axvoter

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review XIII (federal 2025): Indigenous–Aboriginal Party of Australia

Running where: for the Senate in NSW, QLD, and VIC, and in the House divisions of Parkes (NSW), Lingiari (NT), and Durack (WA)

Prior reviews: federal 2022, VIC 2022, NSW 2023

What I said before: “Their policy platform is really simple stuff: a community that wants to be taken seriously and not treated paternalistically. They seek the space to address their own issues on their own terms.” (VIC 2022)

What I think this year: The Indigenous–Aboriginal Party of Australia (IAPA) first contested the federal election in 2022, having been formed in the remote NSW town of Wilcannia, and then endorsed independent candidates at Victorian and NSW state elections because they did not yet have registration at state level. They also contested the 2023 federal by-election for Fadden (QLD), placing seventh in a crowded field of 13. I am pleased to see the IAPA is back contesting this election, with many candidates familiar faces from those prior campaigns, and I'm especially glad that they have been able to expand their efforts to contest two seats covering remote areas in NT and WA. I will be curious to see how much support they obtain in those seats at polling places for predominantly Indigenous communities.

The IAPA’s focus is firmly on the Indigenous communities whose interests they formed to promote and their goals are often rather simple things that reflect the unacceptable level of disadvantage many Indigenous people experience. Their focus is on an “Indigenous voice IN parliament”, seemingly a riff on the Uluṟu Statement’s call for a Voice TO parliament. There are, of course, Indigenous MPs in parliament, but the IAPA wants representation from a party devoted to Indigenous issues specifically. One of the main reasons the IAPA was created was to address environmental damage to Baaka (the Murray-Darling river system), which has profound spiritual significance as well as practical importance to the Indigenous peoples who live along and with it. This year the party’s “Healthy Rivers, Healthy People” policy also explicitly names the Martuwarra (Fitzroy River), which sits within the WA electorate of Durack, where they are fielding a candidate. This policy goes with two others emphasising the protection of sacred sites and management of water resources.

You will not be surprised to learn the IAPA wants to end the removal of Indigenous children from their families, with much greater support to be provided for in-home support instead, and that they want to stop the incarceration of Indigenous children. They promote a policy of prevention not punishment, with an emphasis on stopping youth offending to break the cycle of young people whose damaging experiences of incarceration lead to a lifetime of going in and out of prison.

IAPA’s approach to housing issues is a bit different from many parties, and it is informed by their distinctive purpose. Rather than discussing urban zoning, first-home buyers, negative gearing, or any of the usual suspects, their policy is about Indigenous housing especially in regional and remote areas. Their emphasis is straightforward and reflects the appalling housing conditions of some remote communities. They want provision of “basic services, materials, facilities and infrastructure; habitability; affordability; accessibility; legal security of tenure; and location and cultural adequacy”.

I said in 2022 that a lot of the IAPA's requests are so basic that they are depressing in how starkly they highlight the challenges and disadvantages experienced in many Indigenous communities, especially in remote areas. That remains true, as the housing policy shows, but happily they are also able to celebrate a couple of gains since their first platform was formulated. One is the introduction of an Indigenous crisis support line, 13YARN, which received over 70,000 calls in under three years (especially during the Voice debate) and one of the co-designers was recently awarded NSW Aboriginal Woman of the Year, Gamilaroi woman Marjorie Anderson. The IAPA is also glad that the federal government has acquired the copyright to the Aboriginal flag from corporate owners, although they qualify this with a note that “like the continent itself, the Aboriginal flag is not rightfully or morally owned by the Australian Government”.

The IAPA's Senate how-to-vote card for Queensland recommends preferences to Socialist Alliance, Legalise Cannabis, Australia’s Voice, Fusion, and the Greens, in that order. For Victoria, they haven’t issued a similar card but urge their voters to “please include a progressive party likely to win [in] the 6th spot, otherwise you may accidentally contribute to the election of a racist party”. It’s interesting they make no specific recommendation for Labor despite the Albanese government holding the Voice referendum.

Recommendation: Give the Indigenous–Aboriginal Party of Australia a good preference.

Website: https://www.indigenouspartyofaustralia.com/

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review XII (federal 2025): Health Environment Accountability Rights Transparency (HEART)

Running where: for the Senate in the ACT (lead candidate of Group F with running mate from the Libertarian Party), NSW (second and fifth candidates in Group I on joint ticket with People First and Libertarians), QLD (second candidate in Group K with the Great Australian Party), VIC (second candidate in Group O with People First), and in the House for the divisions of Bennelong, Eden-Monaro, and Lindsay (NSW), and Canberra (ACT)

Prior reviews: federal 2019, federal 2022. NSW 2023

Plus Health Australia, for reasons which will become clear: federal 2016, VIC 2018, federal 2019, VIC 2022

What I said before: “the pandemic only heated up their rhetoric, which seeks to undermine vaccines and other public health measures that are proven to be safe and effective … If you want your teeth to fall out and to die of preventable diseases, this is the party for you.” (NSW 2023)

What I think this year: This party began life in the mid-2010s as the Involuntary Medication Objectors (Vaccination/Fluoride) Party, which tells you everything you need to know in six stupid words. We are so close in time to when the world lacked vaccines for many once-widespread debilitating ailments that there is literally at least one childhood polio survivor still living in an iron lung, Martha Lillard in the US. Here’s a good long read from 2017 about Martha and two other American polio survivors (Mona Randolph, who died in 2019, and Paul Alexander, who attained popularity on Tik Tok before dying in March last year). They underscore their disappointment, even heartbreak, with the rise of the antivax movement and people who sow distrust about vaccines.

Many diseases that once stalked our society no longer threaten us thanks to the achievement of mass vaccination and herd immunity. This is not a miracle, as some would describe it, but the outcome of decades of hard work, investment, good policy, and genius alike. We witnessed one of the great achievements in medical history at the start of this decade: within two years of covid being identified, ordinary people could receive a safe and effective vaccine. Anybody who wishes to undermine the outstanding medical achievements of the past century or so and risk the spread of diseases—especially by misleading parents into gambling with their children’s lives by not receiving a full course of childhood vaccinations—is a horrific ghoul.

In December 2019, IMOP tried to soften their image as dangerous science denialists by renaming themselves the Informed Medical Options Party, a name about as inaccurate as it is possible to be. This change received approval in March 2020, days before the emerging threat of covid was declared a pandemic. At the time, IMOP got steaming mad about being called anti-vaxxers by senior medical professionals and politicians, with the party’s secretary suggesting that their members “only want their voice and concerns heard”. Now, it’s one thing to ask your GP questions to better understand a vaccination or any other medication. It's another thing to keep rejecting medical and scientific expertise, ignore the consensus of researchers, promote woo, and undermine public confidence in the transformative, lifesaving effect of vaccines. Do not say you are “just asking questions”. Do not pretend you are promoting “informed choices”. And definitely don’t say you have “done my own research” unless you happen to possess your own fucking world-class research laboratory staffed by a team of qualified researchers.

The most paranoid people amplified their fearmongering during the covid pandemic, but they were such malcontents that they struggled to work together. Cooker parties (some registered, some not) fielded rival candidates at state and federal elections. But in 2023 it emerged that IMOP were negotiating a merger with Health Australia, another “don’t call us antivaxxers” antivax party whose existence also predated the pandemic. In August, the two groups announced amalgamation under the name Health Environment Accountability Rights Transparency (HEART). Using IMOP’s registration with the AEC, they submitted an application to change the name, which received approval on 3 October. Astonishingly, later that month, IMOP-cum-HEART had to retract their own merger announcement. Health Australia chose to withdraw from the merger process, and collapsed a few months later.

So, HEART is just IMOP, rebadged, although I don’t doubt some ex-Health Australia people support this entity. Some of HEART’s rhetoric about affordable living, political transparency, and individual rights tries to appeal to politically disengaged voters in a cost-of-living crisis. But they cannot disguise how extreme their views are for more than sentence or two. Their website has predictable “big pharma” diatribes alongside promotion of completely unfounded alternative medicines and other woo popular in the backblocks of Byron Bay. And their fearmongering goes beyond healthcare: they are, for instance, concerned about the apparently imminent introduction of China’s “social credit system” to Australian cities. Their “transparency” policy is really a stubborn insistence that virtually all leading authorities on vaccines and healthcare are hiding conflicts of interest and that none of their studies or policies can be trusted. It’s striking how ready these people are to buy into unsubstantiated claims about “holistic” and “natural” medicines while insisting the most rigorous medical studies and expert bodies are compromised and sinister.

