Animal Justice Party

Animal Justice Party

Website: https://www.animaljusticeparty.org/

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/animaljusticeparty.bsky.social

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnimalJusticePartyAJP

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/animaljusticeparty/


(My review for the 2021 WA Election. My review for the 2022 Federal Election)

The party for vegan animal-lovers.

Animal Justice Party were founded in 2009. They have never held a federal seat, however they have MLCs in both the NSW and Victorian Legislative Councils, and have held seats on local councils. They are therefore a minor party who have actual electoral experience.

As a party, AJP have matured somewhat over the last decade and a half from the changes brought by having to reach policy decisions on a wider set of priorities than the party’s core values. While their core values remain intact (I will never get over the fact that anyone running for office must be a committed vegan, for instance), they’ve performed actual policy work, both in their areas of interest and collaboratively in the upper house. Understanding how to actually DO the work of politics is an important skillset, and valuable in minor parties.

Party Analysis

AJP’s policy platform for the federal election is largely based in their core issue and interest (animal rights) but also canvasses a bunch of progressive policy areas. They are not purely a single interest party and do have positions on a range of areas.

In terms of broader topics, AJP’s approach to the current cost of living situation is that they want to lower income taxes and the removal of payroll tax. To make up the difference they want a combination of getting big business to pay higher tax rates and higher taxes on resource extraction, particularly mining and gas. They also want a tax on pollution, which as we know is never controversial in Australia. They also have the most cautiously worded policy on negative gearing I have ever seen: "Gradually adjust Capital Gains Tax and Negative Gearing to create a fairer tax and housing system." Cmon. You can be a bit bolder than that; you’re being outflanked by Bill Shorten in 2019.

Also with respect to cost of living, in terms of the issue of housing, the AJP platform is firmly pro-densification. They want to advocate for more public housing, more flexible zoning laws to allow higher density and infill in all cities, smaller floorplan housing, and a vacant properties tax. They don’t like short stay rentals. Their stated aim is cheaper and more accessible housing for all.

Another social issue that is raised is domestic and family violence. AJP has a history advocating for better government support for this, particularly in terms of rehousing victims and support to leave with pets. This is a genuine danger with domestic and family violence: one of the biggest predictors of danger to humans is if the abusive person threatens, injures or kills the family pets, and a lot of shelters don’t allow people to bring pets with them. Their policy is a lot of support and extra funding for the existing programmes to try and prevent and address violence.  

In terms of healthcare, as always the AJP’s central policy is actually Veticare - aka Medicare for pets and injured wildlife. It’s a policy that makes perfect sense in terms of AJP’s strong focus on animals. It both has extra money for vets and vet mental health as well as a focus on desexing and microchipping for pets.

The most interesting general environmental policies from the AJP this time are that they want to start a National Biodiversity Fund for the purpose of protecting endangered species, ending deforestation and habitat destruction, and supporting sustainable practices. This is a really interesting way to look at improving environmental outcomes. They’re also interested in legal personhood for natural land features rights: just like the landmark rulings allowing various rivers and mountains in NZ to own themselves (like Taranaki Maunga for instance), the AJP are suggesting that various river systems and the Great Barrier Reef should gain this protection, to give them specific rights that the country has to protect.

And then we have all the usual animal-based policies.

AJP want stronger animal protection laws and an overseeing independent body to hold all states and territories to a standard. AJP specifically point to the animal cruelty legislation they’ve succeeded in passing in NSW as something they want to see in all jurisdictions, and it’s a good demonstration of what smaller parties with a primary issue can accomplish when they have a seat at the table. AJP have been able to negotiate to get support behind a bunch of their core initiatives as well as being signatories for other progressive legislation.

They want to end live export (which is a live issue this election as the ALP have policies to implement this), phase out farming animals, transform the agricultural system to be plantbased only, and advocate for veganism. This is a standard part of their platform, where one of the points I’ve never seen addressed is the question that given Australia has some of the poorest, least nutrient-rich soils on the planet, and a lot of our farmland isn’t appropriate to grow crops with any serious yield (aka why it’s used for sheep and cattle farming), what are the plans to convert dry sheep farms to produce plants instead?

