Party Games 20/55 Democratic Labour Party

The Democratic Labour Party with its convoluted history is an odd beast. A socially conservative, pro worker party with its stronghold in Victoria, it lost its only federal Senator in 2014 when John Madigan quit the party on less than good terms. And while John has his own party now, the DLP are hoping they can get his seat back for someone still on the team.

Policy wise they're still strongly pro-life and against marriage equality, a result of their Catholic origins (even if their twitter tried to deny this to me last election). They're still pretty good on worker rights, a result of their ALP origins. They still support fusion power. Miscellanious policies that appealled to me are setting up centrelink counters at universities, reestablishing an upper house in QLD, a sensible bushfire plan, and their support for fusion power. Things that make me concerned they've not thought things through is having leave entitlements transfer to new employers (will the old employer give a bunch of cash to the new employer?, will all the leave be paid at the new pay rate (for good or bad)? Will everyone be entitled to long service leave just for working 10 years? (that last one might not be such a bad thing)), their plan for a development bank that gets it's money from ..., and their support of fusion power.

Another interesting point to note is that their policy page on asylum seekers currently has in bright red at the top This policy is currently under review. Given that the timing of this election isn't that much of a surprise (it had to happen some time this year), I'd have thought some time before now would have been a good time to finalise the current iteration of policy development. But that's just me.