b_auspol

Warren Grzic (Ungrouped Independent)

Website: https://wordsofwarren.wixsite.com/warren4senate

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


(My review for the 2022 Federal Election)

Everyone loves a perennial candidate! I have reviewed Grzic before; he’s a serial candidate, having run as a federal ungrouped independent in 2016 and 2022, and for NSW state and federally in 2019 for Sustainable Australia (not top of the ticket). This gives some idea of what his views are on various issues.

Grzic is promoting himself as the ‘fresh voice’ for NSW in the spirit of Jacqui Lambie or David Pocock. Given his number of attempts running and lack of success (and indeed, his lack of a box above the line) I am unswayed that he’s going to achieve this aim.

He has a genuine policy platform on his website this year (this has not always been the case in previous occasions) and honestly, it’s a lot of the general centrish wishlist a lot of parties have been running on.

Grzic has a very Sustainable Australia view on housing: he thinks we already have enough supply, and that negative gearing is great, as ‘most landlords are not that wealthy’ and ‘negative gearing enables them to offer affordable rent’ (I am dubious about this claim). He instead wants a ban on foreign ownership, abolish the capital gains discount, and empty homes and lots renovated and built upon. Also rent caps, because he does admit that renting is expensive right now.

There is a cost of living policy, but it’s mostly raise the tax free threshold to $26k, have a national gas reservation policy and more solar panels to combat electricity prices, and invest more in general practitioners for preventative medicine.

Grzic does not want more more immigration and honestly this whole policy is straight from what Sustainable Australia talk about (did they not let you run this time, Grzic?)

Grxic’s great idea to help decrease pollution is more investment in public transport (which he says environmentalists hardly ever talk about. I don’t know which ones you’ve been talking to, Grzic, but I can introduce you to plenty of them!)

As I read through his policies, my main take away is that Grzic doesn’t really have any solidly thought out policies. He has issues, and he’s got some ideas for what might help fix those issues, but a lot of it is small scale and targeted at a single part of the situation. And that’s not necessarily bad, as he is just one guy. But it feels like maybe he really should go back and talk to his former party and help them out, as a lot of his policy ideas aren’t even on the scale that if he were elected and a party was trying to buy his vote in the Senate, he would have a tangible idea of what to bargain for.

Kerrie Christina Harris (Ungrouped Independent)

Website: https://www.theaveragewoman.org/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Kerrie-Harris-Independent-for-Federal-Senate-for-NSW/61572884173185/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kerrieharris01

The first of the ungrouped independents this election, Kerrie Harris is a generally centrist social progressive who is a high school teacher in Cooma. She focuses on how ordinary and ‘average’ her life experience is (indeed, her campaign website is called The Average Woman) and on the struggle folk are feeling right now.

Harris is clearly inspired by the Voices for movement and very compelled by the concept that having independent representation means that she’s only beholden to voters, not other interests.


This is a charmingly naive concept: while she is certainly not the only candidate on the ballot who is there for essentially a ‘testing the system’ reason (Crikey is running an ungrouped candidate in Victoria for reporting reasons), the scale of trying to run as an independent, for the Senate, in the largest state in Australia, from a regional country town does seem to have not been addressed here.

In terms of policies: honestly it’s a lot of socially progressive stuff with a regional bent.

Harris cares about housing prices, wanting rent caps, increased housing supply, more social housing and restricting negative gearing to one property.

Harris is focused on violence against women and children, and wants more action about the current number of deaths, including more educational reform in schools and long term strategies to change society (in this she sounds VERY much like the teacher she is).

She wants more regional and rural support: extra funding for rural students to attend university, better healthcare funding for rural hospitals, better internet for the country, and more access to public transport.

She wants environmental reform protecting ecosystems and animals, and a renewable energy transition.

And then there’s the general suspicion of politicians and parliament: fewer career politicians, a real time political donation register with lower caps, government contract transparency, and so on. She’s generally suspicious of anything either the ALP or the Coalition have done in government is focused on themselves first.

Look. Kerrie Harris sounds like a lovely person, and most of her policy ideas are those that clearly get talked about around the table at a cafe or the pub with friends. There’s an earnestness to her position, but I cannot help but think that there are multiple parties and organisations out there with practically identical platforms that she could coordinate with, and achieve more than standing as an ungrouped candidate.

