Party Games 18/38 Kim for Canberra

Kim for Canberra is another single candidate party vying for one of Canberra's two senate seats (a mathematically challenging proposition). Despite this challenge, Kim Rubenstein has a decent mix of policies, going strong on climate change, making sure an ICAC has teeth, and gender equality.

The one policy I've not yet seen elsewhere, and probably won't, is her proposal to increase the ACT's senate representation from 2 senators to 4. This is primarily on the basis of population, as the ACT with a population of 450k gets 2 senators, while Tasmania gets 12 senators for its 530k. This discrepancy definitely shows the advantage of being a state rather than a territory. A larger senate cohort would also make electing independent senators easier (the quota would drop from 33% to 20%), but would result in the odd case of the ACT having more senators than MPs (although that's long been the case for Tasmania).

If I lived in Canberra, I'd probably put Kim ahead of both the majors.

Party Games 17/38 Katter's Australian Party

Katter's Australian Party takes after its larrikin founder Bob Katter. To say Bob's a bit of a character is an understatement. 

I think the best way to summarise the position of the KAP is to say that if you live north of Gympie, you'll do well, and if you live in a big city there's not much for you. From special tax rates for people in rural areas, spending more money on regional infrastructure, providing subsidised loans for rural development, and so on and so on. Oddly they also want to turn farmers into jailers, with a proposal to send convicts to remote farms to work their sentence rather than putting them in jail. They also want to ensure that marriage is strictly one man and one woman, so they don't seem to consider that battle lost yet.

I didn't really see anything that stood out as for the city slickers, other than some grumbling about council funding favouring urban areas because there's more people here. And so as yet another country good city bad party, I can't really support them.

Party Games 16/38 Jacqui Lambie Network

Jacqui Lambie remains one of the few positives to come in to politics thanks to the political adventures of Clive Palmer. Like Ricky Muir, she's shown a sincerity and dedication to the job of senator well above what was expected based on their pre-election performance. This hasn't always translated into concrete results, and I haven't always agreed with her positions, but she takes the responsibility seriously.

The Jacqui Lambie Network website lacks much detail on policies. The FAQ includes "what is your policy on X, Y, or Z?" with the answer that they don't want to come up with lots of different policies that never get implemented, and instead their focus is getting the balance of power, which is honest. In fact the site looks more like a kickstarter campaign with fundraising targets for different campaign actions.

The lack of policy details probably mean I'd put them between the two majors on a ballot, but since they're only running candidates in Tasmania I don't need to do so.

Party Games 15/38 Informed Medical Options Party

The Informed Medical Options Party is three of those four things. They may be a party about medical options, but reading what they have to say I can't say that they count as informed. 

Their main goal is the removal of any and all vaccine requirements, and in support of that they cherry pick data and only listen to people who tell them what they want to hear. They complain that government bodies that assess medicines and vaccines are staffed by people who have done research in the field which according to them makes them biased rather than experts.

There's some additional medical tom-foolery such as promoting alternative medicine and including it on the PBS, GMO paranoia, stopping water fluoridation (a common enough issue that there was a panel on it at OzWater 22), and supporting organic foods, and allowing parents to refuse care for their children with cancer.

The only thing on their platform I can get behind is increasing parental leave. But even this isn't enough for IMOP to get out of the bottom section of the ballot.

Party Games 14/38 The Indigenous-Aboriginal Party of Australia

The Indigenous-Aboriginal Party of Australia is not a single policy but is a single focus party. They stand for better recognition and treatment of indigenous Australians. This includes constitutional recognition, stronger protection of sacred sites, more self management of indigenous communities in areas such as education and land use, and so forth. 

An area where I'm not sure I think there solution appropriately solves a legitimate issue is indigenous incarceration. They're proposal is for only the most serious adult offenders to be able to be incarcerated, with less serious offenders and juveniles to stay in the community. My preference would be for better oversight of police and the courts to eliminate the present bias causing such disproportionate numbers of indigenous Australians to end up incarcerated. But maybe I'm not in the best place to tell those affected that it's worth the time such a long term solution would take when they're facing the brunt of injustice now.

