Phlebas Considered

Party Games 2025 - LIbertarian Party - 16/TBD

The Libertarian Party continue their pursuit of their ideological purity at the expense of ordinary Australians. They are opposed to any form of government regulation, and consider government not being an appropriate solution to any problem as axiomatic. For those of us who recognise that modern day life involves a lot of areas where coordination problems exist and that money is not the sole means of working out how to weigh competing interests the is a clear need for a proactive and capable government.

The Libertarian Party describe themselves as helping people, but don't actually have any policies that seem to achieve that. They want to privatise the ABC and SBS, get rid of all company taxes and replace income tax with a flat tax, significantly cut government expenditure and sell off assets to reduce government debt.

They promote bitcoin as an alternative currency, when the last 20ish years have shown that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general are not fit for purpose for use as general currency (for example, how bad does the guy who bought a pizza for 10,000 bitcoin in 2010 feel today).

Their policy for women is pure transphobia. The existence of trans people is the only thing they bring up in their section on protecting the family. They don't bring up the pay gap (which they would support as they don't think the government should interfere with private contracts), they don't have anything to support victims of domestic violence, nor any other issue impacting women.

They don't want to do anything to protect the environment and want to repeal existing regulations.

All in all, their plan is to let the rich do what they want because they don't want to hold anyone to any sort of account other than a bank account. Don't vote for them.

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Sunday, April 27, 2025

Party Games 2025 - Legalise Cannabis Australia - 15/TBD

No real changes in policy in the last few years from Legalise Cannabis Australia and so no real change in my opinion of them. I agree with decriminalising marijuana, but I don't think that's a suitable foundation for a party's environmental policy, nor it's human rights policy.

They're not terrible, but they're not really prepped enough to be ranked highly.

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Party Games 2025 - Katter's Australian Party - 14/TBD

Katter's Australian Party has one thing that sets it apart from most other parties named after a founder, which is that the party is no longer led by said founder. In this case, it's officially led by the founders son, so I'm sure Bob still has a fair bit of sway.

KAP is very much a north Queensland focused party, and reading through their policies it reads a bit more like they haven't been updated from the last state election. The policies are a mix of cruel on crime, overfunding rural areas at the expense of urban areas, and a protectionist economic plan. They're also the only party I've come across with a specific policy on crocodiles.

I'm not opposed to ensuring that rural areas get adequate services, but you can't justify every expenditure by saying rural areas need more support and underfunding urban areas to make up for it. They'll be late middle of my ballot

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Saturday, April 26, 2025

Party Games 2025 - Jacqui Lambie Network - 13/TBD

The Jacqui Lambie Network is another leader-centric party that comes from a senator who left their original party but wanted to stay in politics. This time it is Jacqui Lambie, one of the few positives to come out of Clive Palmer's political shenanigans. I don't always agree with her positions, but I appreciate the effort and care she puts into the job.

The few policies they've listed on their party page are some economic nationalism/protectionism, anti-China rhetoric, and anti-corruption efforts to get money out of politics. The first I don't agree with, the second I feel they have a point but don't like how they deal with it, and the third I can get behind.

They have a few senate candidates, but they'll probably end up between the two majors for me.

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Party Games 2025 - Indigenous - Aboriginal Party of Australia - 12/TBD

The Indigenous - Aboriginal Party of Australia suffers two issues that I can see. First, they need a better web designer. Second, they fall into the trap that many single issues do, which is that they only have policies related to their main focus and don't have any indication of how they'd handle other issues which will be 95% of things dealt with in parliament.

As the name suggests, they are focused on issues affecting Indigenous Australians, and in that area I don't see anything I disagree with.

They do have candidates for the senate in QLD, so I think they'll end up around the middle of my ballot

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The Many Iterations of Harry August

At the start of the year as a way of being a bit more social I joined a book club that was being formed on the Brisbane subreddit. It's been good experience and it has got me reading more than I have in recent years and reading some things I wouldn't normally have given a go. There's usually some good discussion and the meetings are held at a pub on the night they do cheap steaks so there's good food as well. This month I'm not going to be able to make the meeting due to working a night shift so I'm putting down some thoughts on this month's book (I've kind of wanted to do it for each book, but haven't gotten around to it).

This month's book was The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. It was a refreshing change from the previous two months which were both rather heavy (physically and metaphorically) tomes. It is a sci-fi novel about a man who lives his life over and over again, and focuses on how he deals with a problem that affects him and his fellow Groundhog Day-ers.

The story takes a while to develop, and starts out with exploring what life looks like for someone who experiences life like this. This is a bit of a mix, and it was at this point I started trying to work out how this works in universe. Like the titular character, I take a multiversal view of how things work (the alternative being a single universe that doesn't work with how things are described). Initially I assumed that the rebirths happen straight away as there is zero perceived time between death and rebirth (although it does take a few years before memories start coming back). However I started considering how this would work with people who had short lives compared to someone who lived a longer life and this just led to paradox or complex schemes with variable speed time. In the end my working model is that upon death the GroundHog Day-ers go into a sort of limbo until the end of the current universe, then they all move to the next universe and remain in limbo until it is time for them to be born again.

