Australian Citizens Party
Apr. 13th, 2025 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
b_auspolAustralian Citizens Party
Website: https://citizensparty.org.au/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CitizensPartyAU
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CitizensPartyAU
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CitizensPartyAU
(My review for the 2022 Federal Election)
The Australian Citizens Party are the local LaRouche conspiracy theorists. They’ve been around as a federally registered party since 1997 and were previously known as the Citizens Electoral Council. Their ability to conceal their level of nuttiness has waxed and waned over the years: sometimes they can present a fairly coherent front at a casual glance, but as soon as you look deeper the weirdness rises to the surface.
They are stalwarts of the Australian microparty scene with very little success over the years.
Party Analysis
This year Aus Citizens are running on a 7 point policy plan. And what significantly worries me about this policy plan is that it looks reasonably normal initially, until you dig in.
Aus Citizens are very concerned with national sovereignty. They don’t like that Australia is close allies with the US and UK, and particularly want to rip up AUKUS and stay out of any international wars. On the other hand, they also want to be closer to China and for us to participate in the Belt and Road Initiative (aka China’s soft power diplomacy). They’re very nationalist and isolationist in views and want the power to go to war to be restricted to a declaration of a joint sitting of parliament. They are pro-Gaza, pro-One China policy and want an Australian republic. I will point out that part of their desire for a republic is because the party includes people who believe in David Icke’s conspiracy that the British Royal Family are lizard people, but they’re not open about that on the internet any more. The other, more palatable reason is that Aus Citizens are gung ho about Australian sovereignty and independence from any form of foreign control.
Aus Citizens are also extremely obsessed with the Australian banking system. They desperately want a government owned bank (and suggest using Australia Post as the basis for it), and are very concerned with the idea that the government is going to steal our money via bail-ins from the banks seizing people’s savings. They fully buy into the ‘the government is trying to phase out cash and only cash can protect us’ narrative. They want to disestablish ASIC because they think it’s corrupt and rebuild it from the ground up. They also want to get rid of the GST and instead have a tax on ‘foreign exchange speculation’.
Aus Citizens want their Australian Owned Bank to invest in national infrastructure nation-building projects. The thing is, when they list their top three policies, two of them are massive red flag fantasy projects.
Aus Citizens want fewer consultants and more professionals in the public service. They want reforms to NACC to closely define its remit and hold it to investigating corruption. They want to ban all corporate donations and only allow registered voters to donate to campaigns. They want stronger whistleblower protections and higher rates of immigration, particularly to rural areas. They also want more GPs and want us to have more Uni places to train doctors and nurses.
In terms of the current housing affordability crisis, Aus Citizens want their Australia Bank to fund cheap homeloans, to abolish negative gearing, and to halve the capital gains tax discount to 25%.
Also in the state owned utilities list, Aus Citizens want state owned electricity again. They also want us to repeal the ban on nuclear power and build it here. Oh and they’d also like us to have far higher minimum petroleum reserves in the country. They’d also like us to break up the Woolies and Coles duopoly due to their abuse of market power.
Aus Citizens are pro live export, on the basis that it “provides affordable protein to millions of people in low-income countries”.
And finally, they have a policy for a Royal Commission into COVID-19. Now every small party loves themselves a Royal Commission, and Aus Citizens are unclear on what outcome they’re hoping from this: but from previous knowledge of their positions on things, they’re not COVID deniers (indeed they are very anti the lab leak conspiracy theory, given their love of China), but they do see COVID as leading to an overreach of government power and deregulation.
Is this party trying to kill me?
Generally no. None of their policies involve guns or other things likely to kill me. Indeed they want Australia out of as many wars as possible.
Is this party trying to harm me?
Mostly they’re bank-obsessed conspiracy weirdos. I wouldn’t want to live in a country they ran, but they’re not really out to harm me.
Conclusion:
I need to reiterate that Australian Citizens as a party are primarily focused on a bizarre interpretation of how banks and the financial system works. If I could subtitle their policy platform it would be RETVRN to the 1970s. They are not a credible party, despite holding a bunch of policies in their platform this year that may look appealing to a lot of leftish folk.
Website: https://citizensparty.org.au/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CitizensPartyAU
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CitizensPartyAU
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CitizensPartyAU
(My review for the 2022 Federal Election)
The Australian Citizens Party are the local LaRouche conspiracy theorists. They’ve been around as a federally registered party since 1997 and were previously known as the Citizens Electoral Council. Their ability to conceal their level of nuttiness has waxed and waned over the years: sometimes they can present a fairly coherent front at a casual glance, but as soon as you look deeper the weirdness rises to the surface.
