FEDERAL ELECTION 2022 PT.1
True to form, I'm not doing very well at getting through
researching all the parties running at this year's Australian
federal election in time. In the end I didn't get on to it last
weekend, but I've been trying to to it in the evenings all week.
Unfortunately I need to wind down a bit before I'm able to make
progress, and by the end of that it's usually around 9:30PM. So
I've been staying up 'till around 1AM, managing 2-3 parties in that
time, and the late nights are taking their toll now too.
But here's the commentary that I've managed so far, which I'll plan
to split up into per-party files eventually, though probably not
until the election is over. It's not as rushed as most years, but
rushed nevertheless, so I very much suggest that I've missed some
things. It's also full of typos and spelling mistakes for the same
reason (and the fact that these parties get me talking about a lot
of stuff that I don't usually need to find words for).
I've worded it all in a very personal way, I don't intend to
convince other people which way to vote but meerly to make it
easier for them to cover interesting points in the policies of
these parties. If you want some basis for judging my opionins and
conclusions, my political leanings are roughtly centre to
centre-right. My key deviations from 'normal' voters are probably
my support for an end to population growth in Australia (primarily
through reduced immigration), as well as a heavy importance on tech
issues, especially removal of and protection against internet
privacy invasion by government and internet censorship. Both of
these issues are very poorly reflected in the major parties, who
are in favour of population growth and completely careless about
internet privacy and censorship. This makes me eager for
alternatives even before getting to all the popular issues such as
corruption and climate change which have so many other voters
pissed of with them.
Mind you, the big two parties do have the disadvantage of
occasionally having to actually implement some of the policies that
they talk about, because, you know, people actually vote them in
sometimes. As a consequence these micro parties all too often get
completely caught up in impossible promises which sound great, but
are unlikely to be realised even if a revolutionary spirit
completely overtakes the nation.
Anyway enough preamble, here's my current brain dump, for what it's
worth. Unfortunately I manually wrapped it as usual (for my election
notes) at around 100 columns instead of 80 and re-wrapping is too
hard, so this isn't going to be as Gopher-friendly as I'd have
liked.
Oh I'll also point out this site as an alternative. It's much
further to the left than I am, but I actually find the alternate
perspective quite helpful for pointing out things that I'd usually
skim over (whether I like them or not):
https://www.somethingforcate.net/
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2022 Federal Election:
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Almost every minor party this election seems to have a plan to combat corruption by introducing
some sort of oversight. It's easy to say of course, and inaction by the major parties (even an
unfulfilled promise from the last election by the Liberal party) makes it an easy policy grab.
As such it's so common that I've decided not to even bother noting it for each party, though
I certainly agree that something should be done to curtail corruption and unrepresentative
political interests in government.
Treaties and things with aboriginal people is also ignored on the basis that it's all a load of
symbolic nonsense that could mean anything in practice.
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Reason Party
https://reasonvic.org.au/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_Party_(Australia)
*The Australian Sex party, all grown-up and serious, and not really hung up on sex very much
anymore, though they still want more freedom for the sex industry.
* Legalisation of all drugs is still on their adjenda too, though more realistic aims are probably
around their support for safe injecting rooms.
* They seem to have stepped up their stance on climate change since a few years ago. They have
a decent set of pilicies working towards this while taking care not to sound like anything might
make life more difficult to the average joe. At the same time they claim to be aiming for "zero
carbon" by 2030, which seems like overreach, especially as they only plan to stop the sale of
new petrol-fuelled vehicles _by_ 2030! Still the subsidies on electric vehicles would be nice.
* Beyond those key issues they seem to have their finger in every pie on the political left. This
tends to manifest itself in lots of very expensive policies, from free child care to increased
rental assistance, better school funding (public and private, frankly I think the latter should
look after itself more than it does already) and guaranteed jobs for all.
* They're also pushing for a four-day working week, which I don't think is a worthy cause given how
flexible working arrangements have become anyway in many industries. I'm completely out of touch
with that though.
* They say they're in favour of protecting privacy. Their policy claims are pretty vague on this
though. "Ban any future collection of phone and internet metadata without a warrant" is nice,
but I get the feeling this area isn't so high on their adgenda.
* I get a sense that they're pretty urban-centric.
* They're all for greater accountability of politicians as well, personally and their policies.
Nobody could complain about that.
* They still don't like religions. I'm far more ambivalent about this topic than they are.
* Very big on mandating 'inclusive' attitudes in many sectors.