The plot resolution does build on the early set up, but also feels a bit deus ex machina.

Normally I've taken some notes of the books to record some bits that have particularly stood out for me in the previous books, but this time my notes have mostly been keeping track of Harry's various lives (they aren't presented entirely in order) and the ongoing work to have a proper model of how the Groundhog Dayism works. Also, this wasn't as literary a tome as the last two books, so the crafting of the language used was more matter of fact.

Overall I'd give it 3-3.5 our of 5 stars,

Monday, April 21, 2025

Party Games 2025 - Health Environment Accountability Rights Transparency (HEART) - 11/TBD

Health Environment Accountability Rights Transparency (HEART) have changed their name to somthing with a better acronym than their previous name which sounded like something a cleaner does (Informed Medical Options Party or IMOP for short), but they're still antivax, anti climate change, anti-education, small government nonsense peddlers.

I'm not going to waste my time with them, and you shouldn't either. Don't vote for them.

Previous Review

Party Games 2025 - Gerard Rennick People First Party - 10/TBD

Gerard Rennick People First Party is another senator splitting from a major party to form their own party. As the name suggests, the senator in question is Gerard Rennick who was a member of the LNP until he lost preselection for the 2025 election at which point he left the party and set up his own party of which he is the president for at least the first 3 years (as per the party constitution which has some weird redactions like in half the instances where Gerard's full name is listed his middle name is redacted).

Having split from the LNP, his policies are a mix of economic populism and scientific misunderstanding. He wants to shut down all action on climate change and put a 10% tax on all renewable energy to cover end of life site clean up, which one seems excessive for the amounts involved, and two I'd be willing to consider if it was applied all energy wholesalers regardless of how the power is generated. And saying "oh no, look how much resources goes into building a wind turbine, how detrimental to the environment that is" while completely ignoring that building a fossil fuel power plant also takes resources is just disingenuous.

On the economic side he wants to make super entirely voluntary because people retiring still need pensions, and I'm not sure how allowing people to put less into super solves that problem. He proposes allowing the first $25,000 put into super each year to be tax free, but that you can also withdraw money from your super at any time for any reason, which is a roundabout way of saying you want to increase the tax free threshold by $25k (actually by about $45k as he also wants to raise the base tax free threshold to $40,000).

He wants a people's bank and insurance company to provide affordable financial and insurance services, but seemingly expects these to run without cost to the tax payer and doesn't realise that if they want to undercut commercial providers they will likely need ongoing financial contributions from the government.

Not a lot to recommend this one other than they don't seem to indulge in some of the cruelty to minorities other similarly aligned parties do, but that's faint praise.

Party Games 2025 - Fusion - 9/TBD

The Fusion Party, or to use their more unwieldy full name FUSION | Planet Rescue | Whistleblower Protection | Innovation, is a progressive party with a reasonable mix of policies. The policies are a nice mix of progressive priorities including action on climate change, more investment in education and research, and a good balance on civil right.

It does worry me a little that this hybrid party made by multiple small parties still can't muster enough candidates on their own. Their lead Queensland candidate is listed as a dual candidate with Democracy First, which isn't a party, but I guess is an organisation with aspirations to partyhood, as their website lists some policies. Democracy First's policies are mainly about limiting peoples ability to work in government in any role, and I really don't like the way they want to do this. They want all elected representatives and public service staff to have at least 10 years non-government experience before being able to get the role, and for public servants limit their time in service to 10 years. I really don't like this for public servants as limiting people to only 10 years in the public service means they can't build a career in public service, and also means a frequent turnover in roles that are potentially very niche and don't have large pools of candidates with suitable experience in the private sector, which means a regular loss of institutional knowledge which is one of the public service's strengths.

This association, along with their use of AI generated art, has made me lower the Fusion Party on my list of preferences, but they'll still come ahead of the two majors.

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Sunday, April 20, 2025

Party Games 2025 - Family First - 7/TBD

Despite having the same name as a previous party, Family First are not the same party as covered here and here. The old Family First merged with the Australian Conservatives formed by Cory Bernardi which folded a few years later, and then a few years later the current Family First was established.

However, it looks to be a very similar beast. It has strong ties to conservative Christianity (the party director is the former director of the Australian Christian Lobby), and policies to match. They have a very narrow definition of the type of family they want to put first, and not much to appeal to people who fall outside that definition. They are transphobic, anti-abortion, and opposed to any action on climate change.

They're running candidates everywhere and will be towards the bottom of my ballot.

