b_auspol

Sustainable Australia - Universal Basic Income

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/VoteSustainable

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

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

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

Sustainable Australia are one of the most cynical parties on the general centre of Australian politics, committed to including daft statements about whatever is their current issue du jour in their party name. This election they’ve picked Universal Basic Income as their hobbyhorse policy (last election it was Stop Overdevelopment/Corruption). I’ve previously described them as NIMBY climate worriers and the appellation still seems apropos.

Party Analysis

How much do you want to hear about corruption in politics and how Australia’s problems could be fixed if we decreased migration? Because oh boy does Sus Aus have a lot to say about both. Among other issues, Sus Aus claim that they are the only party that puts the environment first: yes even including the Greens in this.

They have approximately a thousand policies as always, so I have mostly skimmed them.

They have policies about reducing retirement age to 65 and better aged care facilities, and while I know this policy is at the top of their list alphabetically, it also feels like their lead policy due to their aging supporter demographic. They believe that it is a myth that people aging puts more of a burden on the healthcare system, which I’m not convinced by.

They’re supporters of better arts funding, more money for biodiversity and the environment, stronger climate change legislation, banning new coal mining and transitioning to a renewable grid, putting dental into Medicare, free university and TAFE, better problem gambling regulation, abolish capital gains tax discounts and negative gearing on property, more money for public transport, and better water conservation. As far as all of this goes, they’re a pretty standard set of centre left policies.

Oh they also want a jobs guarantee and to reinstate the Commonwealth Employment Service, because the people writing policy for the party are boomer aged and above.

Then we get to their preferred angles of crankery.

In terms of taxation, Sus Aus want to implement a Universal Basic Income of $40k per year, and raise the tax free threshold to $26k. They want to pay for this via higher company tax rates, effectively, particular from multinationals offshoring profits. Oh and they want optional superannuation (presumably using the UBI as a replacement pension).

The party are also extremely, extremely NIMBY. They want to devolve all planning approvals possible to the local community, they think increasing density is ‘over-development’, but because they also don’t want greenfields developments they instead call for no immigration instead. They explain in a lot of words why it’s mean to say they’re anti-immigration and they’re just calling for ‘sensible’ immigration levels, but as always whenever a political party uses the word ‘sensible’ or ‘common sense’ they actually mean the opposite. They indulge in a conspiracy that the only people in Australia who actually want immigration is big business, for shady reasons. I’m not actually going to get into all their conspiracies about over population, but the obsession with the topic makes the party sound like cranks constantly.

Is this party trying to kill me?

The party wants lower birth rates internationally and fewer people coming to Australia, but it’s not trying to kill anyone already alive.

Is this party trying to harm me?

They’re trying to harm my dreams of affordable inner city dense housing.

Conclusion:

Sustainable Australia is one of those parties that sounds reasonable until you get them onto their special interest topic, and suddenly you feel like you need to back away slowly. It always feels like a case of “our shirts saying we’re not anti-immigration NIMBYs, we just want fewer people have people asking a lot of questions already answered by our t-shirts”. They also always sound really old and focused on the concerns of people who are reaching retirement age, which matches the involvement of Dick Smith in the party and the modern relevance of both.

Do I think they have a number of reasonable policies? Sure, but I can also get those policies from parties who are far less reactionary and anti-immigration.

Sustainable Australia Party – Stop Overdevelopment/Corruption

Website: https://www.sustainableaustralia.org.au/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/VoteSustainable
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VoteSustainable/

(My review for the 2021 WA election)

Sustainable Australia were formed in 2010 and consider themselves centrists. My reading is more that they are NIMBY climate worriers – Sustainable Australia’s main hangup is that there is climate change, but that the solution to saving the planet is less people, and especially less immigration to Australia so we don’t run out of resources. They currently have one MP in the Victorian Legislative Council (thanks, Group Ticket Voting).

Party Analysis

Sustainable Australia are another party that have approximately one million policies all outlined in far too much detail. They are broadly grouped around three separate issues: protect our environment; stop overdevelopment; stop corruption.

In terms of environment based policies, they want more habitat protection and less landclearing, decreased fishing, a lot more money spent on the environment as well as government and public service bodies like an Environmental Protection Agency, more work to discourage invasive species, a plant-based food policy, and a bunch of standard climate policies. Their net-zero policy is “definitely by 2050, but preferably by 2035”, with a 50% reduction by 2030. This is probably the most conservative policy I’ve seen from a climate focused party.

However, Sustainable Australia then lean in to their issues with population and state that to help with our net-zero goals, Australia should decrease population growth. Of course.