It also tells you a lot about HEART that they have entered into the “Australian First Alliance” with three far-right parties, Rennick First, Great Australian Party, and the Libertarians. This explains the convoluted Senate tickets listed at the start of the entry: multiple parties can register a joint ticket of candidates to share a single column on the ballot, which is something the Liberals and Nationals have done in some states for years. People who vote 1 above the line for this ticket will have their first preference go to the candidate listed first in the column below the line; for example, an above-the-line vote in the ACT goes first to HEART but in Victoria goes first to Rennick First. In addition, HEART’s how-to-vote cards recommend that their supporters distribute preferences to religious fundamentalists (Family First, Australian Christians), racists (One Nation), and LaRouchean fantasists (Citizens Party). Anyone who actually follows HEART's how-to-vote recs—which won't be many, as minor parties struggle to get their HTVs in the hands of potential voters—will have their ballot exhaust before reaching any party likely to be in contention for a Senate seat, with the exception of One Nation, who are going to be competitive in some states (especially Queensland).

Despite some HEART members being leftover hippies who were once in the Greens, exiting that party once their penchant for woo became too unwelcome, HEART does not associate with the left at all. The company the party keeps is firmly right-wing and exclusionary.

Recommendation: give Health Environment Accountability Rights Transparency (HEART) a weak or no preference in the Senate, and a very low preference in the House.

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

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review XI (federal 2025): Gerard Rennick People First

Running where: in the House, half of the divisions in Queensland plus Farrer and Richmond in NSW and McEwen and Scullin in VIC; in the Senate, SA and WA in their own right, NSW (third candidate in Group I on joint ticket with HEART and Libertarians), QLD (lead candidate of Group G with running mate from Katter’s Australian Party), and VIC (lead candidate of Group O with running mate from HEART)

Reviews of the above-named micro-parties are forthcoming

Prior reviews: none, this is a new party

If you don’t know who Gerard Rennick is, your elderly relative who has brainrot from Facebook probably does. Rennick posts relentlessly there. And if a conspiracy theory exists, Rennick probably believes it. He is especially keen on conspiracy theories about the covid pandemic and loves to deny the reality of climate change.

So, who is Gerard Rennick? He was elected in 2019 as a Senator for Queensland, third on the LNP ticket. Now, when it comes to the Liberal/National Coalition, Queensland’s amalgamated Liberal National Party is probably the craziest (don’t discount NT’s Country Liberals, but the LNP has weight of numbers): this is the party that brought us the likes of Matt Canavan and George Christensen. The covid pandemic sent Rennick mad, as if he wasn’t already. He became a Facebook celebrity among cookers, posting or sharing content that opposed his own government’s actions to ameliorate the effects of the pandemic. In July 2023, the LNP had a moment of clarity and shunted Rennick out of a winnable position from their 2025 ticket, the eventual consequence of which is that Rennick quit the LNP in August 2024 and registered this party the next month.

Let’s see, then, what his party wants this year. Rennick is pro-Putin, which ought to be instantly discrediting. The party website goes to considerable lengths to present a more palatable veneer, but frankly it can largely be ignored. The “flexible childcare” policy just reduces the funding available for professional early childhood education services, the health policy is incoherent cooker madness, the policy to remove Fringe Benefits Tax is basically the spirit of Christopher Skase Boozy Lunches made flesh, and making universities pay the unpaid component of HECS debts of deceased students is frankly bizarre.

Unsurprisingly, People First is blatantly racist. They’re mad about Acknowledgements and Welcomes to Country, which is a sure sign of a person who needs to grow up and realise not everything is about them. Although they acknowledge that Australia is a nation of migrants, they think that “zero immigration would be ideal”. I guess at least their migrant candidates are honest in pulling up the ladder behind them. People First are especially mad about migrants from “radical nations” (no really, that’s their term), despite their own extreme viewpoints. They are mad that “foreigners” might own houses or other property in Australia, because we do love a panic about foreign (read as: Chinese) ownership in this country—of course they don’t bother to clarify how we define foreign vs local ownership. Could I be a foreign landowner because I am a Pākehā New Zealander by birth? No, Rennick is probably cool with me because I’m lily white. Are my Australian-born friends with Chinese names foreign owners? (there was a “Chinese-sounding names” controversy in NZ along similar lines)

It isn’t hard to pick out other crazy policies. For instance, People First wants a referendum to “enshrine Freedom of Speech in the Constitution” (capitalisation original). Why would we need that when we already have an implied freedom of political communication? I don’t think it’s worth taking seriously anything Rennick says, because his real views have long been presented on Facebook. He is a dangerous individual who should have no say in our parliament.

Recommendation: In the House, give Gerard Rennick People First a very low preference; in the Senate, give Gerard Rennick People First a weak or no preference.

Website: https://peoplefirstparty.au/

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review X (federal 2025): FUSION | Planet Rescue | Whistleblower Protection | Innovation

Running where: five states for the Senate (not TAS), plus a smattering of House seats across four states (not TAS or WA)

Prior reviews: federal 2022 (which links to my past reviews of most constituent parties), VIC 2022

For newly allied party Australian Progressives, see: federal 2016, federal 2019, federal 2022

What I said before: “It’s not as left-wing as some, it emphasises pragmatic reaction rather than ideological ambition, and some of the policies are clearly a little underdone in trying to reconcile five platforms, but most of their positions contain worthwhile goals.”

What I think this year: This is the longest review I’ve ever written, so if nobody sticks with me to the end then I understand. It’s also a much more negative review than in previous editions. This might surprise some readers, including a couple that I know have volunteered for Fusion before. But the more I worked my way through Fusion's materials, the more I came to dislike this party. The heavy use of images that are quite clearly from generative Artificial Intelligence made matters worse: superficial soulless visuals for a superficial soulless party.

Fusion coalesced in 2022 after Australia’s lax party registration laws were tightened. Its original name was FUSION: Science, Pirate, Secular, Climate Emergency, which embodied the names or main focus of the broadly centrist and left-wing parties that had joined forces. These parties retain an independent existence with individual websites, though these also direct the reader to the main Fusion site. The name has been updated to articulate some core principles of this union, or fusion if you will. As I have said before, putting party positions or slogans in the registered name looks ridiculous.

Earlier this year, Fusion formed an alliance with two extra parties. One, the Australian Progressives, is not too objectionable, although I hadn’t realised they still existed. They have gone from being broadly centre-left in their presentation to pitching themselves as not “‘left’ or ‘right’—we’re about moving forward, ie. PROGRESS”. They describe themselves as motivated by “evidence, not ideology”, which makes them a good fit with Fusion (I’ll discuss that claim more below), and state that they sit in the “sensible centre”, a phrase almost invariably used by people who are neither sensible nor in the centre (usually well to the right).

The other partnership that Fusion established is incredibly, unbelievably stupid. They have welcomed into their camp Democracy First, a decidedly right-wing anti-migrant vehicle of serial candidate Vern Hughes. Yes, the Vern Hughes. This is shockingly bad and raises serious questions about the judgement of Fusion's leadership. Hughes has belonged to more parties than you’ve had hot dinners in the last week: by my count, he has stood as a candidate for at least eight groupings, promoted numerous extra parties that never attained registration, and his most recent outing was in 2022 for the lunar-right Australian Federation Party (now the Trumpet of Patriots). Democracy First is openly Trumpian—they have a 12-point platform (more a rant) to “drain the swamp in Canberra”—and it is an unwelcome inclusion in the Fusion fold.

Democracy First worked through a bunch of monikers before settling on the current name, including Sensible Centre (that phrase again!). Their Twitter handle is still @sensiblecentre_ and I had to make a thread in September 2021 warning people to pre-emptively block them because they were searching keywords and aggressively trolling people and peddling anti-vax “plandemic” nonsense. Whether it was Hughes or not (and I won’t be surprised if it was him), it was and is discrediting to the group. Hughes is a self-interested crank whose ideology and principles are flexible, but flexibly right-wing. If he is presenting himself to Fusion as having had some revelation to disown far-right positions, more fool them; the bloke has long since proven himself disreputable.

What all this means is that if you have a Fusion candidate in your House division or Fusion is running a Senate ticket in your state, the people involved could believe in anything from techbro futurism, urgent climate action, or “sensible centre” right-wing aggression. This significant variation in approach and priorities means that you should look up the people standing for Fusion on your ballot because you might find yourself more or less favourably disposed towards them than the party as a whole.