There's no obviously bad positions listed, so I think this is another party that will end up between the two major parties for me.

Party Games 13/38 Federal ICAC Now Party

There's not too much to write about the Federal ICAC Now Party. They want an ICAC and they want it now.

They're very specific about only having one policy. Everything else they'll judge bills to make sure they don't have the potential for corruption and that they comply with the UN Declaration on human rights, and if they do put the decision to party members on whether it should be supported or not.

As in the past, I'm a bit skeptical of one issue parties that don't at least take a little time to consider some of the major issues that they'll be faced with if elected, so this will be another party that sits between the two major parties for me.

Party Games 12/38 Fusion Party

The Fusion Party is the result of a merger between the Science Party, the Pirate Party, the Secular Party, Vote Planet, and the Climate Change Justice Party. The parties listed I've reviewed before have all been pretty decent, and the combination looks to have taken the strengths of each individual party's policies and brought them together Voltron style.

The mix brings together a pretty good climate policy, even if I 'm not exactly sure that an 800% renewable energy target is necessary (surely even 200% would be plenty), a strong stance in removing special privileges for religions, and a decent position on digital rights.

The mix of policies isn't quite as broad as I recall the Pirate Party having, but still pretty good overall.

Party Games 11/38 Drew Pavlou Democratic Alliance

The Drew Pavlou Democratic Alliance follows the positions of its founder Drew Pavlou, who has a bit of notoriety but I haven't paid enough attention to events at UQ to have an informed opinion on him as an individual. As a party they seem ok, They're good on wanting an ICAC, and mostly alright on the environment, although I'm not sure how they'll be able to convince car manufacturers to resume making cars here when the coalition already failed by throwing huge chunks of cash at the industry. 

The other thing that stands out is a very strong anti-China stance.While I'm not under any impression that China is a good guy on the international scene, I'm not sure basing our entire foreign policy around sticking it to them is a solid plan.

There's not much more to say about them, they'll probably end up in the middle third of my preferences.

Party Games 10/38 Derryn Hinch's Justice Party

The main focus of Derryn Hinch's Justice Party is that we should be a lot tougher on criminals, that the justice system is failing us by being too lenient on criminals, and that these propositions are just "common sense". Unfortunately, when you take a serious look at how the community views the suitability of sentencing rather than relying on responses to sensationalised news coverage, you find that when familiar with the actual facts of a case, community members find sentences to be appropriate in 86% of cases, and when asked to suggest a sentence were more lenient than the judge in 61% of cases. 

So I can't really support them on their major policy focus, and there's really not much else they've got going. They support legalising euthanasia, but that's about it that stands out for me.

Party Games 9/38 David Pocock

David Pocock is a one man party running for one of the ACT's two senate seats. Given the ACT only has two senate seats, the maths mean getting elected over the two major parties is really tough. 

David looks to have a reasonable mix of policies, plus an openness to community consultation that stands out. He says if elected he'll hold quarterly town halls, as well as providing a record of all his votes in parliament. His proposal to run a community volunteer program for community members to work in his office, which while a novel way to get the community more involved in the operations of government, I'd like to see this include the volunteers being paid, especially given parliamentarians get a budget for the running of their offices.

He looks to have a reasonable stance on climate change, wants to improve health care in a sensible way, and while I couldn't find anything I disagree with too much, being a one man party there's a fair few areas he doesn't have a policy yet.

As he's only running as a single candidate in the ACT, I won't get to vote for him, but I think he'd probably end up between the two major parties.

Party Games 8/38 Centre Alliance

As Nick Xenephon had a temporary retirement from federal politics, the Nick Xenephon Team has changed their name to Centre Alliance. They immediately score brownie points for using the "re" spelling of centre - I don't care if the spell check underlines centre with a red squiggly line, it's the correct way to spell it. 

Looking at their current policies and what I wrote last time I did this, there doesn't seem to be any major changes to their policies. They're still strongly opposed to gambling, want an ICAC, want to make sure penalty rates aren't cut, and increasing foreign aid. Their climate change policy feels a bit lacklustre but doesn't deny climate change so better than some. 

