Liberal Democratic Party

Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)
https://www.ldp.org.au/

Oh no it’s time for the libertarians.

The Liberal Democratic Party were founded in 2001. They’ve been fighting to keep the Liberal Party from making them change their name ever since, and have been successful at it. They currently have three Legislative Council members: 2 in Victoria and one in WA. This means they have a representative up for re-election this time around. They have previously been successful at the 'confuse the voters by having Liberal in their name' tactic, which is how David Leyonhjelm first got into Federal Parliament, but I suspect their improved prospects since then have revolved around people actually knowing what the party is.

After looking at the quotas for the 2017 election, I now suspect some group voting ticket nonsense is how the Lib Dems managed to get that single seat in the South Metropolitan regions. This is also the only region they were to the left of the Liberals and thus the only region in which they had an initial quota over 0.1. They managed to pick up the Australian Christians, Daylight Savings Party and PHON exclusions to jump into the lead. DSP were absolutely playing group voting ticket games, and AC preferred the Lib Dems over PHON, otherwise PHON would probably have taken the spot. So if they can keep this seat (which had a 0.27 quota primary vote while majorly to the left of the Libs on the ballot) is absolutely going to come down to the group voting ticket negotiations.

I’ll be frank – I seriously dislike the LDP. I don’t much like libertarians, and they have a tendency of electing particularly odious members of the species (David Leyonhjelm, anyone?)
 

( Policy Analysis )

Any Predictions?

Actually, no! We forgot them. But it’s ok as they’ve given us plenty of material about their response to COVID above.


Is this party trying to kill me?

I think I have to go with no, here. None of the policies they are taking into this election are aimed to kill me. I didn’t see any gun regulation changes or anti-vaccine messaging or other items of concern. They’ve been very slick at hiding it, if there is any.


Is this party trying to harm me?

Again, I don’t think so. I think their policies would probably harm WA in that they want to strip away a lot of taxation while also freezing salaries and forcing the budget back into balance during a pandemic, but I can’t see where their policies are out to harm individuals.


Conclusion

The Liberal Democratic Party are libertarians. They believe in as much personal freedom and as few regulations and taxes as possible. They are definitely taking the chance to put the boot into McGowan over what they consider to be overreach in his response to COVID, which tracks pretty well with their general policies.

I’m suspicious of what they are hiding in such slick and minimised policy marketing for the election, but there actually are a couple of gems in there – the hospital policies for one – that might be worth considering. On the other hand, they have absolutely nothing about a climate policy and their policing policy doesn't mention a single thing about race issues, so no kudos there.

I still think they are a bunch of white dudes interested in white dude issues and as far as I am concerned the various Australian governments should continue to throw money at their states and territories during COVID and afterwards to help their populations now, help the recovery after, and help reverse the recession we were already heading into before all this hit, rather than embrace libertarian fiscal austerity just for The Budget.

I would rank them ahead of any of the dangerous right wing parties. But still on the bottom half of the ballot.