I’m now going to turn to the policies and principles that the party has posted on the main Fusion website. Before I launch into my criticisms, let me note key things that I like: the emphasis on whistleblower protections, the promotion of university teaching and research, the strong emphasis on combatting climate change and restoring damaged environments, and many of the digital privacy policies inherited from the Pirate Party. I do, though, wonder if the Pirate movement’s time has passed: I agree that copyright and intellectual property laws need reform, but perhaps in different ways now that we need to protect authors and artists from AI companies who unethically use and even steal material to train their lake-draining hallucination machines (which, as I noted above, this party seems quite happy to use for illustrations rather than photos and art by real people).

Fusion articulate both a set of values and separate principles. They spent a shocking amount of words, including some diagrams, to say not much at all. Both pages are laden with buzzwords that can basically mean whatever you want them to mean, although some of the discussion of values is useful, e.g. that their approach to personal liberty is one of “maximum net freedom”, where one individual’s freedom to act can be restricted justifiably if it limits the freedom of others. The principles page is tedious jargon that reads like the sort of emails many of us would have received from senior managers who use fancy language to express banalities.

Two major conceits animate Fusion. First, they have a frankly naïve fantasy that they can bring together divergent political interests (e.g. greener-than-Green environmentalists and Democracy First right-wingers) to achieve something despite their disagreements. Second, they believe they can do this because they are uniquely focused on evidence, not ideology. These are the sort of people who think “ideological” and “evidence-based” politics are polar opposites.

In reality, all political actors are ideological, and to deny this is either ignorant or dishonest. It is akin to people who claim they do not speak with an accent, only people from other places have accents. Leo Puglisi interviewed Miles Whiticker (NSW lead Senate candidate) and raised this topic. Whiticker defended the party as not taking a “zealous theory-driven position” that is pursued whatever the evidence might be. He defines being centrist as having the attitude that “if the theory clashes with the evidence, we are more likely to support the evidence than the theory”, which is absolutely not what centrism is and basically everyone at every position on the political spectrum believes they follow the evidence.

(also, yes, I keep using interviews from 6 News because Leo is doing the lord’s work for political nerds everywhere, conducting detailed interviews with politicians beyond the major parties)

Let’s turn now to a specific policy: Fusion’s housing policy is a mess. It is a total mess. You are not prepared for how much of a mess this is. Most of Fusion’s policy pages are brief, with bullet points and short paragraphs. The housing policy reads as someone’s passion project and it runs to 10,700 words. The average person is not reading nearly 11,000 words from a party they’ve never heard of, even if they’re good words. And these are not good words. The main proposals revolve around tinkering with taxes. There are a bunch of proposals for much greater government intervention in the rental sector through apps and transparency websites that veer into micromanagement, running counter to Fusion’s own “our party” page that suggests if you support mandated regulatory approaches you’d prefer the Greens. Fusion’s rental proposals would be much more invasive and meddlesome than anything the Greens propose to reform the sector.

The policy jumps all over the show. For instance, it favourably cites NIMBY economist and former Sustainable Australia candidate Cameron Murray. For the purposes of this review, I asked a well-read YIMBY friend for his reaction if told a party was citing Murray favourably and he replied that it’s “almost certainly bad”. At the same time, however, the housing policy favourably refers to Auckland’s zoning reforms, which Murray has downplayed (to such an extent Stuart Donovan and Matthew Maltman absolutely savaged him in a piece reviewing the effects of Auckland’s zoning reforms last December). It’s a muddled assortment of ideas.

But the funniest part is the favourable inclusion of Saudi Arabia’s linear-city megaproject The Line, part of its larger Neom development. You’ve got to be huffing farts to think The Line is a good idea, but the best bit is the bumbling invocation of David Ricardo’s idea of comparative advantage. This concept, central to classical economics, states that countries should focus economic activity on specialisation in industries where they have the greatest efficiencies and lowest opportunity costs. Apparently, the comparative advantage of The Line is that it “will have the economic advantages of being in the desert, and having an uncharacteristic layout”. Is that the best you can do? The comparative advantage of being in the desert.

Another questionable policy is that Fusion wants to declare that ageing is a disease. They pitch this as promoting quality-of-life measures, not as a life-extension policy: if ageing is declared a disease, rather than a natural part of existence, they think this is the magic trick that will enable doctors to prescribe medications that have secondary anti-ageing effects to people who do not have the condition or problem the medication is primarily meant to treat. This has a host of questionable implications and potential for misuse. It’s all a bit silly: there are much better ways to promote quality-of-life measures and healthy ageing than to say the process itself is a disease. The strong whiff of techbro futurism that permeates the party makes me think this is really a policy for anti-ageing fans who think Bryan Johnson is something other than a muddle-headed weirdo.

I could pick on other aspects of their policies and principles but this is quite long enough and I don’t want to repeat the length of their housing policy. Although Fusion contains multitudes, much of it feels driven by the old Future/Science Party, which was very blinkered—the classic science bros who badly need at least a basic education in the humanities. If this is a party made for and by STEM bros, then you can consider me a HASS fellow.

Are there worse parties on the ballot? Yes, many. But they are straightforwardly terrible. Fusion had potential, and I was a fan of some of the parties that came together to form it. I’ve spent so much time on this review because Fusion sit much closer to the positions that I support than, say, Family First, and I think it’s worth articulating why—in 2025 at least—they do not represent a good option, especially not for left-wing voters.

(also, sorry Fusion bros, please don’t @ me: I’ve argued with some of you in DMs before about my reviews and it was very boring)

Recommendation: Give FUSION | Planet Rescue | Whistleblower Protection | Innovation a weak to middling preference. Some individuals might warrant a slightly better preference; any that are aligned with Democracy First should be ranked lowly indeed.

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

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review IX (federal 2025): Family First

Running where: for the Senate in NSW, QLD, SA, and VIC, and for a solid collection of House divisions in the same four states plus Fenner in the ACT

Prior reviews: federal 2013, VIC 2014, federal 2016, VIC 2022, NSW 2023

What I said before: “This theocratic authoritarianism is not simply an inappropriate basis to govern a large and diverse community; it is riven with hate and should be repudiated loudly and thoroughly.” (VIC 2022)

What I think this year: Family First are, unfortunately, back on federal ballots after a period of deregistration. The original iteration of Family First collapsed in 2017 after Bob Day, their Senator for SA, got section-44’d out of parliament under a bankruptcy cloud and his replacement, Lucy Gichuhi, defected to the Liberals rather than participate in a merger with Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives. That party soon went defunct and two ex-Labor state MPs, Jack Snelling and Tom Kenyon, got the party’s database and resurrected Family First. You won’t be surprised to learn that they are social conservatives (i.e. bigots) from Australia’s worst union, the Shoppies, although it’s still striking to see a party typically associated with Protestantism revived by two Catholics. Kenyon today is the party chairperson, while the leader is Lyle Shelton, a Protestant famous for eating shit.

Bob Day is quite unhappy about the party returning without him. He registered the Australian Family Party at state level in SA and ran on its behalf at the last federal election as an independent (see my review here). He opposed this registration of Family First unsuccessfully, and he’s apparently gone even more batshit crazy than he used to be because he’s now running for the Trumpet of Patriots—and only as their second candidate on the SA ticket. Mate, you’re a former Senator, have some self-respect and demand top billing. Anyway, let’s move on from Day to what his erstwhile party is offering this year.

To a considerable extent, Family First is a vehicle for Shelton and his grievances, in much the same way as the Australian Christian Lobby under his leadership in the 2010s was defined by how steaming mad he got about same-sex couples. The menu across the top of the website even invites you to buy Lyle’s book (I’d rather set the $30 on fire thanks). If you check the issues tab, the first specific issue listed is drag queen storytime, a thing young kids really enjoy that only the most deranged dullards think causes “confusion and distress”. If the biggest thing you’re worried about is that people dressed elaborately are at libraries to promote literacy and a love of reading to children, you’re actively looking for things to make you mad—and, indeed, seemingly struggling so hard to find things genuinely maddening that you’ve settled on something that ought to be uncontroversial.

If you are exposed to too much Seppo social media and are familiar with the main themes pursued by far-right religious crackpots in the US culture wars, you won’t be surprised by the rest of Family First’s platform. Lyle slurps from the septic tank and it shows. You don’t need me to tell you that Family First opposes women’s reproductive rights or that they want to exempt private Christian schools from discrimination laws. They really hate trans people, and their policies would cause untold harm particularly for trans children: one of their big issues is a “close the gender clinics campaign”. I think we should instead evict Lyle from his house and open one there.

The most galling part of Family First's rhetoric about trans children is not the offensive depiction of them as “confused” or of puberty blockers as “medical experimentation”, but claiming that many who do transition are suicidal, with the implication this is a consequence of their transition. The reality is that refusing to allow people to transition, forcing them to live an identity other than their own, and discriminating against those who do transition are major causes of suicidality among trans youth. So much makes me mad reading Shelton’s work but this has got me especially worked up.

