Animal Justice Party

[b_auspol]

Animal Justice Party (AJP)
https://animaljusticeparty.org/wa/

First party up is the Animal Justice Party. At my first glance it looks like the general shape of their website hasn’t changed much since the previous federal election, which certainly makes navigating it easier.

The AJP were founded in 2009, and originally Sydney based: they currently have two members in the NSW Legislative Council and one in the Victorian Legislative Council. They are registered everywhere but Tas and the NT.

While I was looking for WA specific information, I noticed that the AJP have a delightful little appeal as to why you should rank AJP ahead of where you expect your preferences to end up. “Under our preferential voting system, if you vote 1 AJP, your first preference will be recorded, but, realistically, we will be eliminated during counting and your vote will “fall through” (be distributed) to your second preference.” They also link to a more complex description of preference distribution to help explain.

This realistic description of how many Australian minor party voters become such (by putting their dream small party first then buffering it with places for their preferences to finish up after distribution) makes me quite happy. We spend a lot of time around elections explaining this to voters, but honestly it’s nice to see a small party be upfront about the fact that they know their possible voters need to be convinced to not just vote for the Greens in 1 and are making a pitch that you vote 1 AJP 2 Greens 3 Labor. (They do proceed to say you can also vote 2 another party like the Liberals or One Nation, just so as not to offend any possible voters, but I must say the idea of a 1 AJP 2 PHON voter is certainly an odd one)

Let’s look at their policies!

AJP are careful to distinguish between their “policies” and their “positions”. Policies are apparently their core campaign issues that they want to push in parliament, whereas positions are an indication of how AJP would vote on issues that are not solely related to animal welfare.

Policies:

These are divided into three broad categories: Animals, Environment and Humans. Pretty on brand.

Under Animals; oh look, it’s the AJP. They want to end animal exploitation, experimentation, live animal exports, use in racing and harm coming to animals. There are many many specific policies, many by species.

I do feel the need to point out that they tie themselves in knots over their brumby policy to both say ‘don’t kill the brumbies’ and ‘they probably shouldn’t be allowed to cause environmental degradation’. They really don’t want you to cull brumbies. They try to point out that brumbies actually spread seeds and encourage revegetation. I’m personally pretty sceptical of this argument, considering the population I know the most about are the Snowy ones, and if you want to argue with me that they DON’T cause issues, I’d like to point out Dead Horse Gap lives up to its name most years.

The introduced animals policy is equally “look, we know they are an issue, but we want non-lethal population control methods”. Non-lethal population control. For RABBITS. What on earth would that look like, please tell me. I’m pretty sure they’re also anti a favourite population control method for camels, which is “round them up and sell them to the Middle East” as we have a number of fairly rare camel breeds in the Australian feral population that are valued for breeding and racing. (The other favourite population control method, which is Road Train v Camel, is not safe for anyone involved).

Look, as far as I’m concerned, the AJP policies on feral animals are where their handwringing is most obvious. They don’t want to hurt animals, while still trying to suggest that some animals probably should be removed from environments for the good of everything else in that environment. I understand that they are diametrically opposed to pretty much all practicable solutions to feral animal as an issue, and “non-lethal population control” is a fine ideal, but I don’t see any feasible suggestions on how you achieve that for many populations (trap, neuter, release is still extremely damaging to environments and also only very dubiously legal).

They have a policy on animal law, where they want “a new legal status for animals, acknowledging their right to live protected from human harm”. Uh. And as much as I want to roll around in their legal policy, they’ve lost me there. I am not opposed to animal protection legislation, I just wonder what they want me to do about mice. And cockroaches. And spiders. And rabbits.

I am not the target audience for AJP animal policies. I think it’s because I had too many rural relatives as a kid. I think that a good chunk of their policies are unworkable, I’m completely uninterested in becoming vegan full time, and I think, selfishly, that in situations like medical testing, there are reasons we use animal experimentation and I’d rather they checked safety in an animal before they checked it on a human. That’s why we have ethics panels.

Environment:

This is much more standard left fare. You’d find most of these points in any Greens policy, with “for the animals” tacked on to the end of it. Climate change (the term they use) is real, we should switch to clean energy, don’t use natural gas as a transition fuel, dietary changes to decrease habitat destruction, stop land clearing, protect wildlife and wildlife habitats, reduce waste and environmental pollution.

Humans:

Really this is the suite of policies of how humans should relate to and protect animals. The economy – with regards to not exploiting animals. How animals and plant based diets should be centred in education. Veganism. Gun control (you’ll not be shocked to hear they’re for it and want stricter regulations). Mental health support including companion animals and wildlife rehab. Stable or negative population growth.