As at the last election there are a few policies and attitudes that I like, and a few that I'm
ambinalent about. I still feel thay they're too much about 'inclusivity' to avoid conflict with
free speech, and their anti-religion adgenda seems a bit pointless to me. The main change is all
the expensive policies I see without much sound _reasoning_ explained as to how they can be paid
for. So far as tax goes, say that for business they want to "Decrease regulatory burdens and taxes
via a dedicated parliamentary committee", which is nice but sounds like another huge expense. I
don't see any attempt to find a way to pay for it all.
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Australian Democrats
https://www.australian-democrats.org.au/
* Cloudflare-powered website demands Javascript to load. Grr.... And with javascript enabled I get
a "Join Us" pop-up! Ho hum.
* In spite of the website, I really liked this mob last election. They've have a long past, with
decent overall success as a minor party but a very rocky recent history.
* They support "right to repair"! Not just in name either, they have a long list of policies for
it, including mandatory minimum duration of software support for 'products': 4-year feature and
6-year security. Also a five-star product repairability rating, and lots more. I love that an
Australian party is thinking about this, I don't think I've ever seen any mention it in past
elections.
* They want to focus vechicle taxation more on usage rather than fixed fees for registration and
driving licences, unified under a federal scheme rather than current individual state systems.
At the same time they want to promote rail usage for passenger and freight, and promote electric
vehicle adoption by "Align[ing] Australia's vehicle emission standards with Europe" (though I'd
rather electric vehicles were incentivised than petrol vehicles disincentivised myself). Electric
hybrid aircraft seems a stretch, but they mostly seem realistic.
* Last election I couldn't find mention of foreign policy. This time they have a number of points
about it, but mostly fairly popularist: reverse cuts to foreign aid, reducing tensions with
China (somehow), and send COVID vaccines out to countries in our region. They do seem to be
focused on the local region and indpendent defence which is nice, particularly "Commit to never
being drawn into wars that are not sanctioned by the UN General Assembly and the Australian
Parliament" is nice, though practically impossible without kicking the US bases out of Aus,
which they don't plan to do.
* I like their fairly detailed policies on "adapting to climate change" with a focus on supporting
agriculture, as I did last election. Net-zero by 2050 target, reduced by 66% by 2030.
* Lots of opinionated stuff about defence. Supposably saving money by focusing on defence assets
rather than 'offencive' assets for deploying overseas. Practically I'm not sure it's quite
so clear cut, and I don't know how accurate their pricing can be.
* They're big on accountability, and even have a "rort watch" section on their website which
is quite extensive: https://www.democrats.org.au/rort-watch/
* Unfortunately they seem to have dropped even the weak support that they had last election
for a sustainable national population.
* Strong attitude and plans for improving aged care.
A lot of the points that I liked about them last time are still there, with the nice addition
of a foreign policy, even if some of it seems to just be a direct reaction to media stories
from the last few months. I'm overjoyed to see "right to repair" in their policies, but I'm
disappointed that they no longer seem to care about maintaining a stable population. In all
they end up about the same as before: I'm big on the sustainable population point and they've
abandoned me on that, but other things balance me out.
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Legalise Cannabis Australia
* Single issue party about an issue that I'm ambivalent about, so not much hope here for me.
* Main disappointment is that they've lost their old accronym - This is the Help End Marijuana
Prohibition party, you know, HEMP! How could they let a name like that slip away! Well actually
they barely have based on their old website which is still at https://hemp.org.au/ even though
they now also have https://legalise.org.au/
* They do have some great hemp facts at that new site, did you know:
* It was LEGAL TO PAY TAXES WITH HEMP in America from 1631 until the early 1800s;
LA Times, Aug. 12, 1981.
* George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers GREW HEMP; Washington and
Jefferson Diaries. Jefferson smuggled hemp seeds from China to France then to America.
* The first crop grown in many states was hemp. 1850 was a peak year for Kentucky producing 40,000
tons. Hemp was the largest cash crop until the 20th Century; State Archives.
* Henry Ford’s first Model-T was built to run on hemp gasoline and the CAR ITSELF WAS CONSTRUCTED
FROM HEMP! On his large estate, Ford was photographed among his hemp fields. The car, ‘grown
from the soil,’ had hemp plastic panels whose impact strength was 10 times stronger than steel;
Popular Mechanics, 1941.
Well you do sort-of get the feeling that maybe they stole those from a US website...