Go and eat more shit, Lyle.

Recommendation: In the House, give Family First candidates a very low preference; in the Senate, give Family First a weak or no preference.

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

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review VIII (federal 2025): David Pocock

Running where: ACT for the Senate

Prior reviews: federal 2022

What I said before: “Normally, individuals running on a ‘don’t ya know me and what I stand for?’ platform tack on something so that they are the Jacqui Lambie Network or the Rex Patrick Team or Katter’s Australian Party. David Pocock, however, has had an inspired moment and simply registered his party’s name as his personal name. This isn’t the David Pocock Group, Network, or Team. This is David Pocock.” (federal 2022)

What I think this year: Pocock has been a pretty decent Senator. He had a shaky first few months as he learnt how it all works, but once he figured out whose advice to take, whose to ignore, and what were the signs of a self-interested chancer in the setting of parliamentary lobbying, he got to work in a left-leaning way on issues affecting Canberrans and the nation alike. And, given that his victory at the 2022 election denied the Liberals a seat, his presence is all the more welcome—our parliament is better for Pocock ousting Zed Seselja.

Word on the street is that Pocock has done so well to cement his position in Canberra that he might even outpoll Labor. I will believe that when I see it, but in the contest with the Liberals for his seat, he’s the favourite to retain it. I have seen some speculation that Labor’s vote could drop low enough that Pocock scoops the left-leaning vote while the Liberals do enough to win the second seat ahead of Labor, but I don’t see this as likely. The fact that under Dutton the Liberals have taken aim at the public service and work-from-home policies makes me suspect they might register their worst ever result in Canberra.

Pocock’s website touts his “Wins”, including his ongoing goals. I like he opens with stats that he has given 617 parliamentary speeches, attended 167 ministerial meetings, considered 349 items of legislation, and negotiated 221 amendments. Canberrans, of all people, are most likely to appreciate this kind of info. He then sets out his main issues, and the left-leaning voter will find a lot to like in what he promotes that he is “still fighting for”. Not much leaps out at me as unappealing; he supports 4-year fixed-term parliaments, and while I think parliament should have fixed terms, I have seen no evidence that 4-year terms result in better governance than 3-year terms (and given Australia’s lengthy experience with both at state level, this evidence should be easy to produce if it exists). I prefer not to make politicians less accountable to electors. But this doesn’t seem to be something for which Pocock is fighting especially hard. His leading goal for political reform is to have the ACT’s Senate representation expanded from two to four Senators, which I agree is long overdue.

Pocock has been out the gates campaigning effectively for re-election and he has been busy releasing policies. Alongside climate action, for which he is well known, and action on cost-of-living issues, this year he has a strong focus on health, including more investment in the ACT’s healthcare system, better access to bulk billing GPs, and subsidies for longer appointments so that people with complex conditions don’t have to pay so much. I really like that he is pushing to overturn the ban on gay men in monogamous relationships from donating blood. It is an outdated policy that is no longer necessary for safety and repeal would bring Australia into line with other comparable countries and improve our blood supply.

On the housing front, he emphasises the need for much more investment in public and social housing, which should please many left-wing voters, and I’m happy to read that “the Territory must do more to relax zoning and other rules that restrict permissibility of ‘missing middle’ townhouse and medium-rise apartment buildings. More medium-density housing must be allowed … [and] The ACT Government has to find ways to speed up the development assessment process.” Build! Additionally, Pocock promotes “reform” of negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions. This would be welcome but other parties have stronger positions. I suspect he is right, though, that to make such reforms palatable—especially as this is such a hot-button issue among Australia’s chattering classes—provisions for existing investments will need to be grandfathered in to any reforms.

All in all, I think Pocock is a very good option for left-wing voters in the ACT, and I would unhesitatingly rank him above Labor. I would possibly (probably?) put him above the Greens too. I’m not an ACT voter though, so I don’t have to decide that one for myself.

Recommendation: Give David Pocock a good preference.

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

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review VII (federal 2025): Dai Le and Frank Carbone W.S.C.

Running where: Division of Fowler (NSW), sort of. See below.

Prior reviews: none, this is a new party

I reviewed the Centre Alliance despite the fact it is now a shell of a party that de facto independent Rebekah Sharkie retains because disestablishing it would be more effort than keeping it. So, why not review a registered party that is not fielding any candidates this election even though one of the two people in its registered name is seeking re-election! Yes, this is odd, but indulge me: let’s discuss what’s going on in Fowler and then talk about Dai Le and Frank Carbone W.S.C., or as their ballot abbreviation says, Frank Carbone Western Sydney Community. No, you’re not having a stroke, the abbreviation they provided for the AEC party register is longer than the official name. But we’ll get to the party in a moment.

In 2022, for some mind-numbingly stupid reason, Labor parachuted in former NSW state premier Kristina Keneally to contest the Division of Fowler in Western Sydney. Fowler was one of the safest Labor seats in the country, one which the party had held since its creation in 1984: Labor almost always got over 60% of the two-candidate-preferred vote, often over 70%, with their only sub-60% result being 58.76% in 2010. This electorate had literally never been in play. The incumbent, Chris Hayes, decided to retire in 2021 and endorsed as his successor a popular local migration lawyer, Tu Le, the daughter of Vietnamese refugees. Instead, the party halted the local preselection process and Keneally imposed as candidate.

Now, what you need to know about Fowler is that it encompasses some of Sydney’s most culturally diverse working-class suburbs. At the 2021 census, fewer than 40% of the population were born in Australia, with Vietnamese forming the largest migrant community and Chinese also having a sizeable presence. And what you need to know about Keneally is that although she might dubiously be considered Labor royalty—she was state premier for a little over a year but led the party to a devastating landslide loss in 2011—she is an American who lives on a literal island, Scotland Island, beyond Sydney’s posh Northern Beaches.

So, another Vietnamese woman, Dai Le, who came with her family as refugees to Australia when she was a child after the fall of Saigon, ran a successful independent campaign against Keneally. Labor won the notional two-party-preferred vote over Liberal (55.72%), but lost the two-candidate-preferred vote, the measure that actually matters: Le won 51.63%. Le had been a journalist and a Liberal Party member who had contested the state seat of Cabramatta for the party, but in 2016 she stood against the endorsed Liberal candidate for mayor of Fairfeld and was suspended from the party.

This led her to team up with ex-Labor councillor and Western Sydney political personality Frank Carbone. He is mayor of Fairfield, and has been since 2012. He is enormously popular with his community, winning a stonking 81.39% in a two-person contest at the mayoral election last year. Fairfield’s a funny old council, often going its own way to try to save money—it is one of the very few that contracts a private company to run its elections rather than the NSW Electoral Commission, which is a pain in the arse for election nerds because the NSWEC does a much better job. Anyway, Carbone and Le have an alliance on council that covers 9 out of 12 of the councillors plus Carbone as mayor (and Le is still a councillor as well as an MP).

So, Carbone and Le registered this political party in the belief they have a voting base to win federal seats in Western Sydney. And yet… they are not running any candidates and Dai Le’s officially contesting Fowler as an independent! I suppose it would have looked pretty odd on the ballot if it said:

LE, Dai Frank Carbone Western Sydney Community

Leo Puglisi asked Le about this in an interview on 6 News before the election was called (from 19:57). She explains that she formed the party for “the future” and “I want to make sure that I have laid the foundation. I need to get re-elected … to continue to build that foundation … no point rushing running candidates”. She wants to consolidate her hold on Fowler before seeking to grow and says that she prefers the label of independent this time around. Hence, this campaign is an independent one rather than part of a broader tilt for Western Sydney Community. It’s a bit odd that she describes the party registration repeatedly as “planting a seed” (among other cliches that she repeats) when she hasn’t gone on to use the branding at all such that this seed might grow and gain recognition.

Labor has seen sense and their candidate this year is the woman they should have endorsed in 2022, Tu Le, but is it too little too late and does Dai Le have the local profile to secure re-election? She has the advantage of incumbency but this is a very classically Labor seat and Tu Le will fancy her chances of winning it back. Dai Le’s voting record is closer to the Liberals than to Labor, and is very similar to that of Rebekah Sharkie of the Centre Alliance (see figure 1 here). Unlike many other city-based crossbenchers, she is not part of the “teal” movement and does not receive Climate 200 financial backing.

So, what are Fowler voters getting this time around? Dai Le is pitching directly to working-class constituents in the hope they don’t swing back to Labor, underscoring cost-of-living challenges, particularly with energy, groceries, and insurance. Her take on the current government is that a lot of policies lack substance. She believes her local constituents don’t trust the major parties and seems optimistic that she has established her reputation locally as someone who asks the hard questions in parliament. We will see in a few weeks if that belief is well-placed.

