Party Games 19/55 CountryMinded

CountryMinded are another party trying to fill the niche of being a better rural party than the Nationals. Not being part of the Coalition does allow them to take a few policy stances that are an almost equal mix between rational & sensible and overly protectionist of rural Australia. Among the former are an acceptance of climate change and the accompanying support for carbon pricing and more renewable energy as well as strong support for mental health services. The latter include wanting payroll tax eliminated with no suggestion as to how states will replace this revenue, protectionist trade policies, and that native vegetation is best managed by letting farmers farm as they see fit.

This last item highlights a trend that becomes apparent after a thorough read of the policies. They can all be boiled down to farmers come first. Why do they want small business to have better support? Because 90% of farms are small businesses. Who's best able to plan sustainable land management? Farmers. Who deserves more support from government in times of disaster? Farmers. Who don't we have policies for? Cityfolk.

Now this is not to deny that agriculture is an important industry, nor to suggest that farmers deserve no help from the society and the government. But, one of humanities greatest achievements is having over the last 10,000 years gone from having 100% of the population involved in hopefully producing the food needed for everyone to only 2% or so feeding everyone. And while the huge gains in productivity of food producers over that time is a foundation block of modern society, it's not the only one and to treat it as such risks neglecting other factors important for society. Without engineers developing refrigeration, all that food goes to waste. Without transportation, all that food goes to waste. Without pest controls developed by chemists, all that food goes to waste. Without environmental scientists studying climate change, all that food might stop growing. The list goes on. "Is it good for farmers?" can be an important question for judging policy, but it shouldn't be the only one.

So farmers and assorted country folk will like these guys, but this city slicker is not of their target demographic.

Party Games 18/55 Consumer Rights & No Tolls

The Consumer Rights & No Tolls party has just a few policies, and their site makes it look more like their upset about being stung with a fine for not paying their tolls one time too many than a serious attempt at policy formulation. This impression is not improved when their sole health related policy is that people who choose not to vaccinate their children should not be demonised and that there is no scientific consensus on the matter. Another of their thought bubbles is more referendums to encourage democracy, but this suggests that they don't quite grasp that a referendum is a vote to amend the constitution (and hence why the proposed vote on gay marriage is a plebiscite, not a referendum) and that Australia has historically not voted positively for matters put to referendum.

Unfortunately these are not balanced out by their other policies are things I like. No cuts to the ABC and SBS, encouraging more motorbike and public transport use, and not selling off public assets are good ideas, but not enough to make me inclined to vote for them.

Party Games 17/55 Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

The Citizen's Electoral Council of Australia brings to the fore one of the challenges of going through all the parties again this election, which is that the parties haven't changed much over the last 3 years. In this case, the CEC continue to be economic nutjobs who haven't noticed that Australia made it through the global financial crisis reasonably well, that climate change is an actual thing, and that if Prince Charles is secretly controlling the world, he's a better actor than Leonardo DiCaprio, Judy Dench, Gary Oldman, and Patrick Stewart combined.

There's no new policies (indeed one even says to contact the treasurer Wayne Swan to encourage him to implement the policy) although I did find one section I hadn't read through last time extolling the evils of video games, so I guess I now have even less reason to vote for them.

Party Games 16/55 Christian Democratic Party

The Christian Democratic Party continue to be own of the stronger Christian parties out there, with a very strict and dogmatic approach to policy. They feel that government should be under the authority of God and to serve his purposes. This is something I disagree with.

As a strongly Christian party, there's not many surprises policy wise. They want more God in government, they want no changes to the definition of marriage, mandatory internet filtering, funding for Christian universities, harsher penalties for crime, zero-tolerance for drugs, anti-abortion. Their view on the environment is that God gave it to us so it can't get that bad. They have also joined the anti-halal bandwagon and the anti-ABC bandwagon.

While that's more than enough for them to lose my vote, there are a few things they want that I agree with. They want limits on gambling and poker machines, protecting penalty rates, and giving farmers tax benefits for investing in drought preparedness.

Party Games 15/55 Bullet Train for Australia

Bullet Train for Australia continues to advocate for a fast train system between Brisbane and Melbourne for Australia, which I feel is a good thing having experienced fast trains in Japan and Korea, but in the days of sub $100 flights it's going to face an uphill battle.

