cross Station at 10pm and walk towards Marvel Stadium. Max is concerned we may have already missed the crowds.
“I wonder when the game finished,” he says. “I wonder if I just ballsed it up and talked to people for too long.”
Still, Max cannot help stopping to talk to more people on the way there. We are stopped by a group of young men and women between aged 19 and 20.
“OK, imagine this,” a woman in the group says. “You’re going to the supermarket, what’s in your bag? What are you taking to the supermarket, babe?”
“Like, from the supermarket?” he clarifies.
“No, to the supermarket.”
Her friends laugh. “She wants you to say a reusable bag,” one of them hints.
“So, normally when I go to the supermarket, I’m wearing my work jacket,” Max explains. “I take my work jacket off and I tuck the arms inside out and use it as a shopping bag.”
“Hawww!!” the group erupts in approval. “That’s even better than a reusable bag!”
A woman in another group asks if Max is more aligned with Labor or Liberal.
“I would put myself in between Labor and Greens,” Max tells her.
“Love you! Love you! Now we love you!” she says.
My turn for a question now. I ask Max if he fits into the movement of teal independents.
“I do feel like I fit into that movement, but it’s not a perfect fit,” he tells me. He identifies with their values, but his focus on voter literacy, voter engagement and emotional intelligence education differentiates him from other teal candidates.
The other thing that differentiates him is that he is not backed by Climate 200. He emailed Climate 200 to introduce himself and initiate a relationship, but never got a response. He explains he would be happy for Climate 200 to promote him, but would not take their money.
“I like running off my own bat,” he tells me. “People are voting for me as a person. And I like it, being me, the person, that’s doing it,” he says. “I feel like I’d feel some sense of obligation to someone if they’d given me heaps of money.”
Max has a “Donate” button on his website that redirects to a page which states he does not want donations and suggests people contact him if they want to help. One person has contacted him wanting to donate money; he refused the donation and instead sent the person two “Vote 1 Max Dicks” T-shirts.
Max’s budget is between $10,000 and $15,000. Compare that to Dr Monique Ryan, teal independent candidate for Kooyong, whose campaign budget is $1.2 million. While Dr Ryan has over 2000 volunteers working on her campaign, Max has two friends helping him out. One friend is officially his campaign manager, but in reality, it is mostly Max doing everything.
I wonder what it is that has kept Max, a 31-year-old tradie, from being accepted into the teal club. Or at least from getting a response to that email.
Wanting to improve voter literacy
When Marvel Stadium comes into view, so does a massive wave of people floating towards us. To Max, the sight registers as a relief.
“Oh, this is the crowd I wanted. Good. There are still people. I haven’t ruined it.”
In a rapid-fire flurry, he hands out cards, poses for photos and recites his spiel when people stop to chat.
“This is efficient,” Max mentions to me in between breaths. “This is the most I’ve handed out quickly.”
“He was on The Project,” I hear someone say.
“I can’t vote for you, I’m not in your electorate,” a young man calls out.
Max tells me later he finds this common retort frustrating. He is constantly explaining that as a Senate candidate, anyone in Victoria can vote for him. The lack of understanding he encountered while campaigning in 2019 is the reason he became so passionate about improving voter literacy.
“So, there’s a Lower House and there’s an Upper House,” he tries to explain.
“Ha! Maximum penis!” someone interrupts.
After Max gets through his micro-lesson on how the Senate works, someone suggests he should take up a career in sales.
“I wouldn’t be able to do it if I didn’t genuinely believe in it,” he says.
Relying on voters going below the line
Max started the night with 500 business cards. By the time the football crowd dries up he has less than 100.
“This was fantastic,” says Max. “I thought it would be good, but I didn’t think it would be this good. I really do think that being on The Project and a bit of media attention has made all the difference.”
We walk through the city looking for something for Max to eat. He wants it to be healthy, but the only places open are kebab shops, McDonald’s, Hungry Jack’s and KFC. He is looking forward to sustenance and a short break, but if his energy has flagged even remotely, I cannot tell.
I ask Max if he thinks he has a chance this election.
