b_auspol

FUSION: Science, Pirate, Secular, Climate Emergency

Website: https://www.fusionparty.org.au/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FusionPartyAus
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FusionPartyAus/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fusionpartyaus/

Fusion are certainly the most complicated party to come out of the 2021 election reforms. Formed in early 2022, they are not a resurrection of Alfred Deakin’s Fusion Party (a combination of the Protectionists and Anti-Socialists in 1909), but are in fact the combination of the former Science Party, Pirate Party, Secular Party, Vote Planet, and Climate Change Justice Party.

You could actually describe the old Fusion and new Fusion as completely opposed in their focus. Alfred Deakin would be so mad.

This conglomeration of left microparties stretch as far back as 2006 (for Secular), but broadly are either from the 2013 election (Science and Pirate) or the last parliament (the various Climate parties).

In a delightful turn of events, their colours are described as “Bluebell, Aquamarine, Vivid Mulberry”, which are very pretty, if not a coherent identifying colour theme to look at in a massed bloc.

Party Analysis

Ok so given they are the merging of at least six separate microparties, what do they actually stand for? Essentially, the platform is a combination of all their pet hobbyhorses: Climate Action, Digital Rights and the Right to Privacy, Secular Humanism, and a bunch of general left social justice issues.

The climate policy is named “Climate Emergency”. Fusion want the government to declare a climate emergency, for net zero by 2032 (10 year transition), followed by negative emissions (so we are capturing carbon), increase regenerative agriculture. There’s also a lovely policy to aim for 800% of needed renewable energy, so we can export renewable energy overseas. There’s also an ecological restoration policy that wants to end all native logging, no new fossil fuel projects, regenerative agriculture, and managing waterways to decrease water licences and increase flows. There’s also an interesting policy to use Indigenous Rangers and local Indigenous knowledge more systematically for ecological restoration projects.

Their “Future Focus” policies are a mix bag of dream concepts. Essentially, they would like planning beyond the next electoral term, with a minister to consider long term consequences of decisions, an East Coast High Speed Rail line between the 4 capitals, medical research, more funding for research and development. “Develop manufacturing districts for industries of the future such as space, renewable energy, and quantum and biological computing” is a policy in ‘let’s become the next experts in SOMETHING’, while “Join the international research effort into developing fusion energy” is just making me laugh. Oh yeah, fusion energy time for us all! That’s a reliable investment opportunity.

Education policies include all Gonski reforms for primary and secondary schools, along with incentives for teachers at disadvantaged schools. They also want better funding for universities, less linked to grant applications, and for publicly funded research to be open access. (This policy was written by your local academic, clearly). Finally they are not on team free university – just “continue to fund HECS-HELP”.

The Ethical Governance policy contains the Federal ICAC policy, real time disclosures of donations over $1,000, better FOI requests, fewer restrictions on speech for public servants, more protections for whistleblowers. All of this is pretty much the boilerplate proposals that have been made generally.

Fair and Inclusive Society has the housing policy. Fusion focus on removing capital gains discounts, replacing stamp duty with land tax, and increasing zoning density policy. I’m excited to see the zoning, except for the fact that isn’t zoning density isn’t a federal issue, it’s a local government issue. (Campaign for the level of government you are running for, people!) Switching from stamp duty to land tax is popular with the left, and unpopular with people whose property has gone up massively in value. There’s also the Medicare policy (add mental and dental, increase bulk bill rates and telehealth) as well as a less idenitikit policy in “treat alcoholism and drug dependencies as health issues”.

Fusion are also advocating for an UBI of $500 per week, ok, and then to fund this they are… replacing tax brackets with a flat tax rate? What? A FLAT TAX RATE? In the middle of all this progressive policy? Stage 3 tax cuts aren’t enough, we will just abandon any sign of a progessive tax system? Whatever your feelings about UBI vs a better Centrelink rate, the flat tax policy is completely out of step with assisting people’s finances and off in libertarian dream land.

