#Restore Democracy Sack Dan Andrews

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review XIII (Victoria 2022): Restore Democracy Sack Dan Andrews

Prior reviews: None, this is a new party.

Hoo boy here we go!

It is very funny to me that a party with “restore democracy” in its name is right in the thick of manipulating the utterly anti-democratic Group Ticket Voting system to distort the will of voters—and, now, it is right in the thick of just one of the many controversies this election has unleashed.. Basically, the Animal Justice Party pulled a hilarious and righteous sting on “preference whisperer” Glenn Druery and his cabal of parties that exploit Group Ticket Voting system to distort the will of voters. They strung along Druery and will receive preferences from his cabal, but lodged their own group ticket with preferences that align with party ideology and they are now calling for the system to be reformed. In doing so, they spilt some tea, claiming that Druery and Adem Somyurek (DLP, ex-Labor) set up Restore Democracy Sack Dan Andrews (RDSDA).

The Angry Victorians Party then leaked a video in which Druery claimed that RDSDA is “one of mine”. He goes on: “Every other party was (saying) sack Dan Andrews, sack Dan Andrews, sack Dan Andrews and I was like, ‘Ah ha. We are going to call them the Sack Dan Andrews Party’. And we did. We, me and my allies.”

So, if we accept Druery’s leaked account, this party is simply on the ballot to grab the attention of cookers (notoriously low-info voters at the best of times) and then funnel their preferences to the cabal’s preferred parties. It’s noteworthy that the actual cooker parties seem to have very little to do with RDSDA, giving some credence to Druery. I can’t say I’m too sad about cookers being hoodwinked, but it’s the principle of the matter here.

It gets even more interesting, though. The leader of RDSDA, Tosh-Jake Finnigan, rejects Druery’s claims utterly and says that Druery had “fuck-all involvement”. Who to believe? Welcome to the messy world of micro-party shenanigans!

It doesn’t really matter too much, because this is not a party you want to support. It’s either a Druery front or a revenge party—indeed, it’s probably both. Why do I say it’s a revenge party? Because Finnigan was the whistleblower for the “Red Shirts” scandal. The upshot is that Labor paid $388,000 of public funds during the 2014 election to casual electorate staff who were actually doing party campaign work, but earlier this year the Victorian ombudsman determined that Dan Andrews had not “designed, propagated, or facilitated” the scheme. Now, say what you will about the scandal—and frankly I felt like it had very little cut-through, with almost the only people who cared about it being Labor opponents who wanted something to shout about—but the whole experience appears to have left Finnigan extremely angry and their chosen path for revenge is this micro-party.

Guess where you’ll find RDSDA’s website. No, go on, guess.

It’s not Restore Democracy dot com dot au, no, RDSDA snaffled up viclabor dot org. You can just about feel the grudge.

And what sort of policies do RDSDA offer, anyway? I dunno if policies for a chip-on-the-shoulder preference-harvesting-front are worth the site they’re posted on, but RDSDA promises they will “drain Dan’s swamp” (spot the Trumpian language!) by… uhh… a few lazy bullet points posing as policy. They want a royal commission into and greater oversight of IBAC and the ombudsman (i.e. “they ruled against me therefore they will suffer”). And most of the rest of the bullet points are childish rants about “Ending Dan’s Inner City Woke Agenda”, whatever that is, “Ending Dan’s Dictatorship”, which is tied to anti-lockdown cooker rhetoric, and “Stop[ping] Dan lecturing, screaming at, and bullying working-class Victorians”. It’s puerile stuff—but you expected that from a party with a personal attack for a name, didn’t you?

My recommendation: Give Restore Democracy Sack Dan Andrews a weak or no preference. Remember to vote below the line on the large ballot for the Legislative Council so that your preference goes where you want it to go; all ballots with 5 or more preferences marked below the line are valid votes.

Website: https://viclabor.org/