Socialist Alliance

Website: https://socialist-alliance.org/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/socialistallnce

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

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

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

Socialist Alliance are one of a constellation of socialist parties in Australia; of the group they are the main one to maintain electoral registration (outside of the Victorian Socialists federation in Victoria) and among the group are pretty positive about working for change via democratic systems including voting. This is not the case for all other parties.

Party Analysis

Like all good socialists, the Socialist Alliance policy platform is deeply longwinded, full of issues they are enraged and passionate about, and occasionally inaccessible to your average voter. They have at least set up a set of hotlinks and headings, but it still runs to 15 pages in length. For that reason, I’m going to summarise quite a lot.

Their first listed policy is First Nations issues, which they’re centring for fairly good reasons. It’s about what you’d expect: increase funding, implement Royal Commission recommendations, more funding and self determination for education, child welfare and communities, negotiate treaties.

In terms of ‘democracy’ policies they want to ban private consultants for government departments and agencies, prevent ministers and public servants moving to lobbying or corporate boards after retiring, fixed electoral campaign funding for all parties, a voting age of 16, recall elections, lower politician wages and have proportional representation at all levels.

Socialist Alliance are for stronger anti-discrimination laws, and against anti-protest laws. They want better support for voluntary assisted dying and want to decriminalise assisting VAD.

There is the usual round of solidarity with various oppressed groups, starting with Palestine, Tibet, Uyghurs and Kurds. Socialist Alliance want Australia out of ANZUS and AUKUS and US military bases out of Australia.

Socialist Alliance want an audit of all trade agreements to check if they’re giving corporations too much power or oppressing human rights. They’re general union supporters and strike supporters and want better work condition and bargaining, along with the removal of the youth wage, an increase in minimum wage to $35 an hour, a 30 hour week, and a retirement age set to 55. Instead of the increased manufacturing sector some other parties are talking about, Soc All want a pivot for jobs in “renewable technologies, vaccines, public transport and other socially useful projects”. They want to transition fossil fuel jobs into sustainable industry jobs.

More public ownership! Nationalise assets! Buy back CSL! Fund ABC and SBS better!

There’s a whole suite of climate policies, including nationalising the power industry and transforming it to 100% renewables in 5-10 years. Logging bans. No nuclear. They also want a national heat health strategy, to deal with how to cope with more warmer days each year and keeping people cool and safe. More water conversation, more riverine health flows, end logging in water catchments, etc.

Socialist Alliance are against live animal exports and they’re against horse and greyhound racing. They’re also against all trophy hunting, “including Australian native water birds”, which is a direct call out of the Victorian Labor government and Victorian branches of several unions, including the CFMEU, opposing the end of duck shooting.

Their housing policy is build more public housing, a government purchase system for unused homes,  removal of the capital gains tax discount and negative gearing, better renters rights, more emergency accommodation and better support for people in the system and who are homeless. They also want a 10 year cap on private rents and public housing capped at 20% of income.

More healthcare! Pensions for all! Scrap work for the dole and mutual obligations! Dental in Medicare! Free, 24 hour childcare centres funded by a business levy! Recreational drug decriminalisation and legalisation of cannabis. Better aged care staffing levels and legal minimums. More money for the NDIS.

Socialist Alliance are fully supportive of queer people and want stronger protections against discrimination, full adoption rights, and a lot of support for trans and intersex people including easy change of documents, Medicare funded gender transition services, and paid leave to access this on top of sick/personal leave.

The suite of refugee and asylum seeker policies is basically ‘dismantle everything since John Howard started offshore processing’, and give refugees essentially the community status of permanent residents immediately.

Free public education including university and TAFE, wipe HECS debts, more money for public education, and no public funding to private education.

Socialist Alliance want public transportation to be “comprehensive, frequent and free”. As someone who’s seen a lot of public transport debate; you can generally have two of the three; achieving all three is difficult, and free is the one I’d prefer to drop of the set.