There is also my eternal sticking point in their platform: their advocacy against killing feral animals. I get their emotional buy-in, but also most non-lethal methods are clearly ineffective large scale at managing feral animal populations. You only have to look at the 2021 Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan for evidence of the significant difference in effect of various control methods. In the last 3 years, almost 9,000 brumbies were removed from the park. 6,000 of those were from aerial shooting since that was once again allowed in October 2023. 1,000 of the horses were rehomed. While rehoming is an implemented solution, it is far, far less effective. In a situation where the NSW government is desperately trying to reduce the brumby population to save the ecosystem, the overpopulation, and the animals starving to death, it is not enough to keep up with the herd increase.

Is this party trying to kill me?

No. the AJP don’t want to kill any animal, even humans.

Is this party trying to harm me?

No. The worst they want is for me to stop eating meat.

Conclusion:

The AJP are a minor party with an extremely specific main goal (protection of animals), but from years of political experience understand how to translate that goal into a wide selection of policies, and have advocacy positions on a range of socially progressive issues. Unlike a number of other minor parties, you can either get an answer or fairly easily predict what their MP’s position will be on a range of political issues, which provides a lot more confidence in terms of knowing how they’ll vote outside of their core issues.

Australian Christians

Australian 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.

Australian Citizens Party

Australian 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.

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.

Australia’s Voice

Australia’s Voice

Website: https://australiasvoice.com.au/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Senator-Fatima-Payman/100077402947532/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/senatorfatimapayman/
 
(New party for 2025)

This is Fatima Payman’s electoral vehicle after she resigned from Labor. As a party, it doesn’t really feel like it’s gelled into a solid platform as yet, but more of a grab bag of ideas.  

Party Analysis

The core policy of this entire party is ending the war in Gaza. The conflict is the reason that Payman left the ALP, and understandably is a major concern of hers. It is a very very pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide policy: not only does the party not want Australia involved, but they want strong ethical lines actively avoiding rendering any sort of third party assistance to Israel. The party also is a proponent of wanting declarations of war to come from a parliamentary vote rather than the prime minister, and they don’t like AUKUS and nuclear subs.

The party housing policy is ‘limiting’ negative gearing, but with no details of how, and reducing the capital gains tax discount to 25%, stepped by 5% a year over 5 years. They also are all for a government backed bank, wanting to base it out of Australia Post. As far as I can tell, this concept is entirely just spun out of the Bank@Post system. They want a nice bank, who protect people’s money and loan money at low interest rates to home buyers, not speculate with it! They also want a mandatory banking code of conduct, rather than the current self-administered voluntary one, and are mad about bank branch closures and want these explained to the local community.

Australia’s Voice want to break up the supermarket duopoly, but their suggested method is forcing Coles and Woolworths to sell off stores to ‘independent grocers’ if found to be engaged in “price gouging, exploiting suppliers, or anti-competitive behavior”. This is not actually a solution that is likely to fix the problem, or lead to lower prices for consumers. It’s a surface level gloss for the public, rather than actually addressing the causes of anti-competitive behaviour.

They’re mad at politician’s wages and benefits, in a cost of living crisis. And look, nobody ever likes seeing politicians award themselves more money (which is why they often have a lot of allowances that are easier ways to increase earnings without as much scrutiny), but: we’ve tried paying politicians less, and what we get from it are politicians who are independently wealthy so they don’t need to rely on the stipend, and talent departing for higher private sector wages. Commensurately high wages are the least bad option for allowing a broad spectrum of the community the ability to represent that community.

Australia’s Voice wants a republic (with a little implied dig in the policy about how politicians have to follow s44 but the monarch doesn’t), a gas supply reserve for Australia, and general vibes for climate action (no specific policy). The party wants to raise the HECS repayment threshold and cap debts to 1.5x the original amount, and have a national definition measuring poverty. They’re for raising JobSeeker to $82 a day and an increase in the Remote Area Allowance for Centrelink fixed to CPI. (You can tell Payman is a WA Senator).