Given I now work at a water utility, I'm a bit more interested in their water policies. I'm not sure about their suggestion to harvest storm water instead of desalination, as if we've got enough storm water to harvest to top up dams, the dams which are filled by rain would already be filled, whereas desalination plants can operate independent of rain. However I can get behind proposals to make sure out water resources are used more efficiently.

Nick Xenephon is returning to federal politics, and I think he was generally a positive factor in the senate, so I guess we'll see how he goes without the party sharing his name. I'm also a little unsure of the status of the party as Nick & Stirling Griff appear on the SA Senate ballot under an unnammed group rather than the Centre Alliance name, and the last press release on the party website was from last year. However as my criteria for being included in my reviews is being registered as a party with the AEC, I'll keep the write up.

Party Games 7/38 Australian Values Party

I'll be honest I tend to be a bit skeptical when someone brings up "Australian Values" because all too often what is meant by "Australian Values" ends up being lets go back to how things were at least 40 years ago, if not more. It's an invocation of a golden age that never really existed, and in as much as it did, it was a pretty shitty time for a large part of the community. Ultimately this is another unfortunate import from the US brought to us by a reactionary right wing.

So I was a bit wary going in to have a look at the policies of the Australian Values Party, but did come away with a more positive view of the party than I did going in. One policy I particularly like is requiring professional development for members of parliament. Especially for first time parliamentarians, there's a lot to know about how parliament works, and while there are some information sessions for new members, setting up an ongoing program makes sense. I could also see it as a way to prepare members for becoming ministers down the road, as well as giving all members some grounding in important areas such as health, economics, statistics, etc. I'm less certain about their requirement that all their candidates have management/leadership training, as I feel that would cut down on the diversity of backgrounds candidates will have. 

This is particularly with their candidates, of whom 7 out of 10 are former members of the military. This in and of itself for a candidate isn't a bad thing, but when 70% of your candidates are from a group that make up only about 1 in 50 Australians, your focus may become narrowed. Which shows in their defense policies. They're for better support for veterans, which I can agree with, but they're also for restricting how the media can report on the military, which I'm definitely not a fan of. 

In terms of my preferences I think they will end up between the two major parties.

Party Games 6/38 Australian Progressives

The Australian Progressives are pretty much what the name suggests. Their policies are pretty much a checklist of progressive ideals. There's support for a stronger social safety net, setting up an ICAC, better funding of health care and the CSIRO, taking action on climate change, as well as enhancing the NBN. Their tax policies seem alright overall, although I find setting a maximum income tax rate of 50% to be a bit out place.

 They've also set themselves a pretty strict code of ethics, which I think would prevent a member from accepting large quantities of cash from a blind trust to cover one's legal expenses and not declaring it. Although to be fair, the current ministerial standards seem to be rather toothless, so anything is going to come out looking good.

If anything, the only real fault I can find is being a bit too generically nice, I almost starting think of them like the Federation from Star Trek, although not everyone has Clive Palmer money to use to put their party name on every building they can find. They'll be ahead of both of the majors, but might slip below some similar parties with a bit more character.

The Poster

When I started university, my plan was to get my degree, do honours, then a PhD, then become a researcher/lecturer, and then after about 40 years retire at around 65 (probably the most optimistic part of that whole plan). Of course, that kind of crashed and burned when I dropped out of my PhD, but that academic culture still sticks with me.

A part of that is the process of producing knowledge, and disseminating it. While I never had to publish or perish, the significance of getting a paper accepted and printed, and the related process of attending and presenting at conferences still carries the hallmarks of progress, success, and significance for me. 

At a conference, there are various levels of presentations. At the top you have the keynote speaker, then featured presenters, and then regular talks. The lowest of these is the poster presentation, where you have an A1 poster about your topic that people can look at, and depending on the conference, there might be some time where you're expected to stand by your poster for people to talk to you and ask questions. This is generally where you start out, and over time you work your way up.

And indeed this is where I started out. While I no longer have a copy of the poster, the paper that went with it is still online. 

But then life happened, and conferences weren't a part of what I did.

Until now.

