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Family First

November 15, 2022 / Maz Weaver / 6 Comments

Summary

Website:	familyfirstparty.org.au
Social Media:	Facebook — Instagram
Previous Names:	none
Slogans:	Put Victorians Family First This Election
Themes:	Religion good. LGBTQIA+ bad.
Electorates:	Upper House: Eastern Victorian, North Eastern Metropolitan, Northern Metropolitan, Northern Victorian, South Eastern Metropolitan, Southern Metropolitan, Western Metropolitan, Western Victorian Lower House: Albert Park, Ashwood, Bayswater, Bass, Bellarine, Benambra, Bendigo East, Bendigo West, Bentleigh, Berwick, Box Hill, Brighton, Broadmeadows, Brunswick, Bundoora, Carrum, Caulfield, Clarinda, Cranbourne, Croydon, Dandenong, Eildon, Eltham, Essendon, Eureka, Evelyn, Footscray, Frankston, Geelong, Gippsland East, Gippsland South, Glen Waverley, Greenvale, Hastings, Hawthorn, Ivanhoe, Kalkallo, Kew, Kororoit, Lara, Laverton, Lowan, Macedon, Malvern, Melbourne, Melton, Mildura, Monbulk, Mornington, Morwell, Mulgrave, Murray Plains, Narracan, Narre Warren North, Narre Warren South, Nepean, Niddrie, Northcote, Oakleigh, Ovens Valley, Pakenham, Pascoe Vale, Preston, Point Cook, Polwarth, Prahran, Richmond, Ringwood, Ripon, Rowville, Sandringham, Shepparton, South Barwon, South-West Coast, St Albans, Sunbury, Sydenham, Tarneit, Thomastown, Warrandyte, Wendouree, Werribee, Williamstown, Yan Yean
Preferences:	FF are in lockstep across all Upper House seats. Preferences flow to the Freedom Party, Labour DLP, One Nation, and UAP in that order. No prizes for guessing why.
Previous Reviews:	2014 VIC — 2013 — 2010

Missing
Inaction…

November 14, 2022 / Loki / 12 Comments

So, it wouldn’t be an election unless there were some candidates we were unable to locate.

Some of them are out there, just not really doing much. This includes the New Democrats (Kaushaliya Vaghela as their most visible member), the Restore Democracy Sack Dan Andrews Party (Tosh-Jake Finnigan, ditto) and independents Fred Ackerman, Storm Hellmuth and Mehdi Sayed. For these candidates, we’ve reached out to them on Facebook with the following message:

Hi there. My name is Loki, from Something for Cate, a website that analyses the policies people are taking into elections (I’ve included a link below). As you are a candidate in the Victorian election this year, we were wondering if we could send you a short list of questions about your positions, and post the answers on our site?

We’ve also included Walter Villagonzalo in this group, because although he does have a site, it’s more about what he’s done in the past than his plans for the future.

We’re giving them until next Sunday to get back to us – time is running out, after all.

There are others whom we have not succeeded in locating at all:

Colin John Mancell (Northern Metro)
Esther Demian (Western Metro)
John O’Brien (Eastern Vic) — NOW LOCATED! Thanks Simon!

So we probably won’t be writing much about them.

Health Australia Party

November 14, 2022 / Maz Weaver / 3 Comments

Summary

Website:	healthaustraliaparty.com.au
Social Media:	Facebook — Instagram — YouTube
Previous Names:	none
Slogans:	For All Australians… A Healthy Choice
Themes:	Alternative therapies good, lockdowns and mandates bad. We’re not a single issue party, we’re sensible and balanced. Honest.
Electorates:	Upper House: Eastern Victorian, North Eastern Metropolitan, Northern Metropolitan, Northern Victorian, South Eastern Metropolitan, Southern Metropolitan, Western Metropolitan, Western Victorian Lower House: Melton, Point Cook, Werribee
Preferences:	All over the place. Really. HAP’s preferences vary wildly from region to region, and honestly, I can’t see an overarching theme here. In Eastern Victoria, they favour Shooters Fishers and Farmers and Animal Justice (which are about as different a pair as you can get), while in Western Victoria the Angry Victorian Party edges out SFF and Animal Justice is way down on the ticket. The Metropolitan Regions aren’t any better. Labour DLP, Angry Victorians, Justice Party (not to be confused with Animal Justice, Liberal Democrats, and Sustainable Australia all pop up in the top 5. If you’re looking for a sense of where HAP sees its political alignment, you won’t find it on their Group Voting Tickets.
Previous Reviews:	2018 VIC

