Australian Citizens Party

[b_auspol]

Australian Citizens Party

Website: https://citizensparty.org.au/election2022

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CitizensPartyAU

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

It’s time for my favourite* weird microparty.

The Australian Citizens Party is the new name for our old friends, the Citizens Electoral Council, aka the LaRouche conspiracy theorists. The party was originally registered in 1997 and have been amusing anyone brave enough to read their campaign material ever since.

They technically won a by-election in Queensland way back in 1988 but their candidate abandoned them for the Nationals almost immediately afterwards. They have never since won any serious amount of votes.

The Citizens Party have a certain rhythm to their crazy. Tragically they appear to have removed my favourite link of theirs from the old website: Has your neighbour been brainwashed about Lyndon LaRouche? I have a strong opinion that any time you have to make a special page or point of explaining why you aren’t a conspiracy theorist, it conveys that in fact you are near as no mind that.


Party Analysis

The Citizens Party are very into banks. If you were to ask me what their policies are in between elections, I would gleefully shriek “Glass-Steagall! Stop the bail-in! Bradfield Scheme! The Queen is a lizard!” I cannot explain to you what most of this means, but I certainly have read a lot of their opinions on the matter over the years. Apparently global banking is going to destabilise and collapse any day now and the government will steal all our money. Also the Bradfield Scheme is an impractical dream to drastically redirect water in QLD that would likely cause more climate issues than it solves. And the lizard thing is of course David Icke antisemitism.

Their actual listed policies however for this election are: a national bank, no bail-in for banks, Glass-Steagall banking separation… ahh, Citizens Party, you haven’t abandoned your roots.

In terms of banks, they would like a new national bank. Actually, a couple of national banks. One for our money, using post offices as branches, another to pay for investment in giant Australian infrastructure projects, and a third to “expand manufacturing and agricultural industries”. They also repeat their conspiracy that even though the Australian government guarantees savings deposits to a figure of $250k per individual per bank against a bank failure, the government could really truly call in all the money in the banks in a dire financial emergency. Also they want a Glass-Steagall Act, which I have never fully understood but is supposedly to protect us all from banks speculating with our money.

The giant infrastructure projects they are interested in include: the Bradfield Scheme (tunnel in QLD to redirect water to the Red Centre, proposed in 1938); Project Iron Boomerang (a giant iron ore to steel plants railway across northern Australia, proposed in 2006); and high speed rail between all national capitals (proposed every single election since time immemorial). All three of these projects are pie-in-the-sky ideas that get mooted then ignored by governments who look at the costs involved vs likelihood of any financial return and push them off until the next time someone wanders in their door raving. They are extraordinarily unlikely to ever happen.

In bank policies I am not so inclined to ridicule them over, the Citizens Party want “full compensation for financial victims” including cases from the Banking Royal Commission, with the government paying the compensation now and recouping it themselves from the banks. I’m not opposed to the government helping out and smoothing the way, but in the circumstance that some of this money is probable unrecoverable, I think managing the payment scheme from the banks rather than just anteing up the money themselves is probably a more budget-wise option.

They also want to prevent any house or farm foreclosures in case of the property bubble popping, so people don’t lose their homes. I’m not completely opposed, but also I would be extremely wary over any policy for this that went beyond one property per household, and I don’t think the government should have to pay for mortgages taken out well beyond serviceability. There is some proportion of loans that if the government stepped in to protect them, would essentially be throwing tax money down a black hole propping up the banks.

A 0.1% tax on all shares, bonds and currency exchange transactions! Try to stop financial speculation via taxation! Look, I don’t even know how this would work out, and if it’s viable.

In policies not relating to banks (their core turf), the Citizens Party would like to “End Australia’s shameful reputation as a paradise for white collar criminals by overhauling the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) into an aggressive law-enforcement agency feared by the banks.” Oh wait. It’s still about banks. They essentially want ASIC to be more top down heavy and interventionist against companies. I can’t stop giggling at the description of ASIC as becoming a “feared law-enforcement agency”.

Expanded healthcare! The Citizens Party want more medical treatment providers and hospital beds. I have no objections to us spending more money on healthcare, it’s just that for a federal government election, a lot of that is delivered by the States themselves. But of course, chucking more money at states to spend on healthcare is sensible. We HAVE seen the vulnerabilities in the healthcare system over the past two years come into stark relief, and you honestly can never over-invest in healthcare.

We should also not go to war with China, and stop following the UK and US’s foreign policy decisions. Highlights of this policy include: “reform the war powers to replace the prime minister’s power to unilaterally declare war with a vote by Parliament” – I’m not opposed, I just know the war power is something constitutional and held by the cabinet, so shifting it over to the government as a whole may take some doing; free Julian Assange – anyone with a spelt out Julian Assange policy is a party that I side-eye as it’s a classic case of ‘please please pick a better case to advocate over’; and that instead of being aggressive towards China we should instead join in the Belt and Road Initiative, aka China’s soft power buying initiative, to raise global living standards. I don’t think there is a reasonable way we can just sign up to help fund Belt and Road, and I don’t think that’s a wise call in any case.

Justice for refugees! Finally a policy I can unequivocally agree with. This is pretty standard stuff: stop indefinite detention, release refugees into the community, allow the NZ resettlement offer to go ahead, and then specific media callouts for refugees released from Park Hotel (happened this past week in the election prelude) and Murugappan family back to Bileola.

Finally, the Citizens Party want us to legalise nuclear power and build power plants.

Is this party trying to kill me?

No. They aren’t advertising any gun-related policies or anything that seems likely to kill me.

Is this party trying to harm me?

They’re a pack of bank-obsessed conspiracy weirdos but the Australian Citizens Party don’t seem to specifically have any policies that will hurt me.


Conclusion:

Look, the Australian Citizens Party are bad news. They do want better healthcare and treatment of refugees, but otherwise largely indulge in a desire for central, government-run banking while also being paranoid the banking system is about to collapse and all their money will be stolen.

Their policies are tightly focused and do not contain opinions on a lot of current issues, but this isn’t hugely worrying, as they are a microparty who are unlikely to gain votes outside of their cult members supporters.

Do not vote for them, but do enjoy their commitment to ridiculous giant dream projects for which they haven’t thought through the consequences.