In terms of overdevelopment, there is a slightly odd policy that we should audit our “renewable and non-renewable resources” to work out the reserves we have an avoid using them up, so we have a secured longterm supply. This is of course another “we need to stabilise the population!” policy. I’m not saying we shouldn’t know what we do and do not have available, but also it’s quite hard to probably survey the extent of mineral resources, for instance. Also to prevent overdevelopment, there is to be no foreign ownership of land or property, and we do not need foreign investment in Australia. Any foreign investment is to be limited, a minority stake and beneficial. Look, you can’t write policies like this and not sound racist. I’m sorry.

In terms of stopping corruption, Sustainable Australia want citizen-initiated referenda able to be started by at least 5% of the population. That seems, to my mind, quite low. I’m not as conservative about Australian likelihood of passing referendum votes as many people are, but I can easily see people getting even more disenchanted if there are a bunch of votes to look at every election. They of course want a strong Federal ICAC (as does everyone), and a 4 year ban on lobbying or other work after retirement from a portfolio. Also a complete ban on donations from overseas and property developers. And a bunch of donation reform and transparency. Oh, and they want 4 senate seats for ACT (but not NT?). Now I am all for expanding the ACT and NT senate representation, but I want both to get seats, and if you are going up to 4, all of them need to be voted on every election. That quota needs to drop, to allow fair representation. Also more media diversity.

Their First Nations policy does not directly address Uluru Statement From the Heart. It just says “negotiate treaties” and has no outlined position on truth telling or a Voice to parliament. They simply say they support “a stronger and equal voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians in our democracy”, which sounds rather like “no Voice to Parliament”, via that “equal”. This is quite frustrating to me; if you have an issue with the order, tell me why (as the Greens are). They also want better Closing the Gap reporting and more First Nations led action on their communities and on environmental jobs. I’ve always found this “offer jobs that link to country” policy a bit paternalistic. Yes, there should be jobs that are based on cultural practices, but that’s not the only job assistance the community needs. It’s just always felt a bit off to me.

Aging policies include lowering retirement age to 65, a universal aged pension, and more support and funding for aged care (minimum staffing levels, more home care support packages). Also apparently an aging population being a threat to our health system is a “myth” (mmmm but who is paying the tax for it?)

They would like to offer more arts funding after the pandemic job losses, and more local television and film (no details on how).

Defence! Defence is necessary to stop overpopulation! OK I’ll stop being silly now but they want to be ready to “counter likely threats” (read, China), to link foreign aid to environmental sustainability programs (I see that potentially not going down so well, given we’re seen in the region as presently supporting no climate action), more defence technology that we make locally, get Darwin Port back, and oh look here’s the racism policy “Dispel the myth that growing our population size is the key to Australia’s defence in the 21st Century”. Where do I even start here. “Populate or perish” isn’t actually a policy the Australian government has. Why must you be like this, Sustainable Australia?

The police policy, which goes with this, largely wants more early intervention to avoid the criminal justice system. Better mental health support, more work to avoid domestic violence, more programs to reduce recidivism, more firearm regulations. However they also want recruit more police (uh, hm, retraining the ones we have already is a bigger priority for me), more power and resources to “detect and prevent terrorist attacks” (what Home Affairs need. More money and power) and stronger “counter-radicalisation strategies” of political and religious extremism. All of this, in context of the party, feels pretty dogwhistley to me.

Economic policies are very longwinded but mostly “make more stuff here, in more diverse occupations”. Less red tape for small businesses, a publicly owned bank, more public service jobs, and a National Jobs Guarantee. Also because they are Sustainable Australia, they argue the issue with housing affordability and wage growth and crowded roads is because we have too many people and we allow immigration. Lovely.

Education policy and this is the first “abolish HECS/HELP debts” policy I’ve seen! Free higher education for all as well. More investment in all education institutions and in research. However, childcare is just “affordable and reliable” early childhood education, not free. This is an interesting inversion to most other parties, and I suspect based on the fact that Sustainable Australia want us to have fewer children (and so they don’t have a free childcare policy). They also word it oddly but it looks like they want fewer international student visas and they don’t want those visas to be pathways to immigration. (Hello again, racism, where are most of our international students coming from, who decide to stay in the country where they received their higher education?)

Energy policy wants more solar, more pumped hydro, calling out that there are 22,000 suitable sites for pumped hydro (has anyone done environmental feasibility studies or checked for Native Title issues? I am sceptical there are so many available), banning all new coal mines, banning all new fracking, and “aspire towards a future without domestic nuclear power”, which is bizarre as our only nuclear facility is ANSTO, which makes medical radioisotopes, not energy. (And anyone suggesting we should close ANSTO should remember all the medical supply chain issues of the past two years. ANSTO is a public good, does a bunch of useful research and specialised production, and is about the only level of nuclear fission I agree with). We are not in danger of setting up nuclear power plants.