They are stalwarts of the Australian microparty scene with very little success over the years.
Party Analysis
This year Aus Citizens are running on a 7 point policy plan. And what significantly worries me about this policy plan is that it looks reasonably normal initially, until you dig in.
Aus Citizens are very concerned with national sovereignty. They don’t like that Australia is close allies with the US and UK, and particularly want to rip up AUKUS and stay out of any international wars. On the other hand, they also want to be closer to China and for us to participate in the Belt and Road Initiative (aka China’s soft power diplomacy). They’re very nationalist and isolationist in views and want the power to go to war to be restricted to a declaration of a joint sitting of parliament. They are pro-Gaza, pro-One China policy and want an Australian republic. I will point out that part of their desire for a republic is because the party includes people who believe in David Icke’s conspiracy that the British Royal Family are lizard people, but they’re not open about that on the internet any more. The other, more palatable reason is that Aus Citizens are gung ho about Australian sovereignty and independence from any form of foreign control.
Aus Citizens are also extremely obsessed with the Australian banking system. They desperately want a government owned bank (and suggest using Australia Post as the basis for it), and are very concerned with the idea that the government is going to steal our money via bail-ins from the banks seizing people’s savings. They fully buy into the ‘the government is trying to phase out cash and only cash can protect us’ narrative. They want to disestablish ASIC because they think it’s corrupt and rebuild it from the ground up. They also want to get rid of the GST and instead have a tax on ‘foreign exchange speculation’.
Aus Citizens want their Australian Owned Bank to invest in national infrastructure nation-building projects. The thing is, when they list their top three policies, two of them are massive red flag fantasy projects.
Priority projects include the Bradfield water diversion scheme in North Queensland, the Iron Boomerang railway between Queensland and Western Australia, and high-speed rail between the state capitals.
For people unfamiliar with the Bradfield Scheme, this is a discredited concept of “why don’t we redirect rivers to flow into the centre of Australia rather than out to sea and green the desert!” Not only will it not work, but it is also a massive terraforming project that will majorly disrupt delicate ecosystems purely for the purpose of ‘more farms’. The Iron Boomerang is a hypothetical iron ore railway (thus the ‘iron’ in the name) stretching across the northern half of Australia from coast to coast to connect iron ore mining to steel mills. It’s a highly challenging and implausible project that is economically infeasible and never likely to be accomplished, despite close to 150 years of proposals to build railways along this approximate corridor (and back then we built railways in some exceedingly difficult places).Aus Citizens want fewer consultants and more professionals in the public service. They want reforms to NACC to closely define its remit and hold it to investigating corruption. They want to ban all corporate donations and only allow registered voters to donate to campaigns. They want stronger whistleblower protections and higher rates of immigration, particularly to rural areas. They also want more GPs and want us to have more Uni places to train doctors and nurses.
In terms of the current housing affordability crisis, Aus Citizens want their Australia Bank to fund cheap homeloans, to abolish negative gearing, and to halve the capital gains tax discount to 25%.
Also in the state owned utilities list, Aus Citizens want state owned electricity again. They also want us to repeal the ban on nuclear power and build it here. Oh and they’d also like us to have far higher minimum petroleum reserves in the country. They’d also like us to break up the Woolies and Coles duopoly due to their abuse of market power.
Aus Citizens are pro live export, on the basis that it “provides affordable protein to millions of people in low-income countries”.
And finally, they have a policy for a Royal Commission into COVID-19. Now every small party loves themselves a Royal Commission, and Aus Citizens are unclear on what outcome they’re hoping from this: but from previous knowledge of their positions on things, they’re not COVID deniers (indeed they are very anti the lab leak conspiracy theory, given their love of China), but they do see COVID as leading to an overreach of government power and deregulation.
Is this party trying to kill me?
Generally no. None of their policies involve guns or other things likely to kill me. Indeed they want Australia out of as many wars as possible.
Is this party trying to harm me?
Mostly they’re bank-obsessed conspiracy weirdos. I wouldn’t want to live in a country they ran, but they’re not really out to harm me.
Conclusion:
I need to reiterate that Australian Citizens as a party are primarily focused on a bizarre interpretation of how banks and the financial system works. If I could subtitle their policy platform it would be RETVRN to the 1970s. They are not a credible party, despite holding a bunch of policies in their platform this year that may look appealing to a lot of leftish folk.