They want to eliminate the GST: to counteract this they also want the tax free threshold at $56k and a 70% tax on income over $300k and corporations to pay more tax. I’m not convinced this would raise as much money as they hope, especially as they want to index tax brackets to remove bracket creep. ‘Bracket creep’ (aka as your pay rises you pay more tax) is actually a nice little method of increasing the size of the tax base every year, and is part of how governments are able to announce and legislate tax cuts: removing this actually stops the tax pool from increasing in an easy way that doesn’t require telling people we need to raise taxes.

All in all, they support exactly about what you expect a socialist party would support, without publicly wading too deep into the weeds that turn off people who are not caught up in the debates of the socialist community.

Is this party trying to kill me?

Absolutely not. Socialist Alliance has solidarity against whoever is trying to kill you.

Is this party trying to harm me?

Absolutely not. Socialist Alliance has solidarity against whoever is trying to harm you.

Conclusion:

If you want a party to the left of the Greens that still can articulate their position in a thought out manner, Socialist Alliance is here for you. I don’t agree with all of their policies, and find some of them naïve or impossible to implement dreams, but they are good old fashioned socialists (without being the sort of old fashioned socialists who talk like the USSR still exists).

Libertarian Party

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LibertariansAus

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

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

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

Formerly the Liberal Democratic Party, the party had to change its name due to the 2021 electoral legislation banning parties from using the same words in their names unless they have permission from the older party using it (in this case the Liberal Party of Australia). The party managed to dodge needing to make the name change for 2022 via some procedural chicanery over their registration, but three years down the track and the party has now had to rebrand to the more accurate party name of Libertarian Party.

Party Analysis

The Libertarians are a firmly right wing libertarian party, despite occasional gestures at the idea that you can have left wing libertarians. This year, their policies are presented in a 52 page pdf of a powerpoint, which has to be one of my least favourite ways to access a policy platform (individual pdfs for each policy linked from the website is worse). In the interests of my own sanity, I have only lightly skimmed this to check it’s got approximately the same content as the three website policy pages. This is not a party where I really care about the fine granular details of the intraparty debate over the gold standard.

The general financial policies for the party this year follow the traditional Libertarian cry of ‘the free market will fix everything!’ Quite how the free market is supposed to fix everything when the current American president is manipulating the international markets on a weekly basis over his tariff policies remains unaddressed by the free market true believers here. But in terms of more details, they want a flat tax of 20% for incomes over $50,000, and after so completely diminishing the national tax base, they’ll find savings by ‘scaling back regulatory agencies’ (so the people who check food and water quality? Track diseases? Make sure your boss isn’t underpaying you? Who needs them?), cutting the ATO staff by 50% (because taxes are bad, remember), and privatising everything possible, including those commies at the ABC and SBS.

While they’re privatising everything they’re going to also sell off national assets to reduce the government debt, even though one of the things about being a government is that you have control of your money supply, while assets are a finite resource. Personally it’s not a trade off I’d make, but then I don’t also think the Reserve Bank’s only focus should be ‘maintaining a stable money supply’. Also they want us back using the gold standard and Bitcoin, to ‘foster financial competition and stability’, because when I think of stable currencies, Bitcoin’s wild market fluctuations and crashes is exactly what I’m imagining.

In terms of energy policy, wind and solar are ‘destructive’ and ‘harm natural environments’, but nuclear, coal and gas mining are not worth mentioning the environmental impact of. Also they want nuclear power, even though even optimistic estimates are that a plant couldn’t be online in under 20 years. Also while we’re at it, abolish all renewable targets and net zero policies. Honestly, this is farcical ideologically driven policy for a party claiming that they want the free market to determine things, because renewable energy sources make up the cheapest fuels on the market and such greeny organisations as AGL and Eraring Energy are talking about how they can offload existing coal fired plant assets and instead pivot to cheaper to produce power like solar farms.

The Libertarians are convinced the government education department is useless and ‘stifling competition’. They don’t want public schools but instead want school vouchers, to further eliminate equal access to education for all children close to home. They also don’t trust those damn school teachers, as they want more home schooling and ‘micro-schools’. This is all in the name of catering to children’s needs, of course, and not any ideological desires of parents to restrict children’s experiences of the world.

