Health Australia Party
Jan. 17th, 2021 04:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
b_auspolHealth Australia Party (HAP)
https://www.healthaustraliaparty.com.au/
It’s important to know that the Health Australia Party was originally formed as the Natural Medicine Party in 2013, then switched its name to HAP in 2015, likely on the realisation that a party calling itself ‘Natural Medicine’ is rather unlikely to convince many people to vote for them. They have never managed to win seats anywhere. The wikipedia page mentions the fact they’ve been accused of being anti-vaccine, into alternative medicine and conspiracy theories in the first few paragraphs, which is always a nice warning sign.
One of my personal beefs with the party is the party logo. I presume it’s supposed to look like water and a tree, but, especially in black and white lineart, I’ve always thought it looks like a stylised embryo and placenta, which means I always read their materials looking for pro-life signals, even if there aren’t any.
The front page of their website is interesting. Most of the policies they’re promoting seem like standard lefty stuff, until one of the health policies comes across the screen. They are anti-fluoride. “Safe and non-toxic therapies, not chemicals as the only treatment”. Safe homebirths. Anti-roundup. No chemicals in people or the environment. Promote natural therapies. “Health creation not disease management”. “Independence and integrity in research, not intrusion from pharmaceutical lobbies”.
Sigh.
Now I do actually know how to interpret health pseudoscience language. This is all a fairly standard natural medicine nonsense, couched in their preferred warm and fuzzy language. Big Pharma wants to make us all chronically ill and make us pay for maintenance medicine, not cure us. The least intervention is the best intervention. I have very little patience for “big pharma is” after we’ve all just seen a worldwide race to develop vaccines, a product that is well known for having such thin profit margins that it’s sometimes used as an effective loss-leader for the company. The vaccine technology proof of concept is more what the profit to the company is, this time around, than the actual profits they’ll be making.
AstraZeneca, especially, basically is not expecting to get anything other than goodwill and the licencing fees out of their vaccine, because its pricepoint is so low.
Do we really need the “chemicals and organic have scientific definitions that do not match the way that you use them colloquially” rant? I think everyone knows that one. Scaremongering over “chemicals” always makes me roll my eyes, because part of the reason that there is a preference to synthesise things in laboratories rather than extract them from plants and animal products is that that it means you have a consistent, even yield to work with, so you know exactly how much of an active ingredient is IN your product, rather than guessing. Would you rather have your insulin synthesised in a lab or be purified from pig insulin? Yep. I know which side I come down on.
Anyway, rant over, let’s look at their actual policy documents.
They have a whole page just about vaccination! Oh boy let’s go in. It starts with a disavowal of being anti-vaxxers and say that they’ve been wrongly accused. Okay, they say the media lies and lies, that they only want access to complementary medicine which the WHO endorsed. They don’t like No Jab/No Play, then proceed to accuse the Australian vaccine schedule of being too large, “one of the biggest in the world”. So. Personally I think the fact that Australia has a comprehensive vaccine schedule should be celebrated, not fear mongered, but then I’m not scared of vaccine injuries. Essentially, the page is mostly saying they don’t think undervaccinated children should be penalised.
While I think that a carrot and stick approach to vaccination is not always the most effective, the fact that the Australian government has installed a hardline check on whether kids are up to date on their vaccinations by using “starting school” – aka 5 year olds – makes some sense. The childhood vaccine schedule is designed to have kids immunised against childhood illnesses by the time they start school. Schools are hotbeds of germs. Now, yes, I personally could see a more effective method for undervaccinated kids starting school to be that at registration, maybe the school liaises with parents and public health to get these kids caught up, rather than a punitive benefits and access to education stop, but I’ve not seen the numbers on how many kids are caught by this. Vaccination is actually higher in a lot of marginalised populations than it is in richer areas – we have 97% full vaccination in Indigenous populations, which is above the national average. Yes, the policy would probably be kinder if it were more flexible, and that is a consideration, but I can’t help but suspect that a party of naturopaths and complementary medicine fans might have more than just this objection to making sure kids are properly vaccinated.
Now, HAP aren’t messing around and already have their candidates listed, which is a nice thing two months out from election. Thanks folks. The first two I looked at were suitably bland, and I was getting worried, then I saw the mum who created a natural sunscreen line and is now into feng shui, and I sighed with relief. Another guy is into massage therapy and holistic spa therapy, and there’s a kinesiologist who likes organic and biodynamic farming and is anti-chemical. None of them look like they’re into anything super dangerous as far as complementary medicine goes, but there is a classic layer of nuttiness going on.
The policy document is a “living document” being added to and is available via pdf. Sigh. I wish less parties thought the appropriate way to publish their policies was by PDF, because it makes glancing through things harder, but a single PDF for everything, nothing out in the open, is particularly irritating.
But! It does have a very nice table of contents, good job you folks.
Health Australia Party has a list of five fundamentals, all of which start with “Healthy”. I sense a theme.
