Australian Christians
Apr. 13th, 2025 08:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
b_auspolAustralian Christians
Website: https://australianchristians.org.au/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AustChrist
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AustralianChristians/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/australianchristians/
(My review for the 2021 WA Election)
The Australian Christians as a party were formerly part of the Christian Democratic Party (Fred Nile’s electoral vehicle for decades), mainly in WA, before splitting off to go their own way. Fascinatingly, given the demise of the CDP in the last electoral cycle, Aus Christians are now running NSW candidates, so they’re on my slate to review.
Party Analysis
Aus Christians are your old fashioned right wing Protestant religious party. They are socially conservative, but they also still have that underlying position where they try to offer alternatives for a bunch of things they hate. And they are ALL about the family, as long as your family fits into the strictly defined box of “married man and woman with children”.
They oppose abortion and voluntary assisted dying, but accompany this with policies for more new mother support and palliative care. They want to restructure the NDIS to be more sustainable and supportive. They’re all for marriage between a man and a woman, and against divorce, but they’re also anti-domestic violence and want more programs for this. They want more support for teachers in terms of funding for IEPs for students and lower administration loads. They don’t want drug legalisation but they do want to support more recovery and rehabilitation programs (and of course they’re fans of the Nordic Model for the vulnerable and homeless in terms of welfare and addiction support).
However, there’s positions they’re not so ready to offer alternatives in. Aus Christians are also extremely mad about any form of gender recognition, want to ban puberty blockers for children, stop letting people change their gender on legal documents, and not let trans people play sports. Their policies around divorce and separation have more than a tinge of men’s rights to them: they want “mentoring programs that strengthen the role of fatherhood and the family” and for equitable access to children by both parents after separation. The latter can be a position for shared parental responsibility and joint decisionmaking, or it can be code for men frustrated that they have to pay child support as their ex-partner is the primary carer.
Aus Christians are for religious freedom, as long as we’re defining ‘religion’ as ‘Christianity’ and ‘freedom’ as ‘all things Bible!’ and ‘let religious schools discriminate in hiring and students’ and ‘chaplains in schools’ and this frankly alarming phrase: “Protect the right of parents to instruct and train their children according to The Bible”. The word train when talking about conservative Christianity has a tendency to mean ‘physical punishment’. They think education should be based on Judeo-Christian values, not radical ideologies, by which they mean presumably any policies to the left of the far right. They want a special visa just for persecuted Christians seeking asylum.
Their economic policies are your average conservative small government sort. They want to abolish ALL payroll tax, “excessive” employment laws and red tape for small businesses. They want income splitting for tax purposes for married couples. Their plan for housing affordability is removing stamp duty for first home buyers and elderly downsizers (I presume this is actually their WA state election policy).
Their First Nations policy is again from their beliefs that everyone deserves life: they want lower suicide rates and incarceration; individualised sentencing, interventions and rehabilitation for young offenders; work on culturally appropriate support for children and young people; and more mental health support.
They’re still against vaccine mandates, which makes no sense generally for their sort of party except for the fact it became a ‘stick it to the left, give me mah freedoms’ thing out of COVID. And they want a Royal Commission into COVID.
And Aus Christians are for live export and keeping farms owned by Australian families. Their entire environment policy is about good stewardship of the land, in the most classic Christian sense.
Oh and they want a government nanny filter to block pornography (ISP filtering on all devices!)
Is this party trying to kill me?
No, outside of their suspicions over vaccines, none of the Australian Christians’ policies are actively likely to result in death.
Is this party trying to harm me?
Look, they disapprove thoroughly of queer people, particularly trans people, and they’re against abortion and VAD. They are iffy on vaccines. I don’t feel that their policies are particularly safe towards me or many of my friends and family.
Conclusion:
There are absolutely worse conservative parties on the ballot than the Australian Christians, but that’s no reason to vote for them. They do get some leeway from me out of not having explicit ‘yay guns’ policies and from having logical consistency in their beliefs around the protection of life. However, they’re still old fashioned right wing conservative Christians and they’re definitely ready to join the front lines of any anti-trans movement.