Last, is Dai Le likely to support the Liberals if no party has a majority after the election? She says that nobody should assume who she would support, noting in the aforementioned interview with Puglisi that the Liberals “threw me out … why would I be loyal to a party that didn’t want me in the first place?” It seems that although she is ambivalent about the Labor government, the Liberals also aren’t her favourite people these days. She emphasises a preference to assess each bill individually in terms of how she sees it as delivering for Fowler rather than picking sides. Given how many independents are likely to be returned, the major parties likely will have a range of paths to build confidence and supply or to pass legislation, so she might not even be forced to choose.

Recommendation: If you are a Fowler voter, I recommend you put Dai Le below the Greens and Labor candidates but above the Liberal candidate, and definitely above those who are standing for the Libertarians, Family First, and One Nation. For my recommendation categories, let's call this a "weak to middlimg preference" (even if it would be 3rd of 7! I'm more lukewarm on Dai Le than on Rebekah Sharkie)

Website: https://daile.com.au/

[axvoter]

Vic Senate voter here. Assembled my preference list the other day and made the decision to put the Citizens Party first among the real dregs of the ballot (I believe I described it as the start of the 'oh Jesus' section) -- so, below most of the mainstream right, but above the hateful fringe (Libertarians, GRPF, Trumpet of Patriots, One Nation, Family First) -- mainly on the grounds that they're all conspiracists but at least the ACP isn't as toxically right/hateful. What are your reckons?

This is a good question to which I'm going to give a long and not entirely committal answer. The Australian Citizens Party (ACP), formerly the Citizens Electoral Council (CEC), are the Australian branch of the LaRouche movement, which emerged in the 1960s in the US ostensibly on the left and is now a far-right cult.

I first want to return to my recommendations about the ACP/CEC from when they posted their views online without making any attempt to appear sane:

2013 review: "The CEC are without question the most radically unhinged, delusional political party on the Australian landscape. Do not vote for them. Do not let your preferences get anywhere near them. While other parties may be ignorant or regressive, the CEC are actually destructive."

2016 review: "Do not under any circumstances give any preference to the CEC in the Senate. If the CEC are standing for your lower house seat, put them dead last. The only party that may be worth putting below them is Australia First."

(Who are Australia First? Literal Nazis. I last reviewed them in 2019 and their leader, Jim Saleam, is standing as an independent for the NSW Division of Lindsay this year—avoid him!)

Anyway, how should we approach the ACP-formerly-CEC in 2025? I have two main considerations in play here:

The ACP/CEC will never win a seat. Their best result to date is 0.21% of the national vote in 2004, followed by 0.2% in 2022. They usually get below 0..1%.

The ACP/CEC are uniquely unusual in the Australian political landscape. They hold attitudes so insane, conspiracy theories so laughable, and goals so clearly damaging that they should not be supported under any circumstance. They are divorced from reality and have been so for a very long time.

Now, I won't be confident of my exact ranking this year until I have finished writing all my reviews, and even once I make a draft I often shuffle a few candidates around in the days before voting. But the first consideration above suggests that it doesn't ultimately matter too much where you put the ACP because they're going to be cut very early in the process and there is no realistic scenario under which your vote will play a role deciding between the ACP and some other cretins. If you despise bilious racists more than LaRouchean fantasists, put them lower.

And a complicating factor with consideration two above is the rise of sovereign citizens and similarly deranged conspiracists within parties such as Trumpet of Patriots. Some of these people and their supporters are actively dangerous; they can be physically violent. The ACP once had no competition in terms of which party on the ballot was most divorced from reality, but today's sovcits give them a run for their money.

In general, I have considered the risks of somebody from the ACP having any degree of power to be scarcely worth contemplating, and that they pose a bigger risk across the board than One Nation-style racists and Family First-style religious fundamentalists. But I am now inclined to agree that some other parties and candidates on the hateful lunar right pose more of a threat to the rule of law and public safety. I would probably still put some of the hateful fringe above ACP, but my very last preferences will likely go to aggressive Trumpian creeps and sovereign citizen crackpots.

[axvoter]

I’ve been reading these party reviews since I was able to vote for the first time at the 2016 federal election! I just want to thank you for your efforts in writing these posts and I’m excited for the 2025 edition <3

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has submitted feedback lately, because there have been some very nice comments that have made me feel like I'm doing something more than just scream into the void. It keeps me going. In particular, I want to thank this lovely person above who has been reading my unvarnished thoughts about one deranged micro-party after another for almost a decade now!

If there are any real ones out there who've been reading my takes since the first edition in 2013, I'll buy you a beer (or beverage of your choice) whenever I'm next in your city. I am not joking.

Also, I am indulging myself a bit for 2025. In past editions, I tried to be concise and make entries as succinct as possible. But some of my most popular entries in recent editions have been when I've cut loose and written to my heart's content. So, this federal election, let's see how we go. I'm worrying less about length than I used to. It's time for Detailed Axvoter Thought.

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review VI (federal 2025): Centre Alliance

Running where: Division of Mayo (SA). That’s all. Former Centre Alliance Senator Rex Patrick is standing for the Jacqui Lambie Network.

Prior reviews (including as the Nick Xenophon Group/Team): federal 2013, federal 2016, federal 2019, federal 2022

What I said before: “I don’t live in the Division of Mayo, and if you do, there’s a good chance you have a much better idea of what Sharkie stands for and how good a local representative she is than I do. I now mentally group her with high-profile indie incumbents (e.g. Helen Haines in Indi) rather than with a party. Looking from a distance, she seems reliably centrist.” (federal 2022)

What I think this year: I’ve been tossing up whether to even review Centre Alliance. It is literally now just a re-election vehicle for Rebekah Sharkie in Mayo. At least in 2022, there was nominally one Senator left representing Centre Alliance, Stirling Griff, though for re-election he ran second on a very doomed independent ticket with Nick Xenophon that managed to win only 2.99% of the vote (see my 2022 review linked above for more details). Leo Puglisi at 6 News interviewed Sharkie last week and asked her why the party is still registered (from 14:15 in the video): her answer boiled down to the fact that disestablishing the party structure required more paperwork and wrangling with the bank than simply keeping it and using it as her banner. For all intents and purposes, Sharkie is an independent. The Centre Alliance website is goneburger, her web presence is based around her as an independent with the slogan “Make Mayo Matter”, and her website does not mention the party name—even in presenting her electoral background.

But I am a completist. Other than the major parties, who are not worth the bother reviewing for my average reader, I have tried to review every party nationwide, even going the extra mile to review unregistered parties that are endorsing nominally independent candidates. So, how could I leave out Centre Alliance when they are registered with the AEC? I could not. If neither major party wins a majority, her vote could prove significant for forming government, so I think it's worth knowing something about her even if you don’t live in the Division of Mayo.

Sharkie is a fairly classic centrist who once supported the Australian Democrats and who was briefly a member of—and an employee for—the SA Liberal Party. If it weren’t for the factionalism within the SA Liberals, or the party’s repeated problems with misogyny that have driven away a large chunk of at least two generations of professional middle-class women with centrist or moderate politics, she might well still be in the Libs. But instead Sharkie joined Nick Xenophon’s party, won Mayo in 2016, and has defended her seat ever since.

What does Sharkie offer this time around? Well, her website is very short on policy details. But as an MP, she is strong on community engagement—you don’t hold a seat this long as an independent without spending a lot of time pounding the pavement or advocating for local interests. As is fitting for someone originally elected for a party formed by anti-pokies campaigner Nick Xenophon, Sharkie has pushed for gambling reform, working alongside the more left-wing independent MP for Clark, Andrew Wilkie, to seek implementation of recommendations from the “You win some, you lose more” parliamentary report issued in June 2023 after an inquiry into the effects of gambling.

Sharkie has also taken a strong interest in aged care policy, regional housing issues, and greater funding for regional healthcare services. She’s promoted the “Keep Cash” campaign, which I think is about as silly as a “Keep Cheques” campaign would be; sorry, folks, cash is much less popular than it used to be and if a business does not think it is economical or worthwhile to keep accepting payments in cash, that’s their call. I’m not sure people (strangely, including some business owners) realise there are costs associated with cash just like there are with providing for electronic payments. Cheques faded away, and if cash does too then I won’t lament its demise an awful lot.