Also there’s the standard transphobia we are seeing pop up in far too many countries around the world. The Libertarians want legal definitions of women, bathroom bans, trans athletes banned from women’s sports (which I am absolutely certain they watch religiously to have opinions on this), want restrictions over access to healthcare, and what looks like a coded request for bans on conversion therapy to be lifted. Generally a lot of panicking for no real reason.

Despite being all for the free market, this does not include people coming to Australia. The Libertarians want all new arrivals to Australia to pay fees to immediately buy into “public services and infrastructure” (yet they don’t want to pay adequate taxes themselves for these things), they want short term visas limited to 5 years only, but citizenship only accessible after living in Australia for 10 year, and they want to restrict access to government services like Centrelink to citizens only, even though permanent residents already pay taxes contributing to these. Also they hate international treaty obligations.

They want free speech (as defined by people not being able to tell them that their speech is dangerous and not allowed), they want to abolish Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (aka the section that says you can’t say or do racist and anti-ethnic things that would offend or insult people), and they don’t want legislation that could convict people for spreading misinformation or disinformation, and they want to sell off the public broadcasters who have a remit to allow the broader population to air their views. Free speech to be a racist and lie to people and not get called on it! What a desire.

They have a privacy policy, but that largely is “yay Bitcoin”, “let me say whatever I want on social media with no consequences” (so is defamation legislation also on your hitlist orrr??), get rid of the e-Safety Commissioner (aka the organisation that helps people deal with among other things invasions of their privacy like cyber bullying and abuse), and they’re mad about Digital IDs existing at all. Also they don’t like mass surveillance laws in Australia, but given their other policies I can’t help but feel part of the motivation is “stop spying on my potential domestic terrorism” and convictions that the government is just itching to hunt them down for Bad Thought.

Finally, their foreign affairs policy is to be isolationist noncombatants who do not provide any military aid or participate in sanctions against other governments, withdraw from all international treaties and organisations possible including the the WHO, OECD, ICC, G20 and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (so we no longer have obligations to take in and support refugees), and focus on trade agreements. They are also very convinced we are being coerced by foreign powers. How dare we have mutual obligations with anywhere else in the world.

In terms of candidates, this isn’t really a party where the quality of candidate can vary between jurisdictions, but given who’s running for the Senate in NSW I will call them both out. Top of the combined ticket with HEART and Gerard Rennick People First is Craig Kelly, former MP, formerly of PHON, formerly of the UAP, formerly of the Liberal Party, all around right wing conspiracy theorist, Donald Trump cheerleader and COVID crackpot. You already know him. The other Libertarian running is Steve Christou, the socially conservative Cumberland Councillor who exited Labor Right in the direction of the far-right. If you’re not as up on local Western Sydney Council politics as I am, his multitude of party affiliations will not make much sense, but he’s also flirted with One Nation and some of his highlights on council include: opposing not only drag storytime but queer childrens books, queer parenting books and books about diverse families in the local council library; getting mad about Racism Not Welcome signs as being ‘divisive’ for the community and in particular should not be near a park dedicated to Anzacs because that would somehow harm the memories of Gallipoli by calling out racism; trying to scrap Welcomes to Country and Acknowledgements of Country; and generally being antagonistic and terrible toward his fellow councillors. Every time he does something that hits a newspaper larger than the Parra News I have to sigh, because he’s an absolutely terrible advertisement for the area.

Is this party trying to kill me?

Not openly in the party platform outside of a desire not to know about international medical situations by withdrawing from the WHO. They haven’t got a single open gun policy, for once.

Is this party trying to harm me?

The Libertarians are all in on transphobia and clearly do not have any care about the fallout or impact such policies have on the community. They also want to significantly downgrade the government services provided to people living in this country, and they want to be able to be racist in public without getting called out and sued for it.

Conclusion:

If you want a second perspective on what the Libertarian party’s policies look like in practice, look no further than a whole lot of the stuff going down in the US right now. Unhelpfully for the Libertarians, a live demonstration of the effect of their policies seems to be sending voters running for the Labor Party in the polls, which to me suggests there is not a groundswell in the community for such policy platforms.