Transport Matters Party

November 13, 2022 / Loki / 12 Comments

Summary

Website:	transportmatters.org.au
Social Media:	Facebook — Twitter
Previous Names:	none
Slogans:	Community Driven, Fairness Focused
Themes:	Public Transport Health Taxis
Electorates:	Upper House: Eastern Victorian, North Eastern Metropolitan, Northern Metropolitan, Northern Victorian, South Eastern Metropolitan, Southern Metropolitan, Western Metropolitan, Western Victorian Lower House: Point Cook, Werribee
Preferences:	The Group Voting Tickets of Transport Matters are wildly inconsistent from region to region, with the sole exception that the Freedom Party is always dead last, with One Nation, Family First and UAP battling it out for the next three spaces in most regions. The rest of the bottom half is usually filled out by Companions and Pets, the Coalition, ALP and the Greens, from highest to lowest – although in the Northern Metro region, 3rd place ALP candidate Susie Byers gets their fourth preference. The rest of the parties and candidates in each region seem to have mostly been sorted by some combination of brownian motion and complete indifference – although it’s notable that in Western and Eastern regions respectively, independents John O’Brian and Storm Hellmuth only just scrape in above Freedom, and Companions and Pets are third last in Northern Metro. I’m sure there is a signal somewhere in this noise, but damn is there a lot of noise.
Previous Reviews:	2018 VIC

Angry Victorians Party

November 12, 2022 / Maz Weaver / 6 Comments

Summary

Website:	australianvalues.org.au/angryvictorians
Social Media:	Facebook — Instagram — YouTube — LinkedIn
Previous Names:	Australian Values Party
Slogans:	Politics People Turning Anger into Action and Action into Change
Themes:	We’re angry and it’s all Dan’s fault
Electorates:	Upper House: Eastern Victorian, North Eastern Metropolitan, Northern Metropolitan, Northern Victorian, South Eastern Metropolitan, Southern Metropolitan, Western Metropolitan, Western Victorian Lower House: Bellarine, Lara, Lowan
Preferences:	Perhaps unsurprisingly, One Nation, Health Australia, and the Freedom Party are often high up on AVP’s Group Voting Ticket. Surprisingly – given that they have nothing to say at all about lockdowns or vaccine mandates – Legalise Cannabis features heavily. Astonishingly, Reason is preferenced in the Northern Metropolitan Region (see below for just why this is strange).
Previous Reviews:	2022 (as the Australian Values Party)

Companions and Pets Party

November 10, 2022 / Loki / 9 Comments

Summary

Website:	companionsandpetsparty.com.au
Social Media:	Facebook — Twitter
Previous Names:	none
Slogans:	Protecting your right and freedom to love and own Companion Animals
Themes:	Your right to enjoy and own animals PETA is wrong about everything
Electorates:	Upper House: Eastern Victorian, North Eastern Metropolitan, Northern Metropolitan, Northern Victorian, South Eastern Metropolitan, Southern Metropolitan, Western Metropolitan, Western Victorian Lower House: Nepean
Preferences:	There’s nothing terribly surprising in CAP’s preference distribution – it’s business-lovers at the top and environment-lovers at the bottom, and I’m sure it’s no surprise that Animal Justice is at the very bottom of the ticket every time, with the Greens just ahead of them. Starting at the top, CAP preferences the Coalition parties first, followed by the Liberal Democrats and the DLP. Shooters, Fishers and Farmers come next, except in the Eastern and Western Victorian regions, where they are placed second, with the LibDems and DLP after them. After that, it’s United Australia, One Nation, Angry Victorians, Sack Dan Andrews and, curiously, Transport Matters. Then follows Freedom Victoria, independent candidates if there are any in that region, New Democrats, Legalise Cannabis and the ALP. After the ALP, it’s a less predictable assortment – you have Family First, Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party, the Victorian Socialists, Sustainable Australia, Reason and Health Australia, before we get to the final pair I mentioned above.
Previous Reviews:	none – they’re new

Getting ready

October 16, 2022 / Loki / 6 Comments

Okay, a day of tinkering and moving things around and adding things, and this site is a few steps closer to being ready for the Victorian election. In particular, we’ve populated the lists of parties running in the state upper house with the most up to date information we have on who is running (you can find those in the sidebar, under the heading Victoria — Region by Region), and we’ll be keeping those updated (and even putting them into the correct ballot order once actual ballots are certified).

