Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party

Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party (Shooters)

https://www.shootersfishersandfarmerswa.org.au/

Ah, it’s the country party for those who hate the Nationals. (This is a well mined vein of party, I must admit, but Shooters have been the most successful of the Can’t Believe It’s Not The Nats: With Extra Gun Flavour)

Shooters were originally formed in NSW in 1992 and have spread to all the other states and federal elections. The name keeps broadening to encompass more categories in the hopes to pick up more seats. In WA, they currently have one Legislative Council seat, in the Agricultural region, which has been held since 2013.

So essentially, let us be honest, Shooters are hoping and expecting to keep that seat and might have designs on another in Mining and Pastoral.

Actually I just took a look at the quota flows for Shooters in the LC and how they went in various regions: it looks like it comes down to how big the exclusion transfers from the Nationals, Liberals and Australian Christians are. Shooters just got pipped at the post in Mining and Pastoral in 2017 by the Greens soaking up enough votes from the final exclusions of the third Labor candidate and the Flux candidate (Flux had been playing the group voting ticket game; Labor are just popular in a region dominated by miners); it was close to going to Shooters. They never picked up enough transfers in South West to get close, and the three Perth regions were always never going to happen.

( Party Analysis )

Any Predictions?

We do! The Huntin’ Shootin’ and Fishin’ party will blame feral animals and select native species, and offer to help deal with the problem in return for certain considerations in relation to gun laws and marine parks.

Now they don’t seem to have lucked out in any Australian feral animals being major COVID reservoirs. Sorry, you would have loved that.


Is this party trying to kill me?

They’re the biggest gun apologists in the country and they want less regulation and making guns easier to buy. Yes, that counts as wanting to kill me.


Is this party trying to harm me?

On top of the guns they’re pretty anti-environmental.


Conclusion:

I don’t like the Shooters, but they’re less wingnutty than some of the other right wing parties. On the other hand, they are also very very gun happy.

They also continue to only talk about their narrow suite of issues rather than a broader platform, even though they have seats in multiple states. They're still at the Little Party That Could stage rather than any sort of serious Third Party Electoral Threat.

I would never find myself voting for these folk, but I suspect I would have a hard time trying to pick whether they go higher or lower than One Nation on my ballot. And that’s actually a real concern – in the areas where they do well, that’s actually a consideration where more Shooters votes might keep PHON from getting a seat. If I was being super strategic about it, I think I might preference Shooters ahead of PHON in most regions simply because Shooters are more likely to get excluded and to stop PHON reaching critical mass, but honestly I’d want them well below the Liberals in any case and at that point there is very little left to influence in terms of seats.

Socialist Alliance

Socialist Alliance
https://socialist-alliance.org/

Okay, and so we swing from the far right where we’ve spent a lot of time recently over to the far left.

Socialist Alliance are the only openly socialist party running this election (I do not count the Greens when I’m talking about the collective socialist parties simply because while they share values, the Greens are a lot more strategic at how they pander to Left Labor to borrow voters and are less enthralled with the eventual coming socialist paradise).

They were originally formed in 2001 and enjoy minor political success in the People’s Republic of Moreland and apparently also Freemantle and Cairns. This is FASCINATING: can anyone get me caught up on the potential People’s Republic of Freo and Cairns news as to why this is? Freo person in question is Sam Wainwright, who looks like he enjoys high levels of local popularity. When did Cairns become a possible socialist paradise? I want ALL the deets.

There is a long list of the various groups that have joined and split from the Socialist Alliance on their Wikipedia, because as we all know, nobody hates a socialist party quite as much as another socialist. They’re still trying to be a bit of an umbrella party, only a small one.

Reminder to everyone (including me) who can’t keep them straight: Socialist Alliance are open socialists who want to work with society and think that elections can help their platform (newspaper: Green Left Weekly); Socialist Alternative are the Troskyites who want to attempt work with society but who still believe elections don’t do anything (newspaper: Red Flag); Socialist Equality Party are the Marxists who are awaiting the Glorious Revolution and will have me up against the wall when the day comes (newspaper: I can’t find one/I think they read Red Flag and scoff). (These are only small jests)
 

( Policy Analysis )

Any Predictions?

None for Socialist Alliance. I am going to do something that will make both parties despise me and use Cate’s prediction for the Socialist Equality Party instead (how dare I equate the two):

The Socialist Equality Party is going to build an independent political movement of the working class to address COVID-19. They blame capitalism. And for once, Comrades, they are not entirely wrong.

Socialist Alliance is definitely blaming capitalism for making COVID-19 worse and causing a failure to address underlying issues. And as Cate says, they are not entirely wrong here.


Is this party trying to kill me?

Socialist Alliance have never given me the impression that I, as an aspiring lawyer, will be one of the first against the wall when the revolution comes. They would probably like me to spend more time on the parts of the law that allow me to keep a soul, but I am already turning down The Money in exchange for getting to keep Some Soul Parts, so I think I’m safer with them than some of the other socialists we have in Aus.


Is this party trying to harm me?

No, they probably would like to consider solidarity and rights for me more than they would like to harm me (though may I note that as someone who identifies as ace and as queer as explaining takes all too long, I was not listed in ANY of that Solidarity Rights For All Diversities section, Socialist Alliance, update your literature, though I will grant you that specific trans and intersex policies documents are slightly more urgent).


Conclusion:

Look, Socialist Alliance are essentially the most cuddly option of all the Australian socialist organisations. Do I agree with them all the time? No. But I know their heart is in the right place and that they actually want to try to accomplish their goals via exploiting the system we currently have, rather than going immediately for revolution.

Do I wish that sometimes they would possibly consider being a bit more user-friendly? Of course.

Sam Wainwright has racked up seven years of local government experience, and that is not to be sniffed at in terms of ability to actually achieve things within government. His community keep voting him back in. On that basis, if I were in his region, I would strongly consider giving him a vote at the top of my ballot, simply because supporting effective political candidates is how we help small parties grow. The other two candidates, I would definitely be listing pretty high on my ballot. I’d certainly personally prefer a candidate I know their position on EVERYTHING for over, say, an AJP candidate where there are vast swathes of policy areas avoided as they can’t be put into an animal focused framework.

If you’re heavily left leaning, there are worse parties you could vote for, though I would still argue than the Greens are more effective at promulgating their similar agenda as they have already spent the past 30 years working out how to play in the big leagues (I realise this is a disincentive to many left leaning supporters who feel that the Greens have gone corporate).