They have moved on slightly from their former commitment of abstaining on non fast train matters with a candidates pledge to also support campaign finance reform, action on climate change, support for marriage equality, support for euthanasia, and limiting poker machines. They haven't quite committed to calling these policies though, more just things our guys will vote on.

Party Games 14/55 Australian Sex Party

The Australian Sex Party continues to have a strong set of civil rights based policies. They're pro pretty much anything related to sex, so marriage equality, sex education, LGTBIQ rights, better protections for sex workers, less censorship, a secular state, and more are still in their policy mix.

Since the last election they have added policies in areas I felt they were lacking in, so on the environmental front they are for protecting the reef to the tune of $250 million, a ban on fracking, and support for renewable & nuclear power. On the immigration front they're for closing down off shore processing of asylum seekers.

I still think the party could make more of a contribution if they had a less suggestive name, but a rose by any other name still has good policies.

Party Games 13/55 Australian Progressives

The Australian Progressives seems like a generic left wing party. They have the standard checklist of policies; marriage equality, an emissions trading scheme, greater parental leave, more medicare funding, Gonski funding, closing down offshore processing of asylum seekers, and so on. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but they don't really have anything that makes them stand out as a party policy wise.

One thing I did like was that they're starting to expand their policies with explanatory notes, sources and a version history. It's not unique (the Pirate Party has their policies on a wiki), but it's nice to see they've done their homework and don't consider policies as ordained from on high. They've only got a small subset of their policies expanded upon this way, so I look forward to them adding more.

They'll probably end up slightly above the middle of the pack, but don't stand out among the other parties.

Party Games 12/55 Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party

In looking at the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party I need to start with a mea culpa. When I first heard they had gotten a senator elected and learned who he was, I was quick to write off Ricky Muir. I saw the kangaroo poo flinging videos that emerged and worried what sort of bogan had been elected. But Ricky Muir went into the job with a seriousness that I had not expected and has done a great job for his state and Australia, and I hope he gets reelected. The party is certainly betting on him by using his likeness in their logo.

The party itself has stuck to pretty much the same set of policies, advocating for better roads, better driver education, and support for the motoring industry. There's not much more new from last time around.

Party Games 11/55 Australian Liberty Alliance

The Australian Liberty Alliance is focused on one thing. Stopping the Islamisation of Australia. This seems at odds of their claim to be about liberty. One of the points in their plan to stop the Islamisation of Australia is to make religions submit to a required doctrine of accepting Australian law as supreme over religious beliefs. This would cover all religions if they wanted to keep tax exempt status, not just Islam. The government imposing religious doctrine does not exactly match my idea of liberty, and I'm an atheist who isn't keen on religion. I'm not sure how some of the more religiously fervent members of the public would like this. Other parts of the plan include prohibiting anyone from muslim countries for 10 years. They're also kind of freaked out about Islamic finance.

In other areas they appear a standard right wing party proposing smaller government, more defense spending, in denial about climate change, opposed to gay marriage, making it tougher to be on unemployment benefits, cutting back the services provided by the ABC & SBS, and so on.

The one positive policy they have is making sure everyone has a certain minimal level of internet access, as at this point in time I feel internet access is at the point of being a utility like electricity, not a luxury.

In summary, the Australian Liberty Alliance is another edition to Australia's collection of right-wing parties.

Party Games 10/55 Australian Equality Party (Marriage)

The Australian Equality Party (Marriage), despite it's slightly clunky name, is another single issue party, this time with a focus on achieving equality for Australia's LGBTIQ population. They have a pretty comprehensive set of changes they would like to see, starting with marriage equality, and adding anti-discrimination protection, updating legal documentation requirements to be accepting of wider ranger of gender identities, better provision of health care for the LGBTIQ community, and related issues.

The name does seem a bit clunky, with marriage tacked on in brackets at the end, but as the expansion of the LGBTIQ acronym over time has shown the relevant community is ok with this sort of clunkyness. I think they've added it just to make it a bit clearer what sort of equality they are advocating as otherwise Australian Equality just by itself makes it hard to judge what they're for when completing a ballot paper with only the party name to go on.