The domestic and family violence policy focuses on a single issue - automatic superannuation splitting in cases of domestic and family violence. It’s an interesting proposal to add to the Family Law Act, and it’s actually the sort of policy a solo Senator could champion as a member’s bill.

Is this party trying to kill me?

No, this party is extremely anti killing people (particularly people in Gaza).

Is this party trying to harm me?

No, this party is committed to preventing harm (particularly in Gaza).

Conclusion:

My overwhelming impression of this platform is that most of the policies could easily be summed up as “this is a common sense solution, why hasn’t anyone done it?” without any knowledge of the deeper reasons for why people might not want those solutions or the outcomes if they were implemented. It just feels incredibly politically naïve . And look, I’ve read plenty of politically naïve policy platforms in my time, but generally by the time the party/politican has some political experience, the reality of what is and is not achievable for a minor party kicks in. I think the policy I was most compelled by was actually the domestic violence policy - that one is in the scope of a private member’s bill and an independent senator could form a coalition of crossparty supporters to get it passed if it’s one of Payman’s interests.

I don’t think there’s any harm in Australia’s Voice as a centre left party, and a vote for them is a very clear indication of a vote for ‘do more about Gaza’. But outside of that I am just not seeing a lot on offer that is more than generic stuff the Greens and Labor already cover.

Family First

Family First Party Australia

Website: https://www.familyfirstparty.org.au/

This Family First party is not the original South Australian party of Steven Fielding and Bob Day. It’s a recent creation led by Lyle Shelton, covering a very similar territory but formed from a split from South Australian Labor. That said, they’re still Protestant religious conservatives.

Party Analysis

Family First are not actually running much of a visible platform this election so far, however what they do have at the moment is pretty characteristic of them.

Family First have their lead policy being their opposition to Drag Queen Storytime. Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of fearmongering and quoting of the Cass Review. Their main objection appears to be that it might confuse children and expose them to “dangerous” adult themes and discussions of gender. Now personally I think the level of confusion a small child, who likes to play dressup, will feel is approximately on the level of wondering if the person reading the book is ALSO playing dressup. But conservatives have to panic about things.

Speaking of the Cass review, they’re mad about children receiving gender affirming care at gender clinics including puberty blockers and the fact any treatment is covered by Medicare.

Family First are also outraged about the removal of religious freedoms from schools (that is, religious schools being expected to provide a proper health and sex education to students) and are convinced this would end Christian education in Australia. It feels just a LITTLE overblown. They also don’t like the current anti-discrimination legislation and the fact that the religious discrimination legislation has not been passed.

There’s a very general anti-abortion platform: they think women are being coerced into abortion by men; that sex-selection abortion is happening; and are mad that abortion is accessible at all. It’s all in emotive language.

NSW’s lead candidate for the party is Lyle Shelton, most famous for his opposition to marriage equality, leadership of the No campaign during the plebiscite, and for the phrase ‘eat shit Lyle’ that circulated after the marriage equality vote passed. Shelton is a classic ‘got too conservative for the Nationals’ Queenslander who ran the Australian Christian Lobby from 2013 to 2018, joined Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives in 2019 and ran for the senate in QLD with them, then entered discussions to take over the Christian Democratic Party from Fred Nile in NSW in 2021, only for this to fall apart over Shelton not following Nile’s directions and "irreconcilable differences" in opinions, and then joined Family First in 2022, running and failing to win a seat in the NSW Legislative Council in 2023.

Is this party trying to kill me?

Look, I cannot see any policies about hoarding guns or failing to vaccinate people. But they are anti-abortion and they want to harm the mental health of trans kids, which does lead to higher suicide rates.

Is this party trying to harm me?

Absolutely. Family First are so conservative that all of the policies currently on their website revolve around how much they hate queer people, how much they hate abortion, and how they want their right to be religious bigots protected.

Conclusion:

I think basically everyone is aware of the level of religious conservatism that Family First exist to promote. Even if you’re a conservative bigot, I would look at other party options, because Family First can’t be bothered putting together a policy platform on their website outside of straight hate for people to sign petitions about.