Towards the end of last year the company that I now work at was encouraging staff to submit presentations for an industry conference as we are one of the main sponsors this year. After a little thought, I submitted a topic, and was accepted. And so I put together a poster for the conference.

 

The conference started on Tuesday, and after the opening address the first thing I did was walk through the expo hall to find where my poster was. Seeing it there did give a thrill and a sense of pride. 

 

While thinking about this I have internally been minimising this in comparison to what I did in university. I still put academia on a bit of a pedestal, which I think is something I need to dial back on. When you boil it down, in both cases, the content being shared was "We did a thing, here's how it went." And while at uni I had lofty ambitions of adding to the sum total of humanity's knowledge, being honest my current job helps make life a little better for a lot more people than any amount of studying oddly behaving crystals.

Anyway, I did a thing, and that's how it went.

Party Games 5/38 Australian Federation Party

The Australian Federation Party, previously the Australian Country Party, and before that the Country Alliance, has made the transformation from a protectivist Nationals wannabe party, to a "Freedom" wannabe party where they are mainly concerned with the freedoms to pretend gay people don't exist, that people who aren't Christians exist, that there are numerous cures for COVID made by big pharma that we denied to people because big pharma didn't pay the TGA, and so on.

There proposal to rework the three levels of government has some good ideas, such as making health care a just federal rather than federal & state responsibility, I don't get the point of keeping local government while taking away all responsibilities and duties from them.

They want to improve the NDIS, which is good, but that's about all I found to like.

I think the Australian Federation Party is a cross between the Nationals and the Australian Christian Party who are trying to look like they're neither.

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.

Party Games 3/38 Australian Citizen's Party

The Australian Citizen's Party, formerly the Citizen's Electoral Council, have changed their name but not much else. While they do seem to have updated some of the pages on their website since the last time I did this in 2016, pages not directly related to the current election still only appear to refer to events up to 2018.

Policy wise they still advocate setting up a nationalised bank that funds infrastructure. I am confused by the way they suggest that this bank will offer cheaper funding to governments and industry, but that super funds and private investors will invest in it by buying bonds. If my super fund invested my money in something that is deliberately undercutting banks and aiming to make minimal returns, I'm going to be asking why I should stick with that super fund. If they want to subsidise loans to industry, just say so. Similarly they plan to scrap the GST and replace it with a 0.1% tax on stock transactions. Sounds nice in principle, but GST revenue is about $80 billion a year and using data on the value of stock transactions in Australia a 0.1% tax would only bring in about $4 billion a year, which does leave $76 billion shortfall. They also want a return to the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system, which was reliant on an economically dominant USA, which seems counter to the party's anti-US&UK/pro-China foreign policy position.

On the Arts they seem to be complaining about violent video games, banal pop music, and mass produced movies, which comes across as sounding like a grumpy old man not liking what the kids like. 

They don't accept the reality of climate change, which is a deal breaker, and their environmental policy is just more economic development will help the environment, but without any details on how this might actually occur. 

Overall, they have a few ideas I like the goal of but the few details of seem either counterproductive or insufficient to achieving them, but more areas where I don't agree with what they want to achieve.  

Party Games 2/38 Australian Christians

It's with a certain irony I note that the Core Values page of the Australian Christians, which includes Honesty & Integrity among those values, starts with a fake quote. I may be being a bit more snarky about this than I might be for other parties, but the Australian Christians are always going to find me a tough sell. This unbeliever doesn't take as a given that the bible is the inerrant word of God and that it should be the basis for the laws of our nation, and the Australian Christians don't seem to have considered that the 48% of Australians might need something more than "because God said so" as a reason for a policy.

Their policy list is a common mix of vocal Christian priorities, including strict restrictions on abortions, the right to discriminate against the LGBTQ community, even more government funding for private schools, a denial of climate change, an opt-out rather than opt-in widescale internet filtering, that marriage should only be one man and one woman. They also have a common mix of right wing economic policies such as removing the minimum wage, and railing against red tape.    

They also make the odd claim that freedom of religion is a Christian value, which seems very much at odds with the history of forced conversions of indigenous peoples around the world, as well as overlooks that they want to enshrine Christian beliefs into law, which is very much not in line with the principle of freedom of religion. 