Website: https://australianchristians.org.au/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AustChrist
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AustralianChristians/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/australianchristians/
(My review for the 2021 WA Election)
The Australian Christians as a party were formerly part of the Christian Democratic Party (Fred Nile’s electoral vehicle for decades), mainly in WA, before splitting off to go their own way. Fascinatingly, given the demise of the CDP in the last electoral cycle, Aus Christians are now running NSW candidates, so they’re on my slate to review.
Party Analysis
Aus Christians are your old fashioned right wing Protestant religious party. They are socially conservative, but they also still have that underlying position where they try to offer alternatives for a bunch of things they hate. And they are ALL about the family, as long as your family fits into the strictly defined box of “married man and woman with children”.
They oppose abortion and voluntary assisted dying, but accompany this with policies for more new mother support and palliative care. They want to restructure the NDIS to be more sustainable and supportive. They’re all for marriage between a man and a woman, and against divorce, but they’re also anti-domestic violence and want more programs for this. They want more support for teachers in terms of funding for IEPs for students and lower administration loads. They don’t want drug legalisation but they do want to support more recovery and rehabilitation programs (and of course they’re fans of the Nordic Model for the vulnerable and homeless in terms of welfare and addiction support).
However, there’s positions they’re not so ready to offer alternatives in. Aus Christians are also extremely mad about any form of gender recognition, want to ban puberty blockers for children, stop letting people change their gender on legal documents, and not let trans people play sports. Their policies around divorce and separation have more than a tinge of men’s rights to them: they want “mentoring programs that strengthen the role of fatherhood and the family” and for equitable access to children by both parents after separation. The latter can be a position for shared parental responsibility and joint decisionmaking, or it can be code for men frustrated that they have to pay child support as their ex-partner is the primary carer.
Aus Christians are for religious freedom, as long as we’re defining ‘religion’ as ‘Christianity’ and ‘freedom’ as ‘all things Bible!’ and ‘let religious schools discriminate in hiring and students’ and ‘chaplains in schools’ and this frankly alarming phrase: “Protect the right of parents to instruct and train their children according to The Bible”. The word train when talking about conservative Christianity has a tendency to mean ‘physical punishment’. They think education should be based on Judeo-Christian values, not radical ideologies, by which they mean presumably any policies to the left of the far right. They want a special visa just for persecuted Christians seeking asylum.
Their economic policies are your average conservative small government sort. They want to abolish ALL payroll tax, “excessive” employment laws and red tape for small businesses. They want income splitting for tax purposes for married couples. Their plan for housing affordability is removing stamp duty for first home buyers and elderly downsizers (I presume this is actually their WA state election policy).
Their First Nations policy is again from their beliefs that everyone deserves life: they want lower suicide rates and incarceration; individualised sentencing, interventions and rehabilitation for young offenders; work on culturally appropriate support for children and young people; and more mental health support.
They’re still against vaccine mandates, which makes no sense generally for their sort of party except for the fact it became a ‘stick it to the left, give me mah freedoms’ thing out of COVID. And they want a Royal Commission into COVID.
And Aus Christians are for live export and keeping farms owned by Australian families. Their entire environment policy is about good stewardship of the land, in the most classic Christian sense.
Oh and they want a government nanny filter to block pornography (ISP filtering on all devices!)
Is this party trying to kill me?
No, outside of their suspicions over vaccines, none of the Australian Christians’ policies are actively likely to result in death.
Is this party trying to harm me?
Look, they disapprove thoroughly of queer people, particularly trans people, and they’re against abortion and VAD. They are iffy on vaccines. I don’t feel that their policies are particularly safe towards me or many of my friends and family.
Conclusion:
There are absolutely worse conservative parties on the ballot than the Australian Christians, but that’s no reason to vote for them. They do get some leeway from me out of not having explicit ‘yay guns’ policies and from having logical consistency in their beliefs around the protection of life. However, they’re still old fashioned right wing conservative Christians and they’re definitely ready to join the front lines of any anti-trans movement.