- Healthy People
- Healthy Economy
- Healthy Environment
- Healthy Democracy
- Healthy Society
Healthy People is basically their natural medicine point. “Build a health-creation system, not a disease-management system”. They believe there is an epidemic of chronic disease and the way to solve this is to ‘make people healthier’. I personally find the accusations that doctors and pharmaceutical companies are more interested in managing conditions than curing them exceedingly tiring. You know what is also expensive and you’re told to take every day of your life? Vitamins, which natural medicine folk are all over. Of course, people would prefer to completely fix conditions rather than just managing them, but not everything has a cure yet. I don’t think anybody’s secretly hiding The Cure To Disease out there. They’d make too much money from it.
Natural medicine should be treated equally with pharmaceutical medicine. I am going to sound like the biggest science bore in the world, but you know what they call complementary/natural medicine that has passed scientific studies? Medicine. Do I think yoga and massage and positive thinking and increasing the vegetables in your diet is going to hurt people if it makes them feel better? No. But your doctor quite reasonably already can and does prescribe such things. They don’t suggest you use iridology or homeopathy, because it’s a load of codswallop.
HAP also call out they want affordable medicine from “unbiased real-world clinical studies”. Hey HAP, that’s generally what stage 3 double blinded studies attempt to get! Apparently results in scientific studies are being manipulated to serve vested interests. They think there’s a corrupt cabal deliberately causing issues in medical research, and are outraged that the Australian government has given almost no research money to complementary medicine in the past 10 years. Now I’m just me, but personally I’d rather see public funding going towards actual/conventional medicine. I’m not going to disagree that there is some profiteering in the pharmaceutical world – Martin Shkreli exists – and there is certainly patent abuse, but the PBS does its best to try and keep medications affordable for Australians. They also want to reform the health bureaucracy, which I agree can be onerous, but I’m not sure in which direction.
There’s a call for more access to homebirth in low risk pregnancies, in line with NZ policies. Their euthanasia is a masterclass in all-sidesism: government agencies shouldn’t be allowed to end peoples lives unilaterally (fair); people with poor quality of life should be able to access euthanasia with 2 doctor approval (fair); but also increase palliative care (fair). Basically they support euthanasia while also striking at the two biggest objections to it.
There is concern about medication levels in mental health treatment. And while certainly medication side-effects can be worse than what they help, I also have friends who’ve told me that their brain-drugs are magical and are what let them function. In any case, HAP is interested in the effect of gut health on mental health (??) and want more wholistic mental health treatment with focus on improving the life and housing around the person with mental health while still treating them. Which would certainly help in some cases and the current provision of mental health under Medicare is appalling, but also neurodivergence is neurodivergence and sometimes you just need the chemicals your body won’t make for you.
They’re for medical cannabis, and would like to see full legalisation. Fluoride is a waste product and should not be added to water. Also their domestic violence policy is under this heading – they are suggesting that pharmacies and chemists could be a place to access DV assistance? Which is an idea, but I’m unsure how this is more useful than a doctor.
Healthy economy wants support for small businesses, “genuine tax reform based on fairness and truth”, prevention of companies avoiding tax by offshore income diversion. They’re suspicious of both big business and big unions. “Fair taxes on the wealthy, encourage the middle to progress, and support the poor and disadvantaged.” I think this is a pretty decent warcry, honestly? I can’t fault it. They oppose any increase to the GST, and instead want consideration of other taxation methods like a transaction tax. The HAP is also up for a new National Bank. Everyone is out for one of these, this year! Also fund the CSIRO better! (Hear hear!)
Healthy environment is a call for sustainable and renewable energy. This tracks with the sort of lefty, nature friendly party HAP is. They also want more protections for our natural environment, plants and animals. They would like a National Agriculture Policy and want regenerative agriculture – close reading suggests “organic and biodynamic preferred”. They want to educate Aussie kids about what foods are healthy and which cause chronic illness and obesity. (Which aren’t we already doing? Or do they want even more foods on the kid-ban list?).
Mining should have more environmental protections and less lobbying power – mining companies should not have access to land without the owner’s permission. Their policies to me read as “stop mining in water catchments, stop blowing up Indigenous sites, consult more with communities rather than buying off government ministers”. Which honestly I can’t disagree with.
HAP is supportive that global weather patterns have changed, for a variety of reasons, but partly due to pollution. Uh. That’s a roundabout way to say Climate Change. They support decreased emissions, less plastic waste, reduction of burning off, etc. We are not meeting our global emissions targets. This needs to change.
They want more ecotourism and less pollution. Pointing out the Australian environment is one of our marketing assets to the world is fair – everyone has overseas friends who want to come to see the beaches or the animals or the scenery.
They have a whole policy on bees, and also one on glyphosate. Both these policies are chemical-suspicious: they’re worried about insecticides, herbicides and pesticides killing animals and insects and causing cancer. They would prefer farming take place with as few chemical interventions as possible.
There is a land ownership policy, but it’s about foreign ownership of Aus farmland rather than on native title. They want to investigate how much of Australian land and housing is wholly owned by overseas companies and foreign nationals.