I question how committed they really are to bringing back hemp-based products
of the non-smoking kind.
Besides the fact that they're single-issue, they don't seem to be a very well organised or coherent
bunch. That kind-of seems genuine of them in a way though, given what they're campaigning for.
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Australian Values Party
https://australianvalues.org.au/
* A freshly minted party grumpy about a lack of leadership from the major parties, but particularly
upset that the Taliban have retaken control of Afghanistan. Founded by a veteran, supporting
the defence force is clearly the prime topic, but many other policies are also put forward.
* Pretty weak about climate change. They seem only to begrudgingly consider it and still fear
turning away deniers by doing so.
* They want tougher enforcement against illicit drugs. They quote a report claiming that COVID
border closures led to a 23% reduction in overall illicit drug consumption because they harmed
the trade. They want to keep this up through tougher policing.
* Overall law and order, care for elders, and preserving "our way of life" (particularly through
national defence) are key themes. Clearly rather concervative for a party claiming to represent
the centre.
* They are very keen on better developing an Australian made and owned local defence industry,
aiming to make all defence equipment ourselves by 2030.
Though you can't deny that the major parties have major leadership issues, this party seems
particularly targeted at veterans with a conservative bent and misses a lot of matters that are
important to me. I like the support for Australian manufacturing, but going all-in on local
defence manufacturing in particular seems a bit too specific, and optimistic. Otherwise there's
not much to draw me to them, though their centre-right policies aren't generally repellant to me.
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Derryn Hinch's Justice Party
https://www.justiceparty.com.au/
* Not much seems to have changed here over the years. Derryn Hinch is apparantly a known Melbourne
radio personality, but I still don't know him from anything I care to listen to. As in the name
his party is primed on the topic of law reform.
* They still put forward a lot of arguements about what's wrong in the Australian legal system,
which on some level I'm often inclined to agree with, but there's little to know explaination
of what Mr Hinch actually intentds to change to fix these problems. A dodgy legal system that
you know is always more attractive than an allegedly 'fixed' one that you don't, in my book.
They've had many years to figure this out some more as well. All the major parties want a
legal system that best protects the community, and if this party can't explicitly spell out
how it can improve things, then it will have a rather limited impact.
* Other issues they look at are also of a legal bent. Specifically, Gay marrage, euthanasia, animal
justice, and domestic violence. He takes a leftist approach to all and generally comes across
as a social reformist. As I have mixed views with varying degrees of strength on those issues,
this party's sweeping leftist approach to all of them is a turn-off.
* One new thing seems to be a regional rail policy, which is nice but doesn't make much of a case
for what it wants to achieve and in any case should be a state issue rather than a federal one.
*In the past Hinch has been in trouble for publishing details on an active case. While I don't
know what justifications he had for this, it indicates a disregard for procedure which
makes it hard to imagine him fitting his goals into the practicalities of the legal system.
Hinch has at least stayed consistent, perhaps because he's been more successful than most micro
parties in the past. But his leftward-leaning justice angle isn't quite in line with my own
views, and where I might agree he lacks a real argument for exactly how he'd make things better.
I suspect a lot of his past success is just a consequence of his radio presence, a dubious way to
win a seat in my opinion.
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Animal Justice Party
https://www.animaljusticeparty.org/
*Basically the extremeist end of the animal rights movement. Want live exports banned, and livestock
to be treated as Gods, and preferably not eaten.
*Basically it's all feel-good stuff about keeping everything on four legs happy. They seem to
personalise animals way to far, and would basically have them treated like people. It's all
very silly and probably thought up by people who haven't seen a farm in their lives.
*I am with them in spirit on climate change, except their policy "To rapidly transform Australian
agriculture to allow reforestation by reducing grazing" of course. They take things a bit far,
and clearly have it in for farmers.
Down the bottom with them. I do agree with some of their climate change stuff, but it's the
animal rights stuff that they really want, and where the're more likely to make change. Changes
that would have me joining in a revolt.
-----------------------
Australian Progressives
https://www.progressives.org.au/
* Seem centre-left on first impressions.
