Party Games 4/38 Australian Democrats

The Australian Democrats are back after having been deregistered in 2016 for not having enough members. They joined forces with another party, CountryMinded, which was deregistered for the same reason, and sensibly this new party has kept the name with much better brand recognition. I'm not sure what CountryMinded gained out of this deal as the policies of the new Australian Democrats very much fits with what they had before deregistration with little sign of CountryMinded's tight focus on farmers even in areas such as agriculture or land management.

The Democrats policies have a good mix of environmental and social ideas. They advocate for strong and rapid action on climate change, increases to welfare payments, and improving health care. On the tech side I appreciate their proposals requiring tech manufacturers allow users to do their own repairs and that there are minimum periods that security updates must be provided for. Their COVID position is pretty good, including improving quarantine facilities for the future and

 Their defense policy feels tall but narrow, in that it wants to do one thing very well, namely strike at a long range from the Australian mainland, but if someone finds a way around that one thing there's not much left (kind of like going mass siege tanks as a Terran in Starcraft, if someone gets in to melee range or strikes from the air you're going down quick).

While I admire what the Democrats have done in the past, and they'll be ahead of the major parties, I'm not confident they can match their past successes.