Healthy democracy is about both government and the media, apparently. HAP would like to see a reduction of influence on the national media by “wealthy vested interests”. I’m just going to read that as “Murdoch” and “Packer”. Strengthen the national broadcaster! Oh it’s nice to see a pro-ABC take after reading anti ones. And formalise fact checking. That is an interesting idea, and I’d like to see their proposals on where and how they want that integrated more than what is currently done. Transparent decision making in all levels of government – I wonder if they want more published explanations, more access to decision documents and advice, or what?
Indigenous affairs is under here – they want more focus on increasing the Indigenous community’s health via a holistic approach. They also acknowledge that constitutional recognition and/or a treaty are an active discussion, they are happy to commit to either or both, but know there’s a debate in the Indigenous community over which is preferred and defer to the outcome of that debate. Pretty straight forward “we will support this but also let you decide which you want”.
Encourage citizens to participate and to value their vote. They think people are disengaged and cynical about politicians and that more grassroots work should be done by parties. Now, I think a fair argument can be made that Australian citizens are already, on average, a bit more engaged than other countries simply due to compulsory voting, but there’s nothing wrong with helping with even more education.
Healthy society. HAP are telling me that Australians are “at heart a caring and compassionate people”. Now cynicism over the events of the past year makes me put a few qualifications on that – certainly being in the tribal in-group helps get you that caring and compassion – but it’s an optimistic way to look at our country. They want to improve the country even further by high quality education, which is yes, a scientifically tested metric that does help. And then also a healthy society votes and participates in political conversations.
Their education policy is again a both-sides-let’s-meet-in-the-middle: standardised curriculum is important, but also children need personalised teaching and learning styles! Which honestly, who doesn’t want both of those? I note there are no actual proposals on how to achieve this. They want to support teachers, review NAPLAN, and suggest NAPLAN results are only released to government, not schools and parents, to reduce pressure. I’m not sure Secret NAPLAN is going to take testing issues away, personally.
Immigration HAP calls out as hard and they don’t know the answers. This is one of the things about minor and micro parties – since you have almost no chance of even having to make a balance-of-the-LC/Senate call, you can just go “it’s difficult, we support everyone and don’t want to make tough calls”. While saying they don’t have an answer is fair enough, it does also suggest they’re not really ready to play in the big leagues. They do want to protect refugees.
Defence is basically “we don’t like wars. Please only use our troops overseas for peace-keeping missions or in exceptional circumstances”. They would like to avoid conflict. Support veterans! Consider a voluntary Swiss style National Service (which slightly confuses me as they say this will help defence planning, but they also don’t want our troops going anywhere – I guess it’s for more bodies for disaster relief work).
They are against live animal exports and go on about it for a while, and would like to see the replacement of the live animal export industry with “suitable plant-based products”. Which, uhhhh. I can’t quite figure out if they just mean “export more crops and do some research on what the communities currently buying our animals would want” or if this is some vegetarian/vegan push. I think they mean the former, but it certainly is worded like the latter.
HAP are against the death penalty and support current gun policies: they should only be for farm use or registered gun club target shooting.
I took a quick look at their social media to see what HAP are saying about COVID and the vaccines. There is a fair bit of scaremongering about vaccines not being effective, being genetic manipulation, and calls from their followers not to vaccinate. Also saw 5G is dangerous! Mobile phones/Wi-Fi causes breast cancer! If you have ever followed medical pseudoscience, all of this looks extremely characteristic.
Also in fucking appalling what the hell did I just see, they are marketing a homeopathic medication kit for BABIES in their online store as a fundraiser for the party. And another aimed at kids. Okay, I am horrified. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. You are fundraising for your party by selling sugar pills for babies? That… that is horrific.
Any Predictions?
Cate said “The Health Australia Party have a homeopathic vaccination that is already available.”
I did not see a homeopathic vaccination. However, the Health Australia Party are extremely suspicious of the vaccines that WILL be available for COVID.
Is this party trying to kill me?
No, but they are trying to kill babies. I thought that this was going to be a no, but then I saw the baby homeopathy kit and I lost it.
Is this party trying to harm me?
Yes. Health Australia Party does not particularly want to support actual tested medical care and medicine, and would rather focus on natural medicine. They also are anti-vaccine, despite their protests that they are just concerned about kids getting too many, too fast – they are encouraging people to register their concerns about the COVID vaccines and possibly not take it. They are advocating policies that will endanger people.
Conclusion:
The Health Australia Party are pretty standard left wing social and economic progressives who unfortunately have a giant blindspot known as being completely obsessed with natural medicine. This infects some of their policies to the point that they are running a conspiracy.
While HAP take the time to try and say they are only suspicious of conventional medicine trying to maximise profits, they don't actually hate medicine or vaccinations, their social media shows this is not necessarily the case. I'm not saying that there isn't room to do better on their concerns - I just think they've fallen completely into the deep end of the pool over this.
They are very into natural and complementary medicine. They are very into organic and biodynamic farming. If this conflicts with your views, I'd certainly rank them in a middling manner on the ballot. Vaccine crankery is more dangerous than usual this year.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-17 10:30 am (UTC)The baby homeopathy thing horrified me. They're selling that PUBLICLY. It's one thing when you can disavow it as one of your members going too far, but as fundraising on your actual party page?