Party Games 41/54 Australian Independents

The Australian Independents use the name Independents despite being a party because they believe the primary task of a represenative is to represent the will of their electorates rather than their personal or party beliefs. This does raise the interesting question of what exactly do you want to achieve when you elect someone; are you selecting the person who is closest to your beliefs, the person who will best represent your beliefs (but who may not share those beliefs), someone who will do what is best for your electorate (but may not be what you believe), or someone who will do what is best for the nation (that may or may not be what you believe or what is best for your your electorate), and of course trying to work out how much what you believe aligns with what is best for the electorate or nation. I would tend to go with somewhere between the last with a big enough dose of arrogance to think my beliefs would be strongly aligned with what is best.

Despite this emphasise on representing the views of their electorates, the Australian Independents do have a set of policies they stand for. On the spending side of the balance sheet they are for greater provision of health care, greater funding for education including making university free, more public transport, high speed rail, more childcare, a more generous NDIS, and more support for the arts. On the tax side they are for lower income and company tax rates. They also plan to have a balanced budget. 

They have a strong target for reducing greenhouse gas emmisions, and a generous refugee policy. They want to ban all political advertising during election campaigns, limiting everyone to a few pages in a booklet containing every parties statements distributed by the AEC. I'm not quite sure how they feel this meets their commitment to respect basic human rights such as freedom of speech. They also want to ban all donations to political parties by unions and corporations. 

The Australian Independents are running senate candidates in all states and territories, and one house of representatives candidate in each of Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria 

website: http://www.australianindependents.org.au 

twitter: @independents1 

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/australianindependents1