Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party

[b_auspol]

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.

With that said, let’s get down to business, since this is a party with actual electoral prospects.

Shooters like guns. Now this isn’t a surprise to anyone who’s ever seen their name. I think they all still hate John Howard for the gun buyback.

I couldn’t pass this up on their about page: “SFF is conservative in family values, we honour and value the family unit as the basic building block of our society. We believe in a fair go for all, but not at the expense of others.” Ahh I see you hate me, others like me, and anyone else not in a nuclear family. Well done. Always a solid flag of “country party” and here it is again. And “Fair go for all, but not at the expense of others” is some delightful dogwhistling in that yes, that’s something we can all agree on, except I tend to feel that people who say such things feel that any sort of equality not equity program is “at the expense” of others.

Their electoral policies!

The headline policy is about firearms. Obviously. Ah yes, the policy goes into how all current firearms owners are such a DIVERSE group of people and extremely responsible. Good for you, I say, the fact that getting hold of a gun and storage requirements are hard has absolutely nothing to do with the fact you are telling me you are all extremely responsible.

They also say that restrictions on legal access to firearms does not reduce the number of illegal firearms in the community. Now I might be wrong about this, but I believe the number of illegal guns has two separate lines: handguns, which tend to be the guns that are pretty difficult to get your hands on legally and are your “criminal underworld” guns; and rifles, most of which are unregistered guns that didn’t get turned in during the 1997 amnesty and just pass from farm to farm. So yes, gun regulations can not do much about the first category except by further restricting ownership so less exist in the community, because they are acquired illegally via being stolen or by dodgy/illegal importation, and the unregistered second category could largely be mopped up in another amnesty, as long as the buyback had a higher price than the farm price of an unregistered rifle.

To my eyes, that looks like “we probably could use another national amnesty since it’s been 23 years to mop up some more not much used guns out of the community” but that the current regulations have actually done pretty well at keeping numbers of firearms in the community low.

That is of course not Shooter’s position. They would like less red tape and lower licensing so that “genuine applicants” with a reason to get guns aren’t frustrated in the attempt at buying them. (I… thought that was one of the POINTS of the bureaucratic hurdles of getting a gun; to dissuade people).

They also think “arbitrary limits” on the number of firearms one person can own should be abolished. Uhhh. No thanks, personally. Also they want you to be able to lend guns to someone with the same licence category. That also sounds like a rule that’s in place for a very good reason.

Delightfully they think seniors should get a firearms licence discount! Because it’s very important to cut the costs of owning firearms for old people, obviously. I am dubious about this.

Look this is all very “we hate these specific aspects of gun laws that make our lives difficult” and it’s hard for me to be sorry for them, as personally I think most of the specific issues are deliberately there to try and dissuade gun ownership. I will agree that moves to ensure that gun regulations are standard across the country would be good, but from what I hear WA has one of the looser regimes so they probably wouldn’t enjoy being pulled up to the other states’ standards.

Next we have fisheries policies, which as I know someone who worked for many years on federal fisheries and marine park policies always makes me giggle as I tend to read “and we hate This Person particularly” every time.

There’s a lot of guff about how fishing is an activity everyone can enjoy! Lots of WA people own boats! Why do you make it hard for us! Marine protections should be run by fisheries, not Those Awful Environment People! Sigh. (“We hate the Environment department! Water is for farms not frogs!”)

Basically they want more fisheries stuff both recreationally and commercially and they want those awful environmentalists who have concerns out of the way; prioritisation should be for “sound fisheries management”. No quarter for people who think basing the rules on “how many can we safely catch” is possibly not the best long term policy compared to “what is ecologically more sustainable in the long term”.

Taxation next! Gosh, the layered way they write these policies is a goddamn pain. Just tell me what you want to do, folks. The want to abolish payroll tax, land tax and stamp duty and replace it with a “fairer broad based tax regime”, as these taxes are anti-business. All the usual small business complaints insert here. I’ve still never seen how lowering business tax improves employment, but they do like claiming that every time.

“Land tax is progressive, making it a wealth tax!” Oh well thank goodness for that! Maybe there’s a reason we actually have SOME WEALTH TAXES IN THIS COUNTRY.

All of this reads rather to me like “lower taxes for the wealthy and asset rich”. Yeah nah thanks.

Agricultural policy: they want stronger biosecurity borders for WA, to keep more of the industry at home via not being able to import anything, what sounds like more access to direct roads for farm vehicles and animal transport vehicles, more export ports for animals, they’re supportive of more GM crops and technology in farming (oh look something I can get behind), what sounds like “stop cancelling agricultural leases on crown land”, some stuff that sounds awfully anti-Native Title dogwhistley, more money for farmers, and more laws against Those Dirty Animal Activists coming onto farms.

All of this sounds like it was written by farmers, I’m not hugely fussed by most of it aside from the stuff that sounds like it’s an attempt to get around Native Title and the stuff that is We Hate The Nasty Environmentalists.

There’s a policy about private property and not letting people onto it without the owner’s permission or a court order, and honestly I cannot figure out what their problem is. I think it might be “please stop environmentalists being able to prevent land clearing” but I really can’t be sure what has them hot under the collar.

Bushfire policy! Oh boy this one will be interesting what with the competing factors. More effective bushfire services, more support for volunteers and communities, they want prescribed burns and fuel reduction. I see a lot of “more reduction burning, more money for the RFS”. This is not a bad policy essentially, though personally I’d prefer to see more reference to indigenous knowledge about fire patterns and possibly looking into things like mosaic burns, but really “throw more money at it” is something bushfire prevention NEEDS.

Public Land Hunting! Oh yaaay. National parks must piss them off. “It’s soo expensive for governments to manage ‘pest animals’, let us do it for you. With guns.” Basically they want the right to go shoot declared pest animals and game animals on public land. Oh, at least they acknowledge that hunting on public land near major bushwalking routes might be a bad idea. YAH THINK?

Quick social media dive: their twitter link is inactive; facebook has a lot of pictures of people with their fishing catches and clay pigeon shooting. Um. Great, folks. Of course they also have a giant HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY why don’t you go fish and camp and shoot things! post if you were at all confused about their position on that issue.


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.