Jacqui Lambie Network

Website: https://www.lambienetwork.com.au/

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

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

Jacqui Lambie emerged as a political force after being originally elected by PUP back in 2013. A populist social conservative who has a strong focus on services for military veterans and on Islamophobia, she’s a politician who I frequently disagree with but fully respect her presence in politics. Lambie genuinely represents a cohort of Australians who are otherwise overlooked by the major parties. Lambie’s learning curve as a politician was steep, but she’s at the point where she’s an achievable vote to buy to pass things in the Senate

Her party has mostly existed as a re-election vehicle for herself. Of the 5 politicians who’ve been elected under the party name: Tammy Tyrrell, in the Senate, has quit over conflict with Lambie; and two of the three Tasmanian state MPs were kicked out of the party by Lambie in 2024 after conflict over feeling dictated to by Lambie

So just like One Nation, JLN is a party where scrutinising the candidates put forward is important, as the weight of evidence is that you’ll be dealing with them as independents by the end of their term rather than actual party members.

Party Analysis

JLN’s lead policies are on power prices; they want a national gas reservation, and they also want solar power and batteries installed on all social housing. Clearly they’re not fussed at wading into the renewables v fossil fuels debate: they just want cheaper power. I do note that Anne Twomey has weighed in on the constitutionality of some of these gas reserve policies (that to be constitutional it would have to apply across the country, not just to the East Coast market), but honestly the JLN policy doesn’t have enough details to determine if it meets that.

JLN want better corporate anti-competition laws, to “reduce cost of living pressures”. This is a broader policy than some other parties who are calling for this just to apply to Woolies and Coles. They want to raise funds by cracking down on multinational tax avoidance, and for ‘fair’ resource royalties on the sale of minerals and fossil fuels to funnel more money back into the Australian economy from those sales. There’s also a ‘transparent and accountable government’ policy, though it’s not clear on whether in the Rex Patrick sense (who is running in SA) of increased FOI transparency and better whistleblower protections, or in a more straightforward suspicion that politicians are all just hiding things from the electorate.

JLN are campaigning for more value-add processing done in Australia. They’re calling for more manufacturing done prior to export: so we sell steel rather than iron ore, and batteries rather than raw lithium. Interestingly they’ve also applied this to more than just mining: there’s a call to “export products, not research”, so they want to keep more production here.

There is however the usual migrant suspicion you expect to see from JLN. It’s toned down a lot over the years, but JLN’s housing policy is to ‘freeze foreign investment in residential properties’. I’m not convinced that will achieve anything substantial in terms of increasing the number of properties in the housing market, especially compared to increasing density and building more housing.

And JLN have welfare support policies around young people and veterans. In terms of youth, JLN are focused on those without much opportunity: they want to “grow their self-worth, teach lost values and prevent a cycle of crime” (so no teen gangs!). For veterans, JLN are focused on mental health and suicide in the community, including implementing the recommendations from the Royal Commission, and in ensuring pensions are properly paid.

In the spirit of my comments above, I did do a bit of digging on Glenn Kolomeitz, the lead candidate for NSW. He’s an ex-Labor candidate with a star studded career as a military lawyer. He’s obviously been recruited for his strong focus on veteran welfare and mental health, but he’s also worked in Ukraine documenting war crimes, wrote his doctoral thesis on command responsibility for war crimes with an emphasis on Australia’s command and control structures in Afghanistan, and has been very strident over Australia’s ethical obligations to Afghan interpreters. He’s definitely conservative and he spends a fair bit of time getting interviewed on Sky News, but I think he’d be a genuine asset in any parliament, rather than a clown candidate like some others I could mention (Babet, for instance).

Is this party trying to kill me?

No. The modern Jacqui Lambie Network is pretty focused on mental health treatment and prevention, actually; though particularly in terms of military veterans and police veterans rather than everyday punters.

Is this party trying to harm me?

Look, I would still never expect to see JLN promoting multiculturalism or coming out strongly for a bunch of progressive social issues, but they’re certainly not actively campaigning against them anymore.

Conclusion:

Jacqui Lambie Network as a party is still primarily a re-election vehicle for Jacqui Lambie herself, but I have to say her candidate selection process this election looks a lot more stable than seen in many similar parties. They're a centre right party with a focus primarily on the community demographic that Lambie herself comes from. I think they contribute in a valuable way to having a diverse set of views in parliament that represent the community, and I’d rather see them win seats than quite a few other minor parties of the right.

