Australia’s Voice

Summary

Policies & Commentary

Once upon a time, Fatima Payman was an ALP Senator, elected in 2022 by the state of West Australia. And then, in July 2024, she crossed the floor to vote against her party, supporting Australian recognition of Palestinian statehood. She was suspended from caucus, quit the party and spent the rest of her term as an independent on the crossbench. But she was very far from done. In this election, she’s got her own party running candidates in five states, and a whole suite of policies that often sound more traditionally Labor than Labor does. (Although it should be noted that her chief of staff is Glenn Druery, who seems to have got out of preference whispering.)

First off, and obviously, there’s the idea that Australia should take a strong stand against genocide. While Payman herself is clearly motivated by the ongoing war in Gaza, the policy consists of three bills co-sponsored with Senator Lidia Thorpe, and two of the three bills speak of genocide only in general terms, rather than specifically pointing fingers:

• The Genocide Risk Reporting Bill 2024 “requires Australian government agencies and businesses involved in weapons manufacturing to disclose their supply chains, ensuring they don’t contribute to genocide” and “also introduces an Anti-Genocide Commissioner to hold those who don’t comply accountable with tough penalties.”
• The Defence Trade Controls Amendment Bill 2024 “blocks Australian military exports that could contribute to genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity, and embeds international legal definitions of genocide and war crimes into Australian law” – and also specifies that the AUKUS agreement is not exempt from these laws.
• The Treasury Laws Amendment Bill 2024 “stops Australia’s sovereign wealth fund from investing in companies profiting from illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land and prevents Australian charities from funding companies operating in these settlements.”

Honestly, as an anti-Israel stance, these are a lot milder than Payman’s critics have tried to paint her, and I don’t see anything to disagree with in them.

Mind you, the specific mention of AUKUS above seems a little odd given that one of Voice’s other policies is to scrap the AUKUS deal anyway. They’d also like to Australia become a republic, trigger laws for breaking up the supermarket duopoly, Parliament rather than the Prime Minister deciding on whether Australia goes to war, the JobSeeker rate increased to $82 a day, an increase of the payment threshold for HECS to match the median wage, HECS debts to be capped at 1.5 times the original debt, a gas supply reserve, and an increase to the Remote Area Allowance in line with CPI. All of these seem reasonably achievable and achievably reasonable – the JobSeeker increase, for example, is less than the covid era increases under Morrison. The one exception is the gas supply idea, which seems very similar to the Liberal Party’s gas reservation policy, which is getting a fair amount of pushback from gas suppliers. (Of course, gas suppliers have a financial interest in the system not changing, so it’s not clear exactly what the facts are here.)

They also have short but sweet housing policy, wanting to “limit negative gearing” (although those three words are as detailed as that bit gets) and “reduce the Capital Gains Tax discount from 50% to 25%, lowering it by 5% each year over five years.” They also want to “slash political perks” and “freeze MP pay rises”, both of which are quite sensible, although again, there’s a lack of detail here. Voice is also calling for “establishing a clear definition and measure of poverty” as a necessary first step to addressing the wider issue. It’s both a good idea and also embarrassing that this is a thing that we apparently need to do in Australia.

They’re calling for real action on climate change, specifically with support for renewables and a clean energy transition, and also “to strengthen Australia’s role in global efforts to fight climate change, particularly in our Pacific region” – which is honestly a pretty low bar, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt here. Sticking with foreign relations, they still want us out of AUKUS, and point out that if we stay, we’ve made no plan to deal with the nuclear waste from the submarines. (Which is also, I think we can safely say, a dig at one of the more obvious holes in Dutton’s nuclear power policy.) In addition, they want Australia to develop “sovereign satellite capabilities” (an idea that only gets more appealing each time I read another story about Elon Musk and/or Starlink), and to “prioritise diplomacy, trade, and climate cooperation in our region”. Again, these sound like common sense to me, but I assume not to most of the parties using the phrase common sense in their policy statements.

Their Domestic Violence policy us one of the most detailed, and strikes me as being well-thought out, but focused on the financial aspects of the issue to a detriment of wider concerns:

Family and domestic violence is a widespread crisis in Australia, with many survivors struggling to rebuild their lives and secure a future for themselves and their children.

Currently, victim-survivors can apply for superannuation splitting through family courts to regain financial control. But this process is complex, costly, and often requires survivors to face their abusers again – leaving them vulnerable and retraumatised.

Australia’s Voice is committed to changing the law so that superannuation is automatically split in cases of family and domestic violence.

This policy will:

• End financial abuse by guaranteeing that survivors receive a fair share of superannuation.
• Provide long-term financial security, enabling victims to rebuild their lives with confidence.
• Remove legal barriers, making it easier for survivors to move forward without the added stress of complex legal battles.

It strikes me as an excellent course of action, but also only deals with one aspect of the larger problem.

Finally, there’s banking. Australia’s Voice wants the establishment (or re-establishment, technically) of a publicly owned bank in Australia, whose function would basically be to do all the things that other banks do, and also all the things they like to complain are too unprofitable, like providing services to rural Australia, to senior citizens and to small businesses. All banks, this one included, would be governed by a new mandatory code of conduct which would basically consist of stopping them from doing the kinds of things we had a Royal Commission about a few years ago.

And that’s it, for now at least – there is apparently “more to come…” – although personally, I’d be okay with just more details on these.

All in all, I find myself more impressed by this party than I was expecting to, and I’ll be putting them ahead of the ALP on my ballot, and maybe higher than that.