What will Sharkie do if no party has a majority after this election? She has indicated she is not committed to supporting either major party and would see what she can win for Mayo in return for her support, but that she would likely talk first with the Liberal Party. That is perhaps unsurprising given her background, and she justifies it because the state seats that sit under Mayo are held by non-labour members. That claim is not entirely accurate: most are traditionally Liberal seats (with Kavel in the hands of an ex-Liberal independent), but Leon Bignell, MP for Mawson (entirely within Mayo) has held the seat for Labor since 2006. He is only an independent right now because he is the Speaker of the SA Legislative Assembly; since 2021, the occupant of this role been barred from belonging to a political party outside of election periods. I would suggest that Sharkie first follow the outcome of the notional two-party-preferred count that the AEC calculates between Labor and Liberal, which in 2022 went to Labor in her seat but at her previous victories favoured the Liberals.

(One final aside for the election campaign nerds: Sharkie still uses some of the orange branding that Centre Alliance used to deploy more widely.)

Recommendation: If you are a Mayo voter, I recommend placing Sharkie below the Labor and Greens candidates but above the Liberal candidate and definitely above the candidates for Family First, One Nation, and Trumpet of Patriots. Let’s call that a “middling preference” for the sake of my recommendation schema with which I tag every entry.

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

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review V (federal 2025): Australia’s Voice

Running where: Five states for the Senate (not TAS)

Prior reviews: none, this is a new party

My first new party for the election season! And it is a party that emerged amid a fair degree of parliamentary rancour. This is the party of Fatima Payman, elected in 2022 as a Senator for Western Australia, third on Labor’s ticket. That is normally not an electable position on the Labor ticket at a half-Senate election now that the Greens consistently win one seat, but the swing left in WA in 2022 was so strong that Labor got three in their own right alongside one Green. Payman was a breath of fresh air, a young and articulate Muslim woman who represented a generation and a community who don’t yet see themselves in parliament a lot.

Unfortunately, it all went sour a couple of years later. Australian political parties in general have strict parliamentary discipline even compared to other Westminster democracies with similar traditions, and the Labor whip is the firmest of the lot. It’s not just that Australian political parties are unlike the US Congress, where Democrats and Republicans alike have weak party discipline; there is also no tradition here of one-, two-, and three-line whips like in the UK. In the early 2010s this caused Labor to look a bit silly when Penny Wong, a Labor woman in a same-sex relationship, stuck to the party line against legislating for marriage equality despite the fact everybody knew she supported it and argued for it within the party. Payman, in the end, proved unwilling to similarly parrot the party line on an issue at the centre of her political identity: the right of Palestine to statehood and the urgent need to end Israel’s war on Gaza.

Frankly, I think the Labor whip hand is too firm and that Payman was—and sometimes still is—treated shabbily by her former comrades. When Payman held to the courage of her convictions and crossed the floor to support a Greens-led crossbench motion to recognise Palestinian statehood last June, she was suspended indefinitely from the Labor caucus. I had hoped for better, that her colleagues would recognise how unreasonable it was to ask her to betray her values, but they proved unwilling to budge. The Liberals and Nationals accord more freedom to backbenchers to exercise a free vote (yes I’m saying something about the Coalition parties in an approving tone, believe it or not!), and even its MPs rarely do so; a recent parliamentary research paper emphasises the loneliness of crossing the floor. So, with her position in Labor untenable, Payman quit the party in July 2024.

That’s the back story, and after briefly sitting as an independent, Payman registered Australia’s Voice as a new political party. One of its key policies is a “genocide red-line package”, three bills that Payman introduced alongside ex-Greens independent Senator Lidia Thorpe, but contrary to what you (or at least I) might have expected, it’s not the first thing you see on the party’s website. Instead, an image with unflattering headshots of Albanese and Dutton urges you “don’t waste your vote this election” (a pretty common statement from minor parties of all persuasions) and then a list of “what we are fighting for” policy pages. Presented in rows of three, the top row is housing, banking reform, and supermarket divestiture—it’s only the next row that has Palestine, along with ending politicians’ perks and support for a republic.

The FAQ page pushes the anti-major-party line even more strongly: “The major parties are two sides of the same coin. They’re out of touch and too busy bickering to get on with the job.” (and Payman sure did feel Labor was tinkering while Gaza burned) But the statement that “Australia’s Voice is a new political party formed because we hear the same thing from Australians everywhere—we don’t feel heard” is pablum that micro-parties across the political spectrum say. It doesn’t tell us much about the party’s identity.

The policies on the website are very “Labor centre-left but we support Gaza”, although it seems they’ve been caught on the hop, despite it being a poorly kept secret for ages that the election would fall in April or May: the policies page has a banner that “Australia's Voice is building its policy platform to take to the next election. Below are just some of the things we are fighting for.” This suggests the platform offered just a few weeks out from the election is incomplete. Interestingly, the banking policy shares similarities with, of all people, the Australian Citizens Party, as the party promotes a government-backed bank using Australia Post’s established systems and networks—fortunately, in this case, not because of delusional conspiracies about worldwide finance but to service regional communities and provide low-interest loans.

What they’ve got is generally unobjectionable stuff, with some of the objectives quite good while other components feel incomplete or that not all the implications have been thought through. Moreover, I think much of the party's website has the same problem as the Democrats: what is Payman offering that established players are not? She does have a distinctive offer for voters based on multiculturalism, Australia’s role on the world stage, and concerns about Palestine and global crises, and she can speak especially effectively to young people and Muslim voters, but this is less prominent than I expected. Payman herself isn’t up for re-election until 2028, but I still think promoting her individual political appeal alongside candidates who share her vibe, would help set up the party with a clearer identity long-term than what’s here.

Anyway, no loud alarms going off in my head, only modest caution about a new party yet to find their feet. I hope Payman comes back with a stronger offering in 2028 so that she can conduct a competitive re-election campaign; our democracy would be better if somebody like her can at least stay in the mix rather than be a clear no-hoper if/when she seeks a second term.

Recommendation: Give Australia’s Voice a decent to good preference.

Website: https://australiasvoice.com.au/

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review IV (federal 2025): Australian Democrats

Running where: Qld, Vic, and WA for the Senate, plus the Dvision of Banks (NSW) in the House of Representatives

Prior reviews: federal 2013, federal 2016, federal 2019, federal 2022

What I said before: “Overall, this is quite centre-left stuff, but it’s not immediately clear why you would support the Democrats instead of, say, the Greens. There is little here that is actually distinctive, and they lack charismatic candidates to make you believe that they will be able to deliver on the platform they spend so much time trying to explain.” (federal 2022)

What I think this year: My first reaction was “oh god really?” It’s genuinely befuddling that this party is still alive. A strange and over-optimistic band of true believers persist in maintaining registration and contesting elections, despite the fact the party’s death knell was clearly in 2007 and even some of its former elected representatives now promote other groups such as the Greens.

The Democrats were indeed the third force in Australian politics from the late 1970s to the early 2000s, but they stumbled badly during the big debate over introducing a GST in the late 1990s at the same time as the Greens were eroding their vote—and a mooted “Green Democrats” merger never eventuated. The Democrats' last senators left office in 2008 after failing to retain their seats at the 2007 election, their final state MP quit the party in 2009 (David Winterlich in the SA upper house), and a few years later different factions fought for control of what remained of the party. I did my best as an outsider to try to piece together what was going on in my 2013 and 2016 reviews linked above. By 2019, however, they managed to largely get things back together, originally on a bland centrist platform and then with a more centre-left skew in 2022. Their national director since 2019 has been Lyn Allison, their Senator for Victoria in 1996–2008.

Not much has changed in the Democrats' platform since 2022. They offer to be “the people’s watchdog in the Senate” and they maintain a “Rorts Watch” on their website as a nod to their tradition of holding the balance of power in the Senate to “keep the bastards honest”. Some policies have been updated during the current term of parliament and in response to world events: their liberal-feminist-informed foreign affairs policy, for instance, criticises Donald Trump's misogynistic behaviour as a contrast to the party's focus on the need for women’s leadership on the international stage and on the safety and liberation of women in patriarchal societies and crisis zones.

Drawing on the quote at the start of this entry from my 2022 review, I’m just not sure what the Democrats are offering to win votes from near rivals with similar platforms. If you are a Greens or Animal Justice voter, a supporter of Fatima Payman's new party Australia's Voice, or if you’re on the Labor Left and have made your peace with not always getting your way over the Right factions, there isn’t much here to make you do more than put the Democrats third or so. Without eloquent and attention-grabbing candidates to inspire voters and get media coverage, the Democrats are wasting their time, not to mention their money on deposits with the AEC, which are only returned if you achieve 4% or more of the vote. In 2022, all they could manage was 65,532 votes, 0.44% of the national tally, from standing candidates across five states (their best proportionate performance was in Victoria, where they got 0.75% of the statewide total). As a comparison, David Pocock stood in just the ACT and won 60,406 (21.18%) first preferences and got into parliament.