Health Environment Accountability Rights Transparency (HEART)

Website: https://heartparty.com.au/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HEARTParty_AU

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heartparty.aus

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heartparty.aus/

(My review for the 2021 WA Election)

HEART is the resurrected Informed Medical Options Party aka the Involuntary Medical Objectors Party. A perennial antivax party in Australia (though they’ll protest they’re not really antivaxxers! They’re just asking questions!) they were in fact deregistered prior to the 2025 election, only through multiple appeals finally managed to pass the 1,500 member test and be restored as a registered party. In the process of all of this they’ve again changed their name to obscure their background.

They are of course home to every vaccine and COVID conspiracy theory you can name.

Party Analysis

HEART are not only antivaxxers, they’re proponents of alternative medicine and a lot of holistic woo. They talk about health being about having a ‘strong immune system’ from diet and organic food and small scale agriculture, and they’re anti GMOs. They’re scared of ‘toxins’ and think fluoridation is bad and should be removed from the water supply. They’re fluffy hippies that don’t believe in scientifically based medical care. Also they want the freedom for medical professions to prescribe unregulated substances to their patients, without their organising bodies asking things like “does this treatment work?” or “is this in the best interest of the patient?” or “why are you giving this patient a medical treatment that is proven to be ineffective or actively harmful?”, and for alternative and complementary therapies to be covered by the public health system (despite largely been unproven to be effective).

Similarly, HEART are into organic and biodynamic farming, and deeply suspicious of commercial farming. They want “clean, economical, efficient and environmentally sound” energy production in Australia…but then go on to say they are suspicious of the potential environmental effects of renewable energy sources. They’re also at least mildly suspicious of climate change: there’s a call for listening to “all academic perspectives” when evaluating climate change (which they put in quotes). Which reads to me as they’re also cranks or at least have some significantly minority views in this area.

They want a Royal Commission into COVID, because they’re convinced that the Australian government destroyed people’s freedoms via lockdowns and vaccine mandates. They’re still extremely extremely mad about lockdowns and vaccine passports for travel during COVID. They want a Royal Commission into vaccine injuries (because they’re convinced there’s an epidemic of them). They also want us out of the WHO and UN.

HEART are scared for some reason that Australia will implement the social credit system used in China, which seems deeply unlikely to me. They also want a Bill of Rights with a mix of common rights (freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of religion, freedom of movement, right to privacy) but also a whole bunch of conspiracy driven nonsense like “the right to use cash for any transaction” and “the right to medical freedom” (this is code for alternative medicine).

HEART want the right for parents to opt their children out of receiving lifesaving medical treatment like vaccinations and cancer treatment, and for the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia to no longer be able to override their wishes to get children treatment, and to find for the parent who actually wants to get their kid medical treatment in debates over medical decisions in divorced and separated families. They are so very very mad that other people who have legitimate and court-appointed care of children are allowed to get those children vaccinated.

HEART are also anti-abortion, but phrasing it in the “nobody should be forced to terminate a pregnancy! Give them lots and lots and lots and lots of information until they choose not to!” way.

Also, the party is convinced that 5G is harmful on people, the environment and animals and they want studies to prove it!

Is this party trying to kill me?

This is the prime party of antivaxxers. They really really hate vaccination, and they also don’t want their kids who have cancer being able to access radiotherapy or chemotherapy. So yes, they’re trying to kill people.

Is this party trying to harm me?

Absolutely. Anti-vaccination campaigns lower herd immunity which increases the prevalence of transmissible diseases in the community, leading to people getting more sick more often.

Conclusion:

HEART are a party who are very interested in just asking questions, and who want a lot of funding to study the dangers of things that have already been extensively proven to be safe and effective. They’re the dangerous face of the sort of hippie, back-to-the-land, nature helps and heals us community that is deeply suspicious of government interference and of things that they don’t define as ‘natural’.

FUSION | Planet Rescue | Whistleblower Protection | Innovation

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/FusionPartyAus

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/fusionparty.org.au

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

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

(My review for the 2022 Federal Election)

Fusion are a party that formed out of the mergers of multiple generally left parties that did not have enough members to meet the 1,500 member threshold: Science Party, Pirate Party, Secular Party, Vote Planet (which itself was made up of Save the Planet and One Planet), Climate Change Justice Party, and Australian Progressives. They have, for reasons I cannot understand, also recently added Democracy First, a right wing party created by notorious party hopper and cooker Vern Hughes.

