He said the preference bungle had caused a "catastrophic loss to the party". Leslie Cannold. Credit:Gary Medlicott Three other WikiLeaks council members, Sam Castro, Kaz Cochrane and Luke Pearson and three campaign staff were also resigning late on Wednesday. Dr Cannold tweeted that there had been "5 more #wikileaksparty resignations" in addition to Dr Mathews’. Ms Castro told Fairfax Media she and other members of the WikiLeaks Australian Citizens Alliance had tried for two hours to get a call through to Mr Assange in London on Wednesday evening, and had also tried unsuccessfully to convene a crisis meeting of the Council. Alison Broinowski, a former diplomat who is number two on WikiLeaks’ Senate ticket in NSW, says she is considering her position following the resignations. But Dr Broinowski said she "didn’t like taking things on and giving them up" without a very serious reason to do so. She said she would meet her NSW running mate, human rights activist Kellie Tranter, on Thursday to review the facts before deciding her next move.

"There are a number of different people involved so there are different explanations and justifications for what occurred, but this is not what I joined the party for," Dr Broinowski said. "I don’t think the preference issue matters fundamentally." In her statement Dr Cannold said the party’s national council had resolved to have an "independent review" of an administrative "error" in preference allocation that had led to WikiLeaks preferencing the Shooters and Fishers Party and the Australia First party ahead of the Greens in NSW, and the Nationals ahead of the Greens in WA. Dr Cannold claimed she had learnt that a party member was allegedly subverting the decision of the council about the review, and she no longer had faith in the organisation’s ability to operate according to principles of "democracy, transparency and accountability". Dr Mathews gave a similar account, saying he was resigning because "the recent fiasco over Senate preferences ... caused a catastrophic loss to the party’’ and that the review agreed on had been "immediately undermined".

As the No. 2 on the party’s Victorian Senate ticket, Dr Cannold had been slated to take the place of the party’s lead candidate, Mr Assange, should he have been elected and unable to physically take his seat. WikiLeaks campaign adviser Greg Barns said the party would deal with "governance issues" after the election, but denied that Dr Cannold’s resignation had dealt a body blow to its Senate campaign. "I note she is not the only member of a political party in this campaign who has decided to resign or has been sacked" he said. Dr Mathew’s statement painted a picture of a council torn between pragmatism and principle, as members agonised over whether to do preference deals with right-wing parties on the Christian right, the Shooters and Fishers and ultranationalist Australia First in Western Australia. Dr Mathews is particularly outraged by Wikileaks preferencing of Australia First over Greens senator Scott Ludlam in WA.

He said Mr Assange should have known that "the perceived betrayal of Scott is precisely one of the factors causing members, volunteers, coordinators and now National Council members to desert the party." He said a statement from Mr Assange stating that preferencing decisions had been left to candidates in each state was "in flagrant contradiction of everything that had been happening within the party." In a blistering statement, Ms Cannold said she could not remain as a candidate because to do so would be implicitly making a statement that the WikiLeaks Party was what it claimed to be - "a democratically run party that both believes in transparency and accountability, and operates in this way". "Over the last few weeks those of us resigning and some others have been struggling to make this true," she said. "Over the course of the vigorous debates that have taken place over preferences there have been consistent challenges to the rights of the National Council, the 11 person democratic governing body of the WikiLeaks Party, to do its job: to make democratic, transparent and accountable decisions.

Since June when I joined the campaign, I have been concerned that where disagreement exists with decisions Council makes, these have been white-anted and resisted, forcing Council to reaffirm these decisions and assert their right to make them. "At one point, there was a direct challenge to the Council's democratic right to decide and implement decisions about preference and instead proposed that it become a rubber stamp. This was rejected by Council."