They also have some law and prison policies, which are “focus on outcomes and restorative justice, not punishment” (yes, I advocate for this myself, but the general public hate to hear about restorative justice when it actually occurs), more rehabilitation to reduce recidivism, and “reduce actual and perceived discrimination”. I’m not sure why the anti-discrimination law policy is with the “stop locking people up for long periods” policy, but hey, they’re both aspects of law. There’s also a “Remove censorship, blasphemy, and other laws against speech” policy which is always going to rub up against the anti-discrimination law. You can’t have perfect no discrimination AND no laws against speech. One or other of them will have to give way, they cover the same ground. (Welcome to the Section 18C debate).

Fusion want Voluntary Assisted Dying (aka at this point let the NT and ACT have self determination for this policy, as all the states have passed it or are finalising passing it). They would also like a Constitutional Bill of Rights, with rights to freedom of speech, association and religion, the right to privacy, the right to a trial by jury, the right against indefinite detention, and unjust seizure of property.

The Pirate Policy Section! (Ok they call it Civil and Digital Liberties). This is where there is a copyright, IP and public domain policy that refuses to commit to the reforms they want for copyright – it’s clear they want it shorter but won’t put a figure on it, just say ‘review trade agreements’. They also have a digital rights policy that says “Enshrine network neutrality and freedom of expression in law”, and suggests they want a right to privacy/to be forgotten, but do not spell it out, only hint at it. Commit harder here in your policies. I shouldn’t be reading them through the tea leaves of knowing what Pirate policies generally are.

The Secular Humanism policy section just “separation of church and state”, “remove religious ceremonies from government and public institutions”, “get rid of school chaplains”, “teach ethics instead and fund counsellers”. Is there anything new here? No. They also want to remove blasphemy laws, which are currently already abolished federally. Go bother NSW, SA, VIC, ACT, NT and Norfolk Island to finish taking the laws they already don’t use off the books.

Finally we have foreign policy, which includes “Support political asylum for refugees, particularly for whistleblowers and those exiled for defending democratic freedoms” (I KNEW there had to be an Assange policy in here somewhere, though I note they’ve finally stopped calling him out by name specifically), a call to use foreign aid more often in diplomacy to support human rights, to “renew faith in democracy, institutions, and the media” (ok we’ll just do that), and to develop “strategic alternative supply chains for critical elements of the economy” including semiconductors, IT infrastructure, medicines, food, and steel and plastics processing, machining and fabrication. This all sounds very much like “create a local alternative to having to buy things from China in case we are at war” to me.

Policies that are missing here: the most glaring gap is I see nothing about Indigenous policies or Uluru Statement from the Heart. What is a centre left party without a policy on this at present? There also isn’t really a drug policy here, which I’d expect to see.

Is this party trying to kill me?

No, Fusion are too busy trying to reconcile 6 parties worth of policy to come out with anything aimed at killing me.

Is this party trying to harm me?

I have to say, the UBI policy is a badly thought out policy that could cause harm, but that’s because they’ve clearly put no thought into how the tax side of it would work. Otherwise they’re not advocating for anything that would cause harm (aside from eye rolling on some issues).

Conclusion:

Look, Fusion presents as a weird mish-mash of leftish policy because it’s a franken party of 6 micro leftish parties, each with their own pet issue. My major concerns here is the multiple times they were advocating for things that are handled by another level of government and whatever that tax and UBI policy was.

It is also an EXTREMELY inner city, university educated academics, white set of policies. Even more than you expect to see. Plus, your candidate is probably going to largely be for whatever their original party was, before the merger, and may disregard other parts of the platform.

Fusion aren’t actively advocating for anything I’d consider harmful, but there are more coherent left of centre parties and I kept feeling as I read their policies “they could do more”. I’ll still be ranking them reasonably highly but I was underwhelmed.