As such, their suite of policies can be somewhat eclectic in their focus, given the component parties, and it can be helpful to investigate which prior party a candidate was affiliated with.

Party Analysis

Given the component parties, it’s not a huge surprise that the party has a strong focus on climate change policies,  and a big proponent of secularism.

Fusion want the government to declare a climate emergency. They not only want a transition to zero emissions immediately, including a zero emissions grid, they want policies to reverse and cool the planet. There’s a definite trend towards interest in trendy and scientifically complicated solutions, including carbon sequestration, green hydrogen, closed loop recycling (so that manufacturers have to include end of life recycling in their budgeting), using microbial protein sources for food and lab meat, and so on. They are of course for high speed rail down the East Coast and more support for electric vehicles including charging stations and financing to purchase.

In terms of other environmental policies, Fusion want to end native logging and land clearing, closing and rehabilitating the land for fossil fuel extraction, and more management of waterways and a review of water licences. They want to end all fossil fuel extraction in the next two years, which sounds hideously ambitious, especially given our power grid will not be ready in that time frame.

The party is home to a bunch of futurist tech nerds, so there’s a whole bunch of policies around funding research into science and technology that does not yet exist. Some of that sounds like a great direction to put more research money - medical and pharmaceutical research - but even this sounds bit fantasy driven as Fusion want to classify aging as a disease and their policies around this are tripping over themselves to say it’s not about life extension, but quality of life (but hey we might push that back too wink wink). Others are less rooted in reality: they want more research into fusion energy as a power source; and work developing a space industry for Australia.

In better medical policies, they also want mental health and dental treatment covered by Medicare, and increased bulk billing.

Fusion want more funding for education: better public school funding; incentives for teaching in disadvantaged, rural and remote schools; more research funding and research time for university academic staff; and open access requirements for publicly funded research. The policy very much sounds written by a university academic.

Transparency policies in terms of government include better FOIA laws, and realtime reporting of political donations. Fusion want better whistleblower protections and the removal of public servant gag laws. They also haven’t properly updated their NACC policy, as they’re still asking for one (rather than asking for reforms over its remit). They’re interested in universal basic income.

In terms of their housing policy, to my eye Fusion’s policy is extremely complicated. Basically, they want to completely shake up the current system with all sorts of random tweaks over land tax rates and capital gains tax and negative gearing and incentives. They want greater mobility for households to upsize and downsize. They want stronger rental protections for renters, and they also want the government to run a whole lot of transparency websites over the entire real estate industry, including as far as I can tell managing real estate listings, landlord reviews, housing stock quality, and a whole lot of other invasive issues. I am unconvinced that the government should be involved in this beyond setting minimum standards to be enforced. It’s all very futuristic in places and very unlikely (their article refers approvingly to Saudi Arabia’s NEOM developments including the Line).

Fusion want a constitutional bill of rights, and American style freedom of speech laws. They’re more focused on blasphemy than defamation, however. They want to abolish school chaplaincy programs, separation of church and state, and the withdrawal of charity status from “the promotion of religion” (though they don’t define which side of the line they see religious charities as falling on).

Is this party trying to kill me?

No, I don’t see Fusion as trying to kill me or anyone I care about.

Is this party trying to harm me?

No. There’s very little in their policy platform that I see as actively harmful to people.

Conclusion:

Fusion as a party are more a collection of left wing hobbyhorses than an actual coherent platform. There’s nothing that particularly jumps out at me as a red flag for disqualifiable policies for someone who holds general centre left views: it’s more a case that there’s very little in this platform that is selling me on why them rather than another leftwing party. Their website and platforms also give off the distinct impression of people who want to over-explain their brilliant ideas to you and who fall into the smug tech bro wheelhouse.

Also honestly all the graphics on their website give off the definite slightly-skew vibes of being AI generated art, to an extent that is noticeably more obvious than any other party website I've looked at in my reviews, if that’s a dealbreaker for you.

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.

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.