Tuesday was not the first time voters in Orange have seen candidates at a state or federal level playing the “buy local” card but really there are more important issues than whether campaign posters or how-to-vote cards were printed in the electorate or in Sydney.

One such issue is the allocation of preferences in the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council.

In Orange Nationals candidate Andrew Gee is not allocating preferences, leaving it to voters to decide where their preferences should flow in the unlikely event he is eliminated from the poll early.

His argument, that there is no point in preferencing blow-ins like the Christian Democrat from Swansea Heads or the No Land Tax candidate for Lewisham, is a valid one.

It really is an insult to the intelligence of voters in Orange for these parties to stand candidates who live hundreds of kilometres away and seem impossible to contact.

The strategy of these parties and scores like them, is to raise recognition for their party candidates in the Legislative Council, the state’s upper house.

Thanks to them the ballot paper for the upper house will be yet another tablecloth.

If voters want to see what happens when micro and fringe parties get a foothold in upper houses, they should take a look at the Senate.

One thing NSW doesn’t need is a shambolic upper house unable to deal constructively with whichever major party wins government.