In terms of diversity of policy areas the Australian Equity Party (Marriage) has about the same range as the Australian Cyclists Party, but the areas they've chosen let me know that they're a closer match to my values.

Party Games 9/55 Australian Defense Veterans Party

The Australian Defense Veterans Party initially looked like it was going to be another single topic party, but they have put together a pretty broad range of policies. They also have broadened their definition of veteran, including not just former military members but also including emergency services such as the police, ambulance and fire brigade. In the field of veterans affairs, the party is for providing a lot more benefits and support for veterans, as well as better pay and conditions for people currently in the military and emergency services.

Their energy policies are pretty good overall. It's a bad sign of the times that I get excited by a party that says they accept the scientific consensus that climate change is a real thing, but that's the state of affairs. I disagree with them on nuclear power, but that was about it.

One area I'm concerned about is their rather strong support for the security aparatus and very strict stance on national security. Given the strengthening of powers and reduction in oversight granted to such agencies over the last decade and a bit, as well as revelations about the extent of programs from whistleblowers, I'm not comfortable with letting them go full steam ahead however they want.

Overall, a better set of policies than I expected, and my first pleasant surprise of the process so far.

Party Games 8/55 Australian Cyclists Party

With the Australian Cyclist Party we have another single issue party. Their cause de jour, improving cycling access. They want better standards for bike lanes, a review of mandatory helmet laws with the aim of making helmet use optional for adults, more bike trails built away from roads for recreational use, better education of cyclists and drivers, and a review of penalties for aggresive driving towards cyclists and motorbike riders (this last one definitely peaked my interest.)

Overall their ideas are pretty good, and I'd be happy to seem them implemented, but I wonder if they really needed to go to the effort of becoming a political party rather than an interest group advocating for the changes they want.

Party Games 7/55 Australian Country Party

The Australia Country Party is setting itself up as an alternative to the Nationals as party for the rural areas. It's policy areas primarily focus on better support for rural areas, and protectionist trade policies. The former I can support, the latter I can not.

An example of their protectionist trade policies is their plan to introduce government price controls for agricultural products, and that this price should higher than the international market price. What this is saying is that all Australians should pay more for their food so that farmers can have more money. Now, while I can understand the frustration farmers may feel with market conditions, for example the recent brouhaha about milk prices¹, I don't think government legislated price controls are an appropriate response. I would support stronger powers for the ACCC to investigate and punish companies that are found to be abusing their market power.

Another item that concerns me is their proposed changes to the constituiton. They are seeking to repeal sections 25 & 51 and add recognition of indigenous peoples. Their motivations for this are positive, but they show some misunderstanding of the constitution. They say that they want to repeal section 25 because it allows states to exclude people from voting based on race. This is not the case. Section 25 reads "For the purposes of the last section, if by the law of any State all persons of any race are disqualified from voting at elections for the more numerous House of the Parliament of the State, then, in reckoning the number of the people of the State or of the Commonwealth, persons of that race resident in that State shall not be counted." This does not permit the states to exclude people based on race. What this does is create a consequence for the states if they under their constitution and laws exclude a person from voting based on their race. If they do, they will have fewer representatives in the federal parliament because the people they exclude won't be included in their counted population when working out how many representatives each state is entitled to. Now as it stands I don't think any states do or are likely to in the future exclude people from voting on the basis of race, so losing this section won't make much of an impact, but I would like my legislators and political parties to have a better comprehension of the constitution than a call centre phone monkey with a science degree.

 Tax policy is another area of concern. They want to make it so tobacco tax revenue can only be used for health related matters, which ignores the overall fungibility of money.  They also want to give seasonal workers a much higher tax free threshold, but this I fear would just mean the employers of seasonal workers will reduce the before tax rates they pay so they see the benefits instead of the workers.

 Overall, this is a party that farmers and their associates will like, but for a city slicker like myself they're not bringing much to the table (and to be fair, I'm not the demographic they're looking to represent).

1) In relation to the recent cases of milk companies retroactively cutting the prices they pay farmers I have three main thoughts. First, I can appreciate the anger of the farmers being told this (if my work told me they were cutting my pay by 10% as of 6 months ago, I wouldn't be very pleased either), second, I'm not sure I like that such clauses are allowable under contract law, and third, I'm not that sympathetic to people complaining about the terms of a contract they signed and agreed to some time ago because now the terms don't suit them as much. If they were complaining about unfair terms in a new contract they were being presented with, I could get behind that, but after agreeing to a contract, it's harder to make the case.