Party Games 2025 - David Pocock - 6/TBD

David Pocock while nominally a party, is an independent who has set up a party just to ensure they can appear above the line on the senate ballot paper, but since I've set my standard for which parties I'll review as registered parties that actually have candidates on a ballot paper, he makes the cut. David has been a senator for the ACT for the last term of parliament, and was a bit of a surprise win due to the nature of the ACT's senate representation. He's been reasonably effective as an independent senator and policy wise I like most of what he's done, and if I was an ACT resident I'd be voting for him.

There is a second person on the parties senate slate, but given the ACT only gets two senators, there's zero chance the second candidate gets elected as well.

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Saturday, April 19, 2025

Party Games 2025 - Australia's Voice - 5/TBD

The first of the new parties this time round, Australia's Voice is one of the family of sitting member of parliament leaving the party they were elected with and starting their own party. In this instance Australia's Voice has been formed by former Labor senator Fatima Payman who split from Labor over their handling of the Gaza situation.

Policy wise Australia's Voice is a bit to the left of Labor, which isn't surprising based on where Fatima stood within the Labor Party, The policy page is a bit light, but does include limiting negative gearing and lower the Capital Gains Tax discount (which I'm for even though this is my first election as a property owner), taxing mining companies more, and a more proactive stance on Gaza.

Party structure wise Fatima has a lot of control over the party having final say on all policies and candidates. This isn't unusual for parties set up around a single person, but does limit the development of the party as a self sustaining entity.

Australia's Voice has five candidates (one for the senate in each state except for Tasmania), and I guess they'll end up somewhere between the Greens and Labor on my ballot.

Friday, April 18, 2025

Party Games 2025 - Australian Democrats - 4/TBD

The Australian Democrats continue to exist as a shadow of their former selves. They have a similar mix of centrist policies to the past, and still use the "Keep the bastards honest" tag line, even though there's little chance they'll get enough people into the senate to be able to effectuate that.

It does seem that a lot of the vote they got at their peak have moved on to other parties (the socially progressive side to the Greens, and I think the centrist side will have found the Teals attractive), and I don't expect that it will ever get them back.

Policy wise I do see a fair bit to agree with, including better support for higher education and the arts, more action on climate change, more investment in science, improving public transport nationwide, and more.

They'll probably come ahead of the two majors, but I think they'll have other parties ahead of them. The Democrats also remain the only party I've met a former leader of.

Past reviews

Party Games 2025 - Australian Citizen's Party - 3/TBD

The Australian Citizen's Party has removed a lot of the conspiracy and craziness from the website over the years while keeping the economic populism, but there are signs it is still there lurking beneath the surface. There's still a bit of stuff about a loss of sovereignty to London/international banks, and the candidate profiles reinforce their outsider self perception.

Their main solution for all our ills is the institution of a national bank to fund infrastructure projects, which thinking about it why do we need a bank rather than just having the government fund infrastructure development directly through taxes? They also want to set up the post office to act as a bank, with the idea that the post office will better service regional areas without noticing that the post office already has limited services in regional Australia.

They'll end up after the majors but before the deplorables.

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Party Games 2025 - Australian Christians - 2/TBD

Australian Christians continue their strong held tradition of wrapping up bigotry in religious freedom while failing to appreciate that the religious freedom they advocate should apply to people with religions other than theirs. Including a statement like "Protect the right of parents to instruct and train their children according to The Bible. " in their section of religious freedom just highlights how they see religious freedom as a privilege for themselves rather than a right for all.

Policy wise there are no real surprises. Anti-abortion, anti marriage equality, transphobic, pro internet censorship. One of the few positives I could find was their support for the Nordic Model which suggests support for more investment in education and social services, but I suspect they'd set these up with moralistic strings attached.

They only have candidates in WA & NSW so I won't have to work out where they'd go on my ballot, but they'd be after the majors and before the truly horrendous.

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Party Games 2025 - The Animal Justice Party - 1/TBD

I think a challenge with this series this time around is going to be I've done this a lot and the parties aren't changing much election to election, so I won't have much to say that I haven't already said before. The Animal Justice Party is definitely one of these. Greens but with a focus on specifically animals rather than the environment as a whole (although the do support environmental protection to ensure habitats for animals).

On non animal issues they mostly take positions I support, things like taking rapid action to transition to clean energy, protecting human rights, better treatment of refugees, etc. When it comes to matters involving animals I'm not as gung ho. Eliminating all farming of animals for example is a huge and unnecessary change, not selling processed meats to people under 18 is impractical (are they going to lock the meats behind a counter along with the cigarettes?), and ending animal experimentation will impact scientific research. I can get behind things like banning greyhound racing, but there's too many big swings they take for me to be comfortable.

They do have candidates for the QLD senate, so like last election I think they'll be before the two majors, but there will be other parties ahead of them.

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