“Ten per cent. I have a 10 per cent chance at this moment. That is my belief. I had a 3 per cent chance until I got on The Project.”
I suspect the odds are significantly slimmer, but I keep this thought to myself. If Scott Morrison’s victory in 2019 was a small miracle, Max Dicks will need a miracle on a scale closer to the parting of the Red Sea.
As an independent Senate candidate, any vote for Max needs to be “below the line” on the ballot. In 2019, only 10,147 (0.27 per cent) of voters in Victoria completed all below the line squares.
Of those, 1207 (0.032 per cent) Victorian voters gave Max Dicks their first preference in 2019. It was a solid performance for an independent Senate candidate, but well short of the 600,000 needed to win a seat.
“The plan was always to run again,” Max tells me. “And I was working towards running again, but like a lot of people, Covid was not great. A long-term relationship broke down. I had to move out of the house I was staying in. And being an extrovert, being kept away from all my friends for so long was quite depressing.
“So, Covid was just not a great time for me. It took away from a lot of the time I wanted to be working towards this, and because I hadn’t succeeded at that, I was very much considering not running this year. I just didn’t feel ready, I didn’t feel like I’d done enough.
“I still don’t feel like I have done enough. But you can always do more. You can always do more. And if you don’t try, if you don’t go out there and do it, then you can never succeed.”
An honest politician
I have so many questions for Max, but we are often interrupted. Max gets into lengthy conversations with security guards, intoxicated nightclub-goers and even a detective who claims to be Greens senator Lydia Thorpe’s cousin.
Potential Max Dicks voters quiz him on defence, debt, the separation of powers, education, affordable housing and negative gearing. He responds with well-thought-out, persuasive positions on all of these topics. Some are expecting him to be a whack-job, but they invariably realise he knows his stuff.
One particularly excited young man rushes up to Max, saying, “My boys have not stopped going on about you for the last week.”
With no perceptible pause, the man somehow launches into videoing himself and continues, to his phone-camera now, “Look who I found. Come on the Max Dicks! Let’s go! Vote 1 Max Dicks!”
I ask a young woman we speak to whether she will vote for Max.
“Um, I have a lot more thinking to do,” she says. “What is your actual plan on climate change? You said you care about it, but what’s your plan?”
“The last time an independent got a piece of legislation through parliament was the Marriage Equality Bill, right?” says Max. “Before that, it was 17 years before something else got through. So, as an independent politician, it would be very unlikely for me to actually get a bill through parliament, so I don’t have specific policies, because it would be a waste of your time to read them and my time to write them.”
“Facts,” says the young woman.
“That’s why I give people my values,” he continues. “So that people can understand who I am as a person, so you know the kind of decisions I’ll make.”
When I have him to myself again, I ask Max what example he wants to set for people if he becomes a senator.
“Being honest,” he says. “Being honest, answering questions, trying to be as open as possible. One of the fortunate things about not being a dick is that I can be honest about who I am. And I can just do that. I can answer things honestly, I can answer things openly.”
Democracy at its best and most beautiful
At some point, we see the golden arches again and Max gives up. “Apparently that’s what I’m having now,” he says, looking at the McDonald’s.
It’s 12.30am. Max will be out campaigning until 2am, but I am ready to throw in the towel. I do not have a fraction of the boundless stamina possessed by Max Dicks, nor the same need for exposure. We say goodbye and I head towards Flinders St Station to catch my train home.
As I walk through the city observing all the happy drunk people and all the miserable drunk people, I try to process the night I just had.
I feel inspired, as if I have just witnessed democracy at its best and most beautiful. But I also feel disheartened, knowing someone so sincere, who is working so hard, has virtually no realistic prospect of winning a Senate seat.
When I get home, I find a semblance of comfort in the pages of the Talmud. “Rabbi Shimon said: There are three crowns: The crown of Torah [i.e. the media], the crown of priesthood [i.e. the Senate] and the crown of kingship [i.e. the House of Representatives] – but the crown of a good name surpasses them all.” (Pirkei Avot 4:17)
Darren Chaitman is a freelance writer
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