Party Games 6/55 Australian Christians

The Australian Christians don't seem to have changed much since I read up on them in 2013. In fact I think I recognise some of the images that they have on their policy page from last time. The only change I noticed was in their energy policy where they say they're glad to have seen the carbon tax removed.

Thus much of what I said last time still applies. Their environmental policy seem designed to sound nice but commit to little, they still don't realise that a secular government embracing one religion does in fact exclude other religions, they're still pro censorship and filtering the internet, and most importantly they're still not making a case as to why a non-Christian should accept Bible based policies.

That's not to say they don't have some policies I agree with, even if we don't agree on the reasons why these are good ideas. They support funding the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and they also support investing in public transport.

Party Games 5/55 Australian Antipaedophile Party

Edit: So it turns out that they've just moved their site. I just wrote down their old site when I was compiling my list of parties a few weeks ago.

As the Australian Antipaedophile Party's name would suggest, they are against paedophiles/child sex abusers (the party uses the terms interchangably, but the Australian Institute of Criminology makes a distinction between the two). They say the problem is much larger than people realise, citing different figures in different places, the highest of which is that one in three child experiences sexual abuse. They don't cite sources for these figures, but some rather unpleasant reading online suggests that this is an upper figure and there is a fair range of uncertainty (this summary from the Australian Insititute of Criminology gives ranges of 3-29% of boys and 7-36% of girls which even at the low end is higher than I would have thought or am comfortable with). Their proposals to deal with this issue are longer sentences for convicted offenders with less flexibility for judges in sentencing and making prosecution of offenders easier (there's not much detail on how they would achieve this though). An acknowledgement of the uncertainty in these statistics would make me feel more like they've done their research rather than trying to scare people, and make it less confusing when they seem to contradict themselves on figures.

They also feel that the Family Courts are protecting sexual abusers and helping them avoid prosecution (I'm not sure how since Family Courts are not criminal courts) and the party feels that everyone involved in the family court system are letting children down, from judges, to lawyers, to court reporters, and others and want a royal commission into the system.

They straight up say that they haven't planned any positions on matters outside of their focus area, so it's hard to say which way they'd lean on other matters, and makes voting for them a bit of a coin toss.

Trying to verify some of the claims they make in terms of statistics and such did lead me to some rather less than pleasant reading.

Party Games 4/55 Australia First Party

The Australia First Party. Where to begin? They haven't changed much from 2013. They still want Australia for Australians, a strict adherence to a Christian and European only policy, their policy on marriage equality is "Say no to deviancy," and banning multiculturalism.

Now as someone who enjoys Japanese food, American TV, German board games, English literature, Turkish Delight, middle eastern kebabs, a good Indian curry, and more, banning multiculturalism seems like a bad idea to me. I think inviting others to join us in Australia and contribute things from their homelands to our combined culture makes us better. This is not an attitude the Australia First Party agrees with. In fact, they are for limiting Australia to their narrow vision of what it is to be Australian.

Their citizenship/immigration policy is a prime example of this. They would simplify the existing visa system to three classes - 1: Foreign visitor, 2: Temporary resident, and 3: Naturalized citizen. In implementing this system they'd deport everyone currently here under existing visas, revoke citizenship of most naturalized Australians and make them reapply, withdraw from existing treaties regarding accepting refugees, pretty much refuse to accept any refugees at all, instead sending them straight back to the coutry they came from and billing that country (kind of like Trump getting Mexico to pay for the wall). Their guidelines for becoming a citizen are very strict, and even once you become a naturalized citizen, it can be instantly revoked for numerous reasons. One odd point that stuck out to me was that it would be illegal for a naturalized citizen to carry or own a firearm, while elsewhere on their site they say that ownership of firearms is a constitutional right.

It would be petty of me to point out the numerous 404 errors and links inviting me to log in so I could edit the pages, but I spent so much time looking for something positive to say I feel I've earnt a little pettiness. The one positive thing I found was that thanks to some of their conspiracy theory beliefs, they acknowledge their not going to get into parliament and only run candidates for the publicity.