Health policies are a mix of good things with Sustainable Australia’s only obsessions thrown in. This means there is including basic dental on Medicare, more primary health care, more bans on junk food and sugar advertising, decriminalisation of drug use and treating addiction as a health issue, more vaccines. They also want free access to contraception and reproductive health services, for the stated purpose of “preventing unwanted pregnancies”. Look, I think this is a great policy, I just don’t like the reason WHY they have this policy. There’s also a call out for supporting “quality natural or alternative health care” (if it is quality, it’s called health care, alternative medicine is the stuff that generally doesn’t work, that’s why it’s alternative), and of course they can’t help themselves and point out that higher population densities lead to easier spread of disease.

In terms of taxation, Sustainable Australia want the tax-free threshold raised to $26,000 and a universal aged pension of the same rate. All superannuation is to be optional and current to be able to be withdrawn. A lot of policies to increase taxation on foreign owned housing, remove the capital gains discount on property, remove negative gearing, tax foreign mega corps and resource profits harder, and “Properly tax excessive income and profit”. I can’t really get a good sense of what this taxation system would look like for an ordinary person. Mostly it looks like “deflate the housing market” and “raise more money by taxing overseas”.

Is this party trying to kill me?

No, Sustainable Australia would just be happy if the birth and immigration rates went down. But not due to killing people, just by stricter rules.

Is this party trying to harm me?

In that they are essentially arguing for our country to be smaller, more inward looking and less welcoming, yes. Fundamentally, any party trying to limit or prevent immigration is calling to decrease diversity in our community. There’s no policies directly targeting me, but it’s certainly trying to harm some of my friends.

Conclusion:

It is very very hard to read Sustainable Australia policies without hearing dogwhistles of racism, particularly given their hardline stance on additional immigration and family sizes. There is a solid attitude of “well if they don’t live here we don’t need to worry about them”. I understand the goal to make the nation more self-sufficient, but the NIMBY party really doesn’t have the solutions for this.

I’m glad they’re socially liberal and into environmental policies. But given I wince every third policy I read, I cannot justify voting for Sustainable Australia over practically any other party that has an environmental policy. Plus their net-zero policy is barely better than the ALP one.

They’re still ahead of the Liberal Party for me. But I wouldn’t want them in charge of anything.

SUSTAINABLE AUSTRALIA PARTY - STOP OVERDEVELOPMENT / CORRUPTION
https://www.sustainableaustralia.org.au/

It’s time for the NIMBY party! Sustainable Australia were formed in 2010. Their original name was the Sustainable Population Party. They have one member in the Victorian LC, thanks to preference deals in group voting tickets that election. They think of themselves as centrists. The WA branch of the party only got itself registered last year, in preparation for this election. So they’re new kids on the block as far as WA state elections are concerned.

Sustainable Australia are on my shit list for their stupid name. It’s not the MOST stupid of the election but it’s pretty bad: all caps with a slogan included in the name. They have form for particularly stupid names: you may recall during the 2016 federal election they were using the name #Sustainable Australia, yes with the hashtag. It’s always a bit hard to take a party seriously when they are changing their name every election, trying to find a way to get that edge. It’s both cynical and ridiculous.

Okay, enough about petty things that irritate me, on to the policy platform.

( Policy Analysis )

Any Predictions?

Yes! Sustainable Australia Party will blame immigration.

At this point I haven’t seen any outright comments about immigration causing COVID, but that’s because I can’t be bothered scrolling back to March 2020. I have no doubt they fully believe the border closures and no immigration have protected us from the scourge, however: it’s a popular view.

Is this party trying to kill me?

Sustainable Australia don’t want to kill me or anyone else. They’d actually quite like to protect the environment. They’d just like everyone to stop having babies.

Is this party trying to harm me?

As an Australian citizen, Sustainable Australia are not out to harm me. But I can’t help but feel their policies are harmful for my friends who are on visas, as they’re generally implying they would rather my friends weren’t here.

Conclusion:

I’m going to be blunt and rude. Sustainable Australia always read as a bunch of slightly out of touch kind racist boomer NIMBYs to me. They want change! But at a pace they’re comfortable with, where they don’t have to encounter too many new or challenging ideas. Their issue sets always read as if they haven’t bothered running them past the nearest under 45 year old in reach – they don’t HAVE positions on the ‘cool’ or currently trending issues. They haven’t heard of intersectionalism. They’ve got that whiff of being a bunch of ageing tryhards. On the upside, their environmental and healthcare policies are generally good, as is their concern in trying to ensure there is less government corruption. The issue is that everything, but everything, comes back to their belief that there are too many people coming to Australia. On the downside: if you have to write a whole article about why you’re not really racist, you might need to face the fact that you appear pretty damn racist to outsiders.

On the basis of their opinions on health and the environment, I would consider that they deserve a look in somewhere central on your ballot, but I cannot endorse them any higher than that. They are certainly less dangerous than the swarm of right wing populists, but I'd probably feel more comfortable with them being around Labor on my ballot. And quite possibly below it.