Oh, Biosecurity is a fun one this year. Let me quote. “Biosecurity is a word describing procedures to protect people from biological dangers such as infectious diseases. It includes measures designed to prevent new diseases evolving. Factory farms pose significant biosecurity risks to all Australians. Phasing them out will prevent rather than manage, many infectious disease threats to humans and animals. It will also reduce the risks of new diseases emerging.”

Now this was undoubtedly written with Hendra virus, Lyssavirus and the various swine and bird flus in mind, but it’s still particularly apt this year. I wonder if we can get anyone from the AJP to express their position on the mink farm culls in northern Europe earlier this year.

There is a cultured meat policy! The policy is that… it’s too early to say. It might be good if it doesn’t harm animals, but meat is probably still bad for you as it causes health problems. Equally there is a genetic manipulation policy that GM should be considered on a case to case basis.

Processed meat should not be sold to people under 18 years and there should be package warnings. As it can cause cancer. It should be regulated like cigarettes and alcohol. Um. Is this about nitrates?

Decent work: I thought this might be a policy about how everyone is entitled to a safe, well paid job, but no, it’s about how working in slaughterhouses is bad for your mental health.

All joking aside though, their Domestic and Family Violence policy is well thought out and centring animal welfare here is actually reasonable, because treatment of pets is definitely a warning sign, a method of control and an issue for people escaping violence as many refuges cannot take pets.

Positions:

This is where AJP get down to the issue of how they’re actually likely to vote on 99% of issues that come up in parliaments that don’t revolve around their core brand. As AJP have a small handful of state representatives, they have actually considered this, though the detail is still very minimal compared to any party that reasonably expects to pick up multiple parliamentary seats.

Some of these positions are very, very brief.

AJP say that all of their positions are based on their core values: Kindness, Equality, Rationality and Non-violence.

AJP have positions on Abortion (they’re pro choice), Asylum seekers (Australia should follow the conventions they’ve ratified and not process people overseas), Corruption (they’re against it and want everyone to have an ICAC), First Nations (‘consult local indigenous leaders for guidance on these issues’, plus reform focused on deaths in custody and healthcare), Gambling (animal racing is bad, plus it causes mental health and domestic violence issues), Marriage equality (uhhh I see they haven’t updated this document since before the postal vote – they’re for it, if you didn’t guess), Vaccination (oh this one is unexpectedly relevant this year: they like them, but they don’t like animal testing, please phase that out. They also think no-jab no-play is coercive), and Voluntary Euthanasia (they’re for it with the usual caveats raised; no specific time frames though).

Democracy is an interesting one. They’re generally supportive of the current parliamentary system, but would like all state and federal governments to have fixed terms and annual limits on political donations. Also less paper and corflute waste in elections – they’re suggesting the system where HTVs are posted within voting booths rather than handed out, which I believe is already used in one state. The most radical thing in the whole document is the proposal to lower the voting age to 16, pointing out that most 16 year olds are already making a number of legal decisions for themselves, working and paying taxes.

Now personally I am reasonably supportive of fixed parliamentary terms, however I do note that they don’t seem to have made a huge difference in the length of political campaigning. A cynical person might suggest that, for instance, this WA election has been at the forefront of certain COVID policies from the current WA government since March 2020. Voting for 16 year olds would be personally interesting in that it would allow closer integration with school curricula, as you’d essentially have a practical for your senior students.

Any Predictions?

We have one of mine!
Animal Justice Party are concerned about: rates of human to animal infection; vaccine testing on primates; culls of potential vector species for COVID-19

Vaccine testing on animals is on their policy list! But it’s not specifically as a COVID vaccine policy. This is because vaccine development managed to blitz through animal trials very fast back in March/April when everyone was scared, and we are now well into human trials.

I haven’t seen anything specifically about the felines that can catch COVID but I’m sure if I dug through people’s social media I’d turn it up. Same with my interest in their position on the mink culls.


Is this party trying to kill me?

No. AJP are very very specific about the fact they do not condone any violence, and want non-violent, non-lethal solutions to problems.


Is this party trying to harm me?

I mean, I can’t imagine that I’d do particularly well on a full time vegan diet (and I’d rather get my various vitamins and minerals from food rather than tablets if at all possible), but the AJP do not hold any policies that are trying to harm me.


Conclusion:

Look, while I’d never be offended to see an AJP member in the upper house and we share a lot of left wing values, I do not share their prioritisation of issues. Animal welfare is important, but it’s not my sole guiding light. If you are left leaning and want to centre animal issues because they can’t advocate for themselves, the AJP are probably going to largely align with you and are probably people you want to rank highly on your ballot.