* So far as climate change goes, they're after net zero emissions by 2030. _Then_ negative
emissions after that, which is some nice evidence of someone thinking beyond the popular
hype. They also have some real plans for how to achieve it. Many are fairly radical including
banning all fossil fuel mining licenses and renationalising the electricity sector at a federal
level. Through this they intend to achieve "a 100% renewable energy target for stationary
energy by 2025", while keeping it cheap. The effort and expenditure required to pull that
off in just a few years seems prohibitive (especially while they promise to keep energy
cheap), but probably is the sort of effort required for a 2030 target to be serious. Otherwise
their climate policy is agriculture-friendly, even including "Protecting our most fertile land
from built up development". They want to restore funding to research and oversight organisations
set up then abandoned by governments past.
* Transport emissions reductions focus on rail - expanded, made faster, and made zero-emissions.
Also sounds very expensive, though they don't have a deadline for this.
* They support moving industries out of the major cities into regional Australia, which is nice.
* Quite concerned about drought-proofing - desalination plants in each capital city and domestic
water tank subsidies for low income households (= under $80,000 p.a., geeze I'm poor...).
* They have a whole lot of "Transport Infrastructure" policies which are incredibly vague.
Basically they'll make every transport-related thing great, somehow. They do plan for
"re-nationalisation of public transport previously sold off."
* Renationalisation seems to be abit of a common theme (in reality these industries were
originally under state not federal ownership though). I'm a bit divided on the topic myself,
but they frame it nicely as a way to make widespread adoption of clean technologies in those
industries much easier to implement. The cost though, the cost!
* They're all for public broadcasting and want to restore or expand funding to the ABC and SBS,
including getting ads off SBS. I'm all for that because they make up practically all my TV
viewing, radio listening, and much of my news media. I do suspect extra funding could be easily
wasted though, as it usually is in government agencies. They also want to restore international
TV services, but they don't mention restoring shortwave broadcasts of Radio Australia, the loss
of which I consider a more significant and ignorant cut to a long established service for
Australians, as well as one one offering political influence in surrounding nations. Shame
nobody seems to pay attention to that.
* They want to remove tax exemptions for churches, and generally any special treatment or inclusion
of religion in government. Interesting their policies here sound exactly like the Reason party -
some copy/paste work going on by one party or other perhaps? Anyway, again I'm ambinalent on
this.
* Truth in Political Advertising laws would be nice. This is something I couln't find again
in the Australian Democrats policies this time (though I might have just missed it). Like
the Democrats though, there's no detail, and the devil would easily hide within such things
(except that they don't believe in him).
* They want a new referrendum to vote for Australia to become a republic, which I don't support.
Our politicians are up themselves enough as it is.
* They want to mess about with the consitution, but aren't clear on the details except that they
want to "bring it in line with modern multicultural Australia" and "capture contemporary thinking,
practice, and will of the Australian People". I'm guessing they want to make sure it doesn't
mention "God" anywhere. A pointless waste of time and resources so far as I'm concerned, and
with risks of stuffing things up. Oh, I see that in part it's also about S.44 and the
prohibition of dual citizenship for members of parliament. Actually I think that requirement
is quite reasonable, and if politicians are too stupid to figure out when they're breaking it
then tough luck.
* They want better data privacy protections, and again I'm getting dejavu from the Reason Party
here. This party have a little bit more detail on it though:
* Policies that strengthen privacy protections for the public.
YES PLEASE
* Policies to require opt-out and deletion processes for data as well as ability to find out
who your information has been passed on to
YES PLEASE
* Policies that would treat Metadata as any other private data and require a warrant for
interception/collection by government agencies and must be specific and limited in scope.
YES PLEASE
They have a nicely organised set of policies covering a satisfyingly wide field of topics.
Probably a little too far to the left for my taste, but up there above the majority anyway
thanks to a more considered climate change policy and ABC/SBS funding. As with so many
nice-sounding centre-ish parties though, there's a lot of spending which seems out of touch
with the already massive national debt.
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Socialist Alliance
https://socialist-alliance.org/
* Socialism is now the solution to climate change as well as inequality, according to this party.
* They have an extensive and radical (but vague) list of policies starting with a drastic
restructuring of tax, which abolishes GST and taxes the hell out of rich companies and
individuals.
* "Nationalise the mines, banks and energy companies, under community and workers' control", as
any good socialist should, I suppose.
* They're anti-nuclear to the entent of banning Uranium mining, which is going further than
most.
* 100% renewable energy in 5-10 years, undertaken by bringing power industries under public
ownership and phasing out fossil fuels by blocking new coal or gas projects while supply
guaranteed jobs to workers in those fields.
