The Great Australian Party

Summary

Policies & Commentary

The Great Australian Party is essentially the party of Rod Culleton, former One Nation Senator who was disqualified from actually sitting in the Senate due to both bankruptcy and pending criminal charges. He is standing again in this election despite (a) still being an undischarged bankrupt and (b) having a whole fresh set of criminal charges pending. He currently styles himself as “Senator in Exile” and has become, according to himself, an authority on the Australian Constitution. A deeply idiosyncratic authority, to my mind, but many of GAP’s policies are based on interpretations of the Constitution that could charitably be called ‘minority views.’

The website lists their policies in alphabetical order, which means that Animal Welfare is the first cab off the rank. And honestly, there’s not a lot to object to here, at least not once you get past the first line, which states that Animals must be recognised as sentient beings that deserve our care and respect. I’m not sure why, or even if, animals can be considered sentient in literal terms, but maybe it’s more metaphorical. The rest of the policies here are fairly sound, even if the sections about care, respect and an end to animal cruelty might seem to be contradicted by some of the things about hunting that are in other policy areas.

Their proposal for People Initiated Referenda seems pretty sound, but I tend to think that this is a good idea, your mileage may vary. (I do think it sets the number of petition signatures needed to trigger a referendum far too low.) Their policy on Tribal Federation is equal parts white saviour bullshit and sovereign citizen bullshit – its absolute refusal to engage with native populations on their own terms is breath-taking.

I’m not going to go into a lot of detail, because frankly, there’s a lot of guff here and little of it is communicated very well. In general, the GAP is opposed to political correctness, to foreign ownership, to ‘globalism’ and the United Nations (except for those policies which specifically cite the United Nations as their sources), and it frequently promises to legislate things that are already law (which I suppose means it would be easy to turn around after the election and say “Look! Done!”), especially as regards Constitutional Law. It’s also very frequently anti-vaccination, due mostly to nebulous concerns about ‘freedom’ and conspiratorial fears about ‘globalism’.

There’s a distinctly sexist tone to a lot of the GAP’s policies, too. Not just in the obvious pro-traditional marriage, abolish the Family Court way (although those are there too), but in subtler ways as well. Their Health policy, for example, states that:
Nursing is a typical example, many girls who would have made excellent nurses, have been lost due to the disbandment of on the job apprenticeship training, for academic training.
Leaving aside the terrible grammar, that many girls is freighted with a whole bunch of assumptions about “women’s work.” Similarly, part of their education policy concerns the bond between mother and child, which seems deeply nanny state to me, but I’m just some politically correct leftie who thinks that a century plus of thought about Constitutional law matters, so what do I know?

Finally, I want to tell you about the Great Australian Party’s policies on firearms. This actually starts out reasonably: GAP will put an end to the inconsistency of state laws regarding the licensing of firearms. In general, moving the criminal code from state to federal law isn’t a terrible idea, although of course a lot depends on implementation. But then the very next line reads GAP believes in firearms ownership as a right, not a privilege. Everything else follows on predictably from there – if you just want to assume that their policy is essentially that the (American) National Rifle Association was right about everything, you’ll only be wrong on a couple of minor details. According to GAP, what this country needs is concealed carry for handguns, semi-automatic weapons for farmers and that reasonable defensive force is always justified and will ensure that laws reflect this maxim, which appears to be a version of the controversial Stand Your Ground laws in various American states (you know, the ones that studies have shown actually increase the homicide rate).

So, in short, this party is an absolute shoo-in for the very bottom of my ballot paper, number last literally with a bullet.

Just a reminder that Maz and I lack the necessary Eurovision knowledge to choose the songs that Catherine liked to include, but we’d love to see what you suggest in the comments below 🙂