One final note, while I've included their proposed party logo to be used on ballots, unlike other parties I've done this for, they currently haven't had theirs approved by the AEC due to the objections of a number of groups to the group using the Eureka flag as their logo.

Party Games 3/55 Animal Justice Party

The Animal Justice Party doesn't seem to have changed much since last election. They still want to eliminate any human use of animals, including transitioning everyone to a plant based diet (they don't seem brave enough to say vegetarian). They still only have animal related policies, some of which I do agree with such as eliminating greyhound racing (given the revelations of mistreatment of animals within the greyhound racing industry it's an easier sell this time around), but others such as opposition to all animal experimentation, and an insistence that omnivorous animals don't need to eat at least some other animals to meet all their nutritional needs don't get my support. Their lack of policies in other areas and their continuing to remind me of PETA in their animal first rhetoric means I don't see much for me from the Animal Justice Party.

Party Games 2/55 21st Century Australia Party

This is going to be a short entry. While the 21st Century Australia Party is a current registered party, they appear to have no candidates this election and their last media release was about their plans to take part in the 2013 WA senate re-election after they couldn't get their act together to get registered in time to have candidates in the main 2013 election. Also, all of their policy pages haven't been updated since the 2013 election.

That means I'm not going into too much depth as to their notion to eliminate the states (given Australia's reluctance to pass measures at referendum their timeline is horrendously optimistic), or their plan to take the budget power away from parliament and establish an independent board similar to the Reserve Bank to do the budget instead, or the fact that the entire party seems to be a vanity project for the founder (although he didn't name it after himself like Clive Palmer did). Nor will I detail why I dislike their plan for online direct democracy for major issues and leaving elected parliamentarians to deal with only minor issues, or their constant comparison of running a government to running a business, or how out of date their remarks about the carbon tax are.

Perhaps it might have been easier to have gone back and renumbered earlier posts to be a 54 part series, but I've already read through their website and don't want that effort to go entirely to waste.

Party Games 1/55 - #Sustainable Australia

First up, because they included a hashtag in their official party name, is #Sustainable Australia. Last election they were the Australian Sustainable Population Party. Since then they seem to have mellowed out a bit on the strictness of how little population growth they want, or at least haven't listed any specific population targets this time round, and that was the main criticism I had of them last time round.

Their current plans to restrict population growth include reducing immigration from the current rate of around 200,000 people per year to 70,000 people per year (which includes an intake of 14,000 refugees per year), and reducing family and child benefits for third and subsequent children in a family. This is a lot more reasonable than their proposed targets at the last election.

Their other policy plans are a mixed case of hits and misses for me. Hits include ideas such as 10 year sunset clauses on national security legislation, treating drug abuse primarily as a health issue, getting the ATO to help small business by bundling super contributions with employees taxes and the ATO sending it on to the relevant super fund, and including human and worker rights as a key part in trade deals with other nations. Their energy policies overall are pretty good as well.

I'm not sold however on citizen initiated plebicisites, removing the minimum vote threshold to receive electoral funding (that is a rather self-interested policy), supporting a plebiscite on marriage equality (even if they expect it to have a yes result), and their plans to get multinationals to pay more tax need more rigour.

Overall I think they're doing a better job this time around, and they've moved closer to what I'm looking for in a party and their positions, but not quite enough to get a vote close to the top, but will likely be above at least one of the majors this time round.

Party Games 2016 - Prelude

It's 16 days to the next federal election and I've decided to once again embrace the mass of information that all the parties put out there. And once again, I've left it later than perhaps may be wise to do so, but that's the way it is.

This election will be the first double dissolution election I get to vote in, but thanks to the changes to voting for the senate we aren't seeing quite as many people nominating this year (but there's still a bunch). It's still the place the minor parties have the best chance at a seat though, and where they focus most of their efforts (with a few exceptions).

In addition to the party reviews, I had thought to do a check of how well the Coalition had kept it's election promises, but the ABC have done a much better job with their Promise Checker, so check that out instead. Alas the Fact Checker unit of the ABC is being cut due to the ABC's reduced budget (one of the broken promises), but hopefully the news section will pick up the slack.

So this is the start of the 55 part series of Party Games for 2016.