* They want a real transformation of democracy at a constitutional level. They support a
"publicly-funded citizen-initiated referenda on all issues of significant public concern"
which reads as a partial move to more direct democracy. Also "All government positions
subject to recall elections if 10% of electors petition for it". This seems like it would
make politics pretty complicated. Politicians get a pay cut down to "an average worker's
wage" and their election campaigns are all "publicly funded to a fixed amount".
* They want to treat migrants and asylum seekers more kindly.
* They want to "Defend and extend anti-discrimination laws" but also Adopt a Bill of Rights
including guarantees for freedom of speech, assembly and religion. Those aims are directly
at odds in my opinion.
* At least they want to repeal data retention laws, but they also want to Abolish ASIO and
all spy agencies - I'd like foreign spy agencies not to be given free reign over Australian
computer users like they are now, but getting rid of our own spy agency entirely is going
way too far.
* They love unions, and want "a 30 hour work week, with no loss of pay", somehow. Also reducing
the pension age to 55 and minimum wage up to $25/hour.
* Free child care. They have a rare, but unsurprising, answer to paying for this one: "funded by
a levy on business".
* They'll fix aged care by nationalising it. There was a time when it was sort of nationalised
in that old people were put in public-owned insane asylums. Mind you considering all the
recent horror stories from the private aged care industry it's hard to imagine even an
old-fashioned loony bin being worse.
* There's a lot covered in their policies, but I think you can generalise their approach
towards many industries as:
Rule 1: if it's public-owned throw lots more money at it.
Rule 2: If it's privately owned and causing a problem then make it public.
Rule 3: If it's privately owned and not causing a problem then tax the bejeezes out of it
to pay for rules 1 and 2.
* Well they want to increase in funding for ABC and SBS, and get the ads off SBS, so I'm
with them on that. They want to "democratise their boards" as well, and I'm not sure what
they mean by that - do we have a national ABC/SBS board election as well? I suppose I
wouldn't object to that - stop making terrible dramas and put on more boring documentaties
and old movies, I'd say!
* "Shift to open source software use by government bodies" they even get a YES PLEASE out of
me on that one.
* They're very tough on animal welfare - banning live animal exports, hunting, "cuel" use
of animals in sport, recreation or entertainment. etc. That's not for me.
* They want to cut military spending by 50% and "Pay reparations to Iraq and Afghanistan for
the illegal invasions and occupations", while breaking ties with the US military. They
don't want to make friends with China either though because of their human rights issues,
so they want something of a neutral stance.
They're very radical and leftist, as you'd expect. Way too much of both for me. They have done
a decent job of forming their approach to socialism around modern issues such as climate change
though. Much of their policy is clearly unachieveable anyway, but the remainder is often
unattractive to me as well, things like opposition to uranium mining and live animal exports are
too leftist for me. Though I do at least give them credit for better ABC/SBS funding and the open
source software push.
-----------------------
Australian Federation Party
https://ausfedparty.com.au/
* The new evolution of the Country Alliance, who I quite liked in the past but they seem to have
changed focus a lot. Digging deeper it seems that this might be because the former chairman of the
now dead Family First party, Peter Harris, is playing a major role with them. I didn't like
Family First, particularly on their climate change denial and their christian conservative stances
such as anti-abortion. In between he's apparantly been doing all the COVID-19 anti-vaxxer circles
(https://www.crikey.com.au/2021/11/19/stop-the-bill-anti-vaccine-ruby-janssen-peter-harris/), which
looks pretty bad as well.
* The old party focused on rural and regional Australia while pursuing a centreist path seems indeed
to have been replaced with something of a reborn Family First party.
* They are now pushing for a more direct democracy approach to governance, holding monthly town hall
meetings, and an expectation that sitting party members will prioritise feeback from that above
party policy, which is nice in principle.
* The home page goes on to become a platform for rants about false claims and "totalitarian policies"
from the government in reaction to COVID-19. The anti-vaxxer influence is very evident.
* They also claim to best support Christian values out of all the parties.
* Frankly, even though officially this is the same part that was called the Australian Country
Party at the last election, I think it's really a continuation of the Family First party and
little more.
* They want a bill of rights in Australia - like the US. That would just cause trouble, I'd say.
The country party seems to have been hijacked by this Peter Harris to create a spin-off of Family
First. Their right-wing christian consertativism really isn't my thing. The prioritisation of
listening to the constituency over voting by party lines is nice, but in practice I wonder whether
anti-vaxxer type groups are the only ones they'll really be listening to anyway. Not for me.
To be continued...
- The Free Thinker