Looking at what I wrote last time reminded me of some things I did like among their policies, such as supporting the NDIS, but support for public transport seems to have gone and been replaced by support for more bike lanes and facilities.

Overall, while Australian Christians priorities are 1) Further the revelation of the glory and righteousness of God and then 2) Promote the true welfare of the Australian people, in that order, I can't support them.

Party Games 1/38 Animal Justice Party

Thanks to the hegemonic impartiality of the alphabet, my survey of Australian political parties commences with the Animal Justice Party (they've moved from third last time I did this to first). As their name suggests, they are primarily focussed on protecting animals. 

Mostly this comes through things I can generally agree upon, things like banning greyhound racing, protecting habitats for native wildlife, taking action on climate change, and so on, there are areas where I feel that when balancing out the interests of humans and animals, they've come down to strong on the side of animals. An example of this is their domestic violence policy. In this area they want to make sure that animals can be recognised as victims of domestic violence, give greater protection for animals' interests during divorce, and create a national register of domestic violence perpetrators and animal abusers. There's also more funding for domestic violence shelters, but that's focussed on making sure animals can be taken to shelters. There's nothing on preventing violence before it happens (other than a general vibe of if people are nicer to animals they'll be nicer overall) or providing more tangible assistance such as making domestic violence leave paid rather than unpaid time off work.

This also comes across in some of their animal focussed policies. I think they're rather optimistic in believing that feral animals can be managed purely with non-lethal methods (I mean who hasn't whacked a cane toad with a golf club?), and I don't think we need to completely get rid of events like rodeos and circuses to prevent harm to animals, or completely eliminate meat from our diets.

Looking at my last review of the Animal Justice Party they have made progress on one area I criticised them for then. They have taken the time to develop policy positions outside of their main focus, in areas such as supporting better treatment of refugees, the formation of a federal ICAC, being proactive in dealing with climate change and more.

I also like their stance on certain technologies such as genetic modification and lab grown meat. Rather than just dismiss these out of hand as some groups with a similar focus have, the Animal Justice Party take a "we need to know more" stance without prejudging, seeing that there can be both positive and negative impacts. It's good to see pragmatism is still a thing.

Overall the Animal Justice Party has some good ideas, although sometimes they need to come back to seeing people as people rather than just another animal. Since they have a candidate for the senate in Queensland I think I'll likely vote for them ahead of either of the majors, but I don't think they'll get the first preference.

Party Games 2022 0/38

So it's time to dust off the old blog. I've been considering resuming writing stuff here since about the start of the year, but haven't felt I'd be able to write consistently enough to be worthwhile. But a new federal election has been called, and so masochist that I am, another run of political party reviews seems a good place to start.

I did skip the previous election cycle. That was because I applied to be a poll worker with the AEC and thought that doing that and publicly posting a review of every party contesting the election wouldn't be a great pairing, and by the time I decided the AEC wasn't going to call with a job offer, it was too late to go through the whole process. This time round I'm no longer working a Monday to Friday 9-5 type job, which combined with concerns about COVID mean I didn't apply this year, and so feel free to post whatever I want.

 So where to from here. I've got a list of registered political parties from the AEC website. Candidates are declared on April 22 so while I'm going to start my reading and writing now, I'll start posting after the 22nd and cut from my list any parties that don't nominate anyone. I'm also not going to include independents, because there's too many of them to be comprehensive, and just the 38 currently registered political parties is a lot.

As usual I'll write about what I found that I like about a party, what I didn't like, and anything novel or unusual I find. I'm also going to invite controversy by stating how I think the party has done on the issue of COVID. Note that this does not mean that I am interested in every crackpot view on COVID, and reserve the right to delete any such that pop up in the comments (and no this isn't that I'm afraid of debate, or don't want to see the truth, I'm just tired of the bullshit some people come up with).

I'll also be going back to previous entries for the parties, seeing if they've changed for better or for worse, and comparing how I feel about them now with how I felt in previous years.

So for now I've got a fair bit of reading to do, and I'll start posting more after the 22nd (I'm not sure if a weekend of night shifts at work will help or hinder this effort).