I’ve no major problems with the Democrats’ platform; I just don’t see the point. I'm not sure what noteworthy gap on the political spectrum they fill, or why there’s still fire in the belly to run for office. There’s nothing here to make me say “hey if you care about x then consider the Democrats rather than other left-leaning options”, and nothing to prompt me to do anything but put them in a decent enough spot after parties that evoke a stronger positive response. Maybe they’ll speak more to you?

Recommendation: Give the Australian Democrats a decent to good preference.

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

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review III (federal 2025): Australian Citizens Party

(formerly the Citizens Electoral Council and forever the CEC in our hearts)

Running where: Senate in every state and the NT, plus both House divisions in the NT and a smattering of House divisions across five states (not SA)

Prior reviews: federal 2013, federal 2016, federal 2019, federal 2022

What I said before: “While other parties may be ignorant or regressive, the CEC are actually destructive. It is fortunate that their ideas are so absurd, their rhetoric so laughable, and their narratives so incoherent that they have been unable to develop even the most microscopic base despite being electoral pests for over two decades.” (federal 2016)

What I think this year: The Australian Citizens Party (ACP), as part of their rebrand from the CEC a few years ago, launched a new website that appears to try to present the party as more sane and mainstream than they actually are. My 2013 and 2016 reviews, linked above, discuss this party when they were full mask-off and shoving their wackiest beliefs in the face of anybody who glanced in their general direction. I recommend reading those reviews if this party is new to you. Today, the ACP's website is more slick and the 2025 election page begins with motherhood statements opposing corruption and policies about housing affordability and healthcare mingled with their pet economic interests (please enjoy an archived version from March 2019 here for what they used to be like).

I worried this might make it less obvious at first glance that the ACP have some of the oddest beliefs of anybody on the ballot, but last week while having lunch and catching up on my emails I was sitting beside some undergraduate students chatting loudly about the different parties they’d seen on the ballot. One mentioned the ACP, so they looked it up, to great mirth: their collective reaction was that this was obviously a party of nutters. What did strike me, though, was that these young people all thought one of the most absurd ACP ideas was that for a Post Office “People’s Bank”. They were all too young to have even considered going to Australia Post to pay bills or do any other banking. To quote one of them: “Australia Post, run the banking system? Do they want to lose my money as well as my parcels?” (I must say here that I far prefer when my deliveries come via Auspost over any one of those dreadful courier companies, but I got why they were baffled—older generations might either use the Post Office for banking or remember doing so, but it’s not an experience these 20-somethings have had)

In general, the ACP promote ludicrous banking/financial proposals in the tradition of Lyndon LaRouche, a man for whom “heterodox” and “conspiratorial” vastly understate the peculiarity of his ideas. The ACP's past predictions that their "exposés" would bring down Australia's banking and mortgage sector have of course not come true. They were also touting conspiracies that cash would be banned well before this became a popular anxiety of far-right parties who want to commit some light tax fraud. Indeed, they even claim they stopped a cash ban singlehandedly (dig deeper and what they claim to stop was not a ban on cash, but a ban on cash transactions over $10,000, ditched in late 2020).

The ACP believe their People’s Bank scheme can fund large-scale infrastructure projects that do not make sense. Now, I’m a big fan of government investment in public works, but everything that the ACP backs is completely laughable. Rather than things like better urban rail, cycle lanes, pedestrianisation, or improved regional rail, the ACP have terraforming fantasies to make the deserts bloom in Central Australia. These include the Bradfield Scheme (redirect rivers) and the Iron Boomerang (a half-formed idea for a mineral-and-steel freight railway in Northern Australia, which in 2023 a government inquiry found lacking in substance, with the conclusions on page 36 noting “significant implementation issues and risk”). At least they no longer seem to be talking about an Australian space programme or colonising Mars. Is Elon Musk too embarrassing even for them?

Despite the ACP’s attempts to avoid extreme language in speaking to concerns about housing and energy and things like that, you simply need to go to their publications page to find their underlying ideas and conspiracies are still in full bloom. We apparently live in a “bankers’ dictatorship” and the British Crown is directly trying to crush Australian unions (among various other conspiracies, the British royal family is a long obsession of the CEC/ACP). These publications also show their history of being fellow travellers with the current corrupt authoritarian regime in Russia. Elsewhere on their website, you can read nonsense about how Ukraine crossed Russia’s “red lines” and brought invasion upon itself; personally, I find blaming Ukraine for Russia’s invasion to be beneath contempt. I am yet to see a single pro-Russia (or purportedly anti-NATO and ~*anti-imperialist*~) argument that isn’t just the nation-state version of “but what was she wearing?” victim-blaming. Now, sure, the ACP’s foreign policy attitudes lead them to oppose AUKUS, but not for any sensible reason. Stopped clock, right twice a day, etc.

Recommendation: Give the Australian Citizens Party a low preference in the House of Representatives and a weak or no preference in the Senate.

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

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review II (federal 2025): Australian Christians

Running where: Senate in NSW and WA, plus ten House divisions in WA

Prior reviews: federal 2013, VIC 2014, federal 2016, federal 2019, federal 2022, WA 2025

What I said before: “they want their own theological views made into the law of the land. Their acknowledgement that other religions can be practiced freely in Australia is begrudging. They seem more extreme than ever in the narrowness of their vision for society.” (WA 2025)

What I think this year: The Australian Christians splintered some 14 years ago from Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party and, as the CDP was deregistered in 2022, they have now outlasted it. Their heartland is WA, as that was one of the two CDP branches that originally split to form the party (Victoria was the other), and they have maintained a small but consistent presence in the west. Although the WA Electoral Commission is yet to declare the results of the recent election for the WA Legislative Council, it looks certain that the Australian Christians have won their first ever parliamentary seat. (This paragraph will be updated when the WAEC declares the results in the next few days)

A decade ago, Christian fundamentalist parties of varying confessions formed one of the most common genres of micro-party. Thankfully, this desire to legislate a very particular worldview to apply to everybody has waned, but we are still stuck with the Australian Christians. Worse, they have got more extreme over time.

Nothing has changed since my WA election review a few weeks ago: this party opposes women’s bodily autonomy, they are transphobes, and they oppose “coercive vaccine mandates” (coded language for antivax weirdos). When it comes to education, they want more chaplains in school, despite our secular education system suggesting we ought to have none in the public system at all, and they promote home-schooling, which is often an avenue for religious fundamentalists to under-educate and under-socialise their kids. In less obviously religious areas, their economic policies favour the sort of small business owner who is annoyed that they might have legal responsibilities and who bleats about the sorts of “red tape” that actually stops them taking advantage of employees or clients.

I also take umbrage with their name, despite not being a believer of any faith. This party's political or theological positions do not represent all or even most Christians in Australia. Maybe if you're a socially conservative evangelical Protestant you will find your faith embodied in this party, but those from other denominations will at best feel like a square peg in a round hole. Believers who adhere to more liberal wings of Christianity will find this party about as objectionable as I do.

Recommendation: Give the Australian Christians a low preference in the House of Representatives and a weak or no preference in the Senate.

Website: https://australianchristians.org.au/

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review I (federal 2025): Animal Justice Party

Running where: Senate in every state and the ACT, plus a smattering of House divisions in the ACT and five states (none in WA)

Prior reviews: federal 2013, VIC 2014, federal 2016, VIC 2018, NSW 2019, federal 2019, federal 2022, VIC 2022, NSW 2023, WA 2025

What I said before: “I’ll make this simple because nothing has changed. The Animal Justice Party promotes policies that support veganism and which oppose harm to all animals, including invasive species that wreak havoc on Australia’s ecosystem.” (WA 2025)

What I think this year: AJP’s placement in the alphabet means that I usually get to start my series of reviews in a very straightforward manner. They’re a stable part of the micro-party landscape with representation in the upper houses of the NSW and Victorian state parliaments, and at the time of writing they are in contention for the yet-to-be-declared 37th and final seat in WA’s upper house. (This entry will be edited once the WAEC announces the results sometime this week)

Indeed, the question this time around is whether I can highlight something about AJP that I have not noted before. My friend at b_auspol guided my attention to their housing policy, which has a classic left-wing slant in promoting more public housing and which speaks to a common YIMBY demand to “make zoning laws more flexible to allow for higher-density housing developments, and infill (the replacement of houses with higher density dwellings), near public transport and essential services”. As someone who is a big fan of dense, walkable cities that prioritise a choice of active and public transport modes, this goes down well for me.

