Party Games 6/54 Australian Protectionist Party

This one's going to be rough. I've haven't sworn at my computer as much as I did while reading the Australian Protectionist Party's policies in quite a while. From the leaflets explaining how mosques in you neighborhood reduce house prices to a tax plan put together by someone who likes round numbers more than actually paying for the expenses of government to a zero net immigration policy, the Australian Protectionist Party are I can't quite decide what.

Let's start with taxes. They're against them. The carbon tax, the mining tax, the GST, payroll tax, it's all bad. It hurts business, it causes paperwork, it reduces incentives to work, it's too high. They'll cut them all. And instead bring in a flat 20% tax with a $20,000 tax free threshold. Now, while I've not gone and found all the stats to work out just how much money this would bring in, it will be a lot less than the existing income tax (less income gets taxed at a significantly lower rate means less tax revenue). So we've got lots of taxes gone altogether, a massively reduced income tax and not much about how they'll cut spending to compensate for this huge drop in funds.

They're also a big fan of trade tariffs, wanting to impose a 10% tariff for all manufactured goods imported. I think I need to do some separate posts on why I disagree with certain policies as I feel I may end up repeating myself a bit. A more unique idea they have is forming an agricultural OPEC to get more money for agricultural exports (because if cartel for oil works, why not one for food?).
 
Immigration. A zero net immigration policy. Immigration on a one out, one in basis. This pretty much means no immigration. They also want an immigration policy that supports a homogenous society, by which they mean excludes Muslims and people from the Third world (although South Africa is on the list of countries it's ok to immigrate from).

Before I get too negative they do have some ideas I agree with. As part of their environment policy they want to encourage new energy sources such as solar, wind, and nuclear power. They want to build light rail networks and cycle-ways, and have more electric cars. They also want to have all government documents printed only in English to save paper so you can't win them all. Another positive is the cute girl they have modeling their t-shirt (you can tell I'm stretching for things here).

They have some people running for the house in WA, and senate candidates in Queensland and New South Wales. Senate preferences have the Coalition ahead of Labor.

website: Australian Protectionist Party
twitter: @AustProtParty