Australian Christians

[b_auspol]

Australian Christians (WA)
https://australianchristians.org.au/wa-election-2021/

I think the hardest thing for me about any party that puts the word “Christians” in their name is that I immediately start reading all their election material with an eye for dogwhistles. I tend to suspect that they’re socially conservative and are using narrow definitions of terms. Now this may be unfair of me, but your average socially liberal Australian religious person has happily fitted themselves within the broader tent of an already-existing party and doesn’t need to wave the fact they are religious in the name of their party.

Of course, after turning to Wikipedia, the Australian Christians are basically a rebrand of the WA and VIC branches of the Christian Democratic Party that was founded in 2011. I assume they wished to establish their own identity beyond Fred Nile. The Victorian branch later merged with Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives in 2017, but the WA branch apparently weren’t interested.

So that tells you all you really need to know.

However, let us be fair and investigate what policies the Australian Christians are bringing to this election. There are probably darker moments ahead in this series.

The WA Election page for Australian Christians lists seven beliefs they have:

1. In strengthening young people, families, & marriages. Let’s Improve funding for mental health & counselling services available to families.
2. In promoting choice & healthy School environments for both student & teacher.
   
3. That NO Human life should be for sale. AC supports the Nordic approach to reduce trafficking & child exploitation.
   
4. In good stewardship of State Finances. AC calls for greater accountability in local & State departments.
   
5. In protecting the most vulnerable – the orphan, the elderly, the homeless, the refugee & the unborn.
   
6. In the power of reconciliation. AC is committed to fight for the disempowered, including our Indigenous brothers & sisters.
   
7. In being good caretakers of our Environment. Reduce harmful Plastics & improve WA’s recycling system.
   

Look, the one thing I am always willing to give the CDP, and it looks like the Australian Christians here echo it, is that they are fairly logically consistent in their social conservatism. They are generally pretty good on the narrow band of “social welfare that fits within Christian Charity”, and so you will find the occasional policy where you would happily endorse what they’re saying. The rest of the time you’re gaping at what their policies outline and picking out the dogwhistles to work out what they’ve just implied, of course.

They define things like ‘marriage’ and ‘family’ in ways that make me shudder (man and woman only for life in covenant! Religious based sexual morality! The government should respect the sanctity of family units and their “unique sphere of authority”!).

Point 1 there is code for “get married in a way we approve and stay married”. I do approve of better funding for mental health and counselling, but I can’t help but be suspicious on what SORT of counselling. From the good perspective: they’re talking about trying to decrease family violence and divorce through effective treatment. From the bad side: look the bad Christian side of counselling is horrific and includes things like conversion therapy.

Point 2 appears to be code for “We don’t like Safe Schools” and “parents should be able to opt their kids out of education topics that conflict with their consciences”.

Point 3: okay, the ‘Nordic model’ is criminalisation of prostitution for the purchaser and decriminalisation for the sex worker. Looking at the studies on countries that have this model – they don’t know. The evidence is a bit all over the place, but it seems like levels of prostitution are somewhat lower and the public is more anti-prostitution with this set up compared to full decriminalisation, though workers are still less likely to report incidents. However, most of the countries they are comparing are European ones, and look, the situation in Europe varies significantly to that in Australia. Personally, I’d rank this as a safer option than prostitution being outright illegal. From a quick read of the current WA legislation, this is still probably a step up from the current situation, which is “street work and brothels are definitely illegal, we define prostitution very broadly, you’re not allowed to live off the proceeds, but escorts are ok and prostitution in itself is not illegal”.

Point 4 – good stewardship. Oh the biblical nature of that. Greater accountability over state and local government finances is reasonable, but I can’t find details of how they define what they want to see.

Point 5 is again one of those issues where largely the ‘Christian charity’ implied is reasonably positive, and then you get to their anti-choice crusade. Supporting and protecting the vulnerable in the community is a worthy goal. I just personally feel that “the vulnerable” includes those who are pregnant and ensuring that they are able to make decisions about that pregnancy.

Point 6 reconciliation for the disempowered and Indigenous is a good policy. There is so much to be done in terms of reforming and overturning the results of over two centuries of colonialism in this country and WA has its own particular issues to overcome. I’m a supporter of Sisters Inside and the FreeHer campaign and yes the WA government policies on incarceration to ‘pay out’ fines are appalling and need to be reformed. There is good work to be done here. Of course there is no policy detail on what reconciliation the Australian Christians have in mind, but I wouldn’t necessarily consider it to be bad.

Point 7 – oh look the environmental wing of Good Stewardship of the Earth strikes again! Yes this is actually a fair biblical interpretation and it actually makes me happy to see it endorsed. This is a value I’m happy to share with the Australian Christians.

On the side of things that they are less willing to say outright on their policy pages and prefer to hide in communication to members, I made a sweep of their website and found the following concerns:

Euthanasia is very wrong and they are worried about people accessing it for what they consider insufficient reason. Lots of scaremongering about Belgium and the Netherlands. Increase funding to palliative care instead.

Surrogacy should not be extended to single men and same sex couples because it “commodifies women and children”. Abortion is of course right out.

They are still very offended about marriage equality.

Being offended that there are laws against conversion therapy.

The LGBTQI agenda has apparently taken hold of the UN.

There is little I can say about any of this except I strongly disagree with them on pretty much every particular, and these are points that we will never see eye to eye on.

Any Predictions?

I’m going to take the CDP prediction made by Cate and apply it here, as they are arguably the same party, policywise.

The Christian Democratic Party will address this through prayer, of course. But they also want you to know that COVID-19 was sent by God to punish Australia for not being sufficiently homophobic.

Now I cannot manage to spot anyone specifically stating that COVID-19 can be fixed by prayer. But I will note that they plan to use the power of prayer during the 2021 election to “reverse bad laws”, the list of which includes banning conversion therapy, legalising abortion and actually letting children get educated about gender and sexuality.

So you know. I think the pandemic is going well enough in WA that it’s not specifically God punishing them. So they’re going to focus that prayer power on making the government more intolerant and small-minded.
 

Is this party trying to kill me?

No. The Australian Christians don’t appear to have any policies that are actively likely to endanger my life.
 

Is this party trying to harm me?

Yes, they are. The Australian Christians are pretty clearly virulently anti-queer, given their opinions on conversion therapy and the “LGBTQI agenda in the UN”, plus they’re anti-abortion. I do not feel safe about their policies.
 

Conclusion:

Look, they’re right wing Christian social conservatives. There are certainly worse far right parties running in this election, but they are certainly stuck on their own interpretation of what Christianity says and are anxious to try and make sure the rest of the state and country have to follow it too.

I can’t say I’d ever voluntarily vote for them, but they’re not quite bottom of the ticket for me. (And yes that is a bit hypocritical of me, as Fred Nile is a perennial for Last Spot On My Ballot unless there is someone frankly more dangerous, but Fred Nile also personally introduced an amendment to a piece of legislation that makes my life and job harder, so I’m allowed to be bitter).

Comments

[b_auspol]

I'm giggling a lot here. That's one miracle that doesn't need to happen.

Yep, they are a known quantity - you barely need to open the policy documents, as you can predict exactly what will be inside. And they aren't into guns, which ranks them near the top of the far right vile minor parties. But that 'bring back conversion therapy' policy is one that makes me grit my teeth, as that's pretty damn harmful.