This election, “The Animal Justice Party stands for Animals, People and the Planet” and they offer a 10-pillar platform that embodies their main priorities. Some pillars will be familiar to long-term micro-party enthusiasts. AJP retains their policy for “Veticare” to provide support for vet bills akin to Medicare, and their policies on animal cruelty are what you would expect (with my usual caveat that their promotion of only “non-lethal” forms of pest control is naïve, but other aspects are more reasonable). How much you like their proposals to “fix the food system” will depend on how much you support vegan/vegetarian diets and whether you think governments should promote a major reduction in meat consumption. It is, though, a bit more moderately phrased a dietary policy than in previous years, with the emphasis on increasing the daily intake of fruit and vegetables for the average Australian.

Other policies are conventional left-wing stuff, such as increasing taxation on big business, promoting a transition to clean energy, and more funding to prevent domestic violence and support victims. Honestly, some of the policies to reduce tax on ordinary people while making sure big business pays their way and can’t exploit loopholes could be bolder! And although the AJP’s policy about supporting victims of domestic violence to keep their pets might seem an extremely niche concern, the b_auspol review makes an important point: “one of the biggest predictors of danger to humans is if the abusive person threatens, injures or kills the family pets, and a lot of shelters don’t allow people to bring pets with them”. I have personal experience here to know how important this is, in what I saw when multiple friends' parents split acrimoniously while we were at school.

As an aside, I am mildly surprised AJP is not running any candidates for divisions of the House of Representatives in WA. I had an AJP candidate in my lower-house seat at last month’s state election, and they stood in ten other state seats.

Recommendation: Give the Animal Justice Party a middling to decent preference. Calibrate this recommendation in accordance with your views on eating meat and consuming other animal products. I am leaning decent this year; beyond my reservations about some aspects of their special interests, they are not a bad left-wing option.

Website: https://www.animaljusticeparty.org/

[axvoter]

Welcome to the Blatantly Partisan Party Reviews: 2025 Australian federal election edition

I’ve already published one edition of the Blatantly Partisan Party Reviews for 2025, the WA state election; now, we turn to an even bigger electoral event, the Australian federal poll. A decade ago, with lax registration laws and the possibility of scoring a Senator off a minuscule vote thanks to the undemocratic distortions of Group Ticket Voting, a dizzying number of parties cluttered the ballot nationwide with misleading names and fringe platforms. Senate voting has now been reformed so that preferences only go where voters themselves direct them, and tighter enrolment laws have removed many chancers from the party register of the Australian Electoral Commission.

This year, I will be reviewing almost all parties contesting the election nationwide. I do not review Labor, the Liberal/National Coalition parties, or the Greens, because if you’re reading this blog you almost certainly know what you think about those parties. I have not yet decided if I will include One Nation in this edition. Otherwise, I am seeking to cover all registered parties who are fielding candidates, whether nationally or in just one state, and I will do my best to identify individuals standing nominally as independents but who represent an unregistered party. I will also cover independents contesting the Senate in Western Australia, where I live and vote; if I have time, I will cover any that catch my eye elsewhere (particularly Victoria, as I still think of Melbourne as “home”).

Time for my usual disclaimers: I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of a political party. I review from the perspective of a small-g green democratic socialist. I am trained and work as a political historian of Australia and New Zealand. This background guides my reviews, which originated as—and remain—notes to inform my own vote. I do not aim for any false neutrality or objectivity, and I share these remarks in the hope they are useful to others trying to navigate Australia’s plethora of micro-parties. It should be obvious but these are my personal opinions, which should not be construed as representing the views of my employer nor of any other organisation with which I am affiliated.

I am, of course, not alone in reviewing parties. Leading psephologist Kevin Bonham has already released his rundown of Tasmanian Senate candidates. The b_auspol blog will review the parties and independents that are contesting the Senate in NSW and, if the past is any guide, those reviews are certain to be smarter and more clear-eyed than mine. And Something for Cate is a blog continuing the thoughtful election-reviewing traditions of deeply-missed Catherine of Cate Speaks; it has been three years since we lost Cate and election season still feels empty without her, but I am so glad her legacy endures.

If you are unsure how to cast a ballot, Patrick Alexander has two handy explainers: you can’t waste your vote for the House of Representatives and what’s the go with voting for the Senate?

I will start posting reviews tomorrow. Early voting begins on Tuesday 22 April and I want to post as many reviews as possible by then. Each review concludes with a recommendation. Before I explain this, I should clarify that in the House of Representatives (small green ballot), you must number every square; in the Senate (large white ballot), you must number 1–6 above the line or 1–12 below the line, and then distribute further preferences if you want. I recommend giving full preferences in the Senate because failing to number all boxes weakens the power of your vote. The more preferences you give, the more powerful your vote is; it will stay in the count longer.

Here is my recommendation system for this year:

Good preference: a party with a positive overall platform that has few or no significant flaws for the left-wing voter.

Decent preference: a party with a generally positive overall platform but I have some reservations; or, a single-issue party with a good objective but by definition too limited in their scope to encompass the fullness of parliamentary business.

Middling preference: a party with a balance of positive and negative qualities, or a party with a decent platform undermined by a notably terrible policy or characteristic.

Weak or no preference: a party with more negatives than positives. In the House of Representatives, put these parties as low as possible. In the Senate, I recommend you do likewise to maximise the potential power of your vote; but I recognise that some of you prefer not to express preferences between varying gradations of undesirability or prefer not to rank the most odious parties.

This schema is flexible; I may, for instance, suggest a “middling to decent preference”.

Stay tuned for those very partisan reviews!

[axvoter]

Back in the saddle

There was movement at the TV stations this morning because word had gone around that the prime minister had got away to join the governor-general at Yarralumla. We enjoyed some motorsport for election nerds (footage of the Comcar chauffeuring Albo to have a chinwag with Sam Mostyn about dissolving parliament) before confirmation of the worst-kept secret of the past 24 hours: the federal election would be held on 3 May 2025.

Yes, as per usual, I will be reviewing the parties cluttering the ballot. At the moment there are 31 parties registered with the Australian Electoral Commission, although there is no guarantee all of them will field candidates (I've seen no indication, for instance, that Kim for Canberra intends to run either Kim Rubenstein or any other Kim). Once nominations have closed and ballots have been drawn on Friday 11 April, I will start posting my reviews. I will attempt to cover all the obscure micro-parties and try to identify nominal independents who are running on behalf of unregistered parties. I will also cover all independent candidates for the Senate in WA (where I live and vote), possibly Victoria (Melbourne still being "home" despite the fact I haven't lived there for some years), and maybe any other unusual or interesting independents who catch my eye around the country.

This is the quickest turnaround I've ever had from reviewing one election to reviewing another: the WA state count has still not yet been finalised! Data entry is ongoing for the WA Legislative Council and we are likely to know its form sometime next week. At the moment it appears Labor has won 16 seats, Liberals 10–11, Greens 4, Nationals 2, One Nation 1, Legalise Cannabis 1, Australian Christians 1, with 1–2 in doubt. Labor will be able to pass legislation with Greens support (20/37 seats) but they will also be hoping for some other decent pathways via the crossbench to pass legislation: if the Greens oppose a measure, Labor will need to find 3 votes elsewhere for an upper-house majority.

The counting in the WA Legislative Assembly, meanwhile, is all but complete, and it has been a total disaster for the Liberals. They were expected to win back a decent number more seats than they did. In my wrap-up I suggested "the Liberals might be able to form a cricket team from their members in the lower house". Instead, they could only field an XI with support from the Nationals. The final seat breakdown in the lower house is Labor 46, Liberal 7, Nationals 6. Roger Cook's ministry has cruised back into government.

This is WA Labor's second best result ever behind the never-to-be-repeated 2021 landslide, better than the 2017 landslide that brought them to power. The scale of 2021 is such that it now obscures just how much of a flogging the Liberals got in 2017 and how simply getting back to that level of representation was the bare minimum to get a pass mark: 31.23% of the primary vote and 13 seats. At this stage the Liberal share of the vote is a measly 28% (although all seat outcomes are known, the count is yet to be finalised—outstanding votes won't change the result anywhere, but might shift the exact percentages).

Will this result bode well for Labor's chances in WA seats federally? It obviously provides them with an important morale boost. Federal Labor is less popular here than state Labor—indeed, Roger Cook at times has made hay by distancing himself from his ostensible comrades over east—but I suspect they will hold on to a decent number of their gains from the 2022 federal election. I'm in a swing seat and corflutes are already going up from the Libs, Labor, and the Greens; a torrent of flyers will probably pour into my letterbox in the next few weeks.

Anyway, see you all in about a fortnight with the first of my Blatantly Partisan Party Reviews.