Democratic Labour Party https://dlp.org.au/ * Also a victim of the AEC's stricter party requirements which prevented them from running in this year's federal election, the Labour-with-a-"u" party is back for Victoria. * A pretty long list of policies, apparantly tailored to Victoria as well. * Quite a wide variety of policies about housing affordability. Capped taxes, more houses, disincentives to foreign owners, "family rent assistance", etc. Some may be good ideas, but I'd question the cost vs benefit of many. * They're big on supporting co-operative housing projects, even establishing a bank to serve them. I don't really know much about these, I think I've only ever heard about them overseas, but it sounds nice. * They want to turn around the shift to renewables and build new coal power stations, as well as repealing bans of gas fracking. Further yet they actually want to pay people who _haven't_ installed solar panels $500 compensation for higher energy costs which they blame on renewables, while ending subsidies on installing new solar systems. They also want to double registration costs for electric vehicles to help pay for their halving the rego cost for petrol and diesel vehicles. They're about as far against renewables as you can get short of prominsing to come over to your house and tear the solar panels off your roof. * They're very much against the animal rights stuff, even introducing a law against "politically motivated trespass" to keep those sorts from turning up at farms. * Against abortion and euthanasia. Religious conservative undertones. * Like Family First, they've got annoyed about gay rights and equallity stuff. Along with symbolic concessions to the Aboriginals, they basically want to hear no more about any of it. * Tough on crime, except for protestors who would be protected by "a charter of citizens rights". * Business policies aim largely to help small retail businesses compete with the big guys, basically by countering a number of specific advantages held by the latter through a list of policies. C: L+ They're conservative to the extreme, but at least they're not ashamed of themselves, their policies are as plain, clear, and brutal as you could want. They've got more of an economic focus than some other right-wing parties, especially for the benefit of people on lower incomes. Overall they're a curious mix, but not really one that I'd like to try out. -----------------------