Coming up next, we’ll have a post about how voting in the Victorian upper house differs from voting in the federal upper house, and then we’ll start getting into the actual reviews of parties and candidates.

Those of you who get email updates on this site may have received a flurry of emails this afternoon, because we have been working on the site, getting it ready for the next election, and we forgot to turn off those notifications – sorry about that folks, please don’t put us in your spam filters!

Voting for Victorians

October 10, 2022 / Loki / 3 Comments

Hiya folks. Hope you’ve all been keeping well since the Federal Election.

For those of you who live in Victoria, you’re probably aware that we have an election coming up on November 26.

So now’s the perfect time to check your enrolment, although if it hasn’t changed since May, you probably don’t need to worry, since the federal enrolment information is shared with the states and will be identical. But if you’re unsure, you can confirm your details here. Even if you haven’t moved, you may want to check just to confirm which electorates you are in, as the state electorates differ from the federal electorates, and there has also been some shifting of boundaries – so even if you haven’t moved in the last four years, your electorate may have.

If you have moved since then, or are going to be moving before the election, you should update your address, which you can do here.

And finally, if you’re new to all this, you can enrol to vote here. If you are updating or enrolling, the deadline is Tuesday, the 8th of November, so you have a little less than a month yet to take care of that.

Early voting begins on November 14, and the VEC will be releasing the information on where you can vote (before and on election day) on November 2 – they’ll be putting a link to those details here.

We’ll be back soon with an explainer on how the Victorian state electoral system differs from the Federal system in the next little while. Be seeing you.

Abortion in Australia

June 26, 2022 / Loki / 0 Comments

Hi folks. We’re not planning on making a habit of this, but some issues are too pressing, too important, to remain silent about. So here we are.

We have watched with great dismay and disgust the recent decision of the United States Supreme Court overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade decision of 1972. This is a terrible thing for reproductive rights, for women in America and for humanity everywhere. It does not directly affect us in Australia, although it may serve to embolden certain conservative voices over here.

To our American friends and allies, we offer our empathy and our support. We see you, and we are here for you.

Ironically, the recent American decision returns that country to a situation not unlike that in Australia: the laws are different in every state.

First off, this article has a good summary of the laws surrounding abortion in each state (you will need to scroll down past the story to find it). There are a lot of common features, but every state has its own peculiarities. In addition, this summary does not include information about the exclusion zones surrounding clinics (i.e. the areas in which anti-abortion protestors are not permitted to gather), so we have briefly summarised it below:

No Exclusion Zone: NT, SA & WA
50m Exclusion Zone: ACT
150m Exclusion Zone: NSW, QLD, TAS & VIC

If you are in need, or think you might be in need, of an abortion, there are places you can reach out to and people you can talk to about this:

Finally, if you find yourself filled with rage and horror at the Supreme Court’s decision and what it might mean for Australia, there are constructive things you can do with your anger. The fight to ensure reproductive rights is far from over in Australia: our existing rights need to be protected, maintained and extended. Here are some folk who will be glad of your help:

Please note that none of these lists are complete, and we welcome additional suggestions to add to them.

How my Democracy Sausage was made

June 4, 2022 / Loki / 18 Comments

Well now. That… that was really something.

When I volunteered to carry on in Cate’s name, I thought I knew what I was letting myself in for. Cate made it look easy, but then, I saw only the democracy sausages, not their making.

Making them is much more difficult than I realised. Writing isn’t that hard, reading isn’t that hard (a few grammar challenged sites to the contrary), but thinking, analysing, comparing – and most of all, trying to do so from an assumption of good faith, if not actual objectivity¹ – that, friends and neighbours, is hard work.

I’ve learned a lot from doing this. About how to do it, and how to do it better next time (and yes, there will be a next time). About myself, which was a surprise. And I’ve learned a better appreciation of my dear friend Catherine, too.

I mean, I’d read almost every post she ever made on Cate Speaks, but I read them as they were published. It’s when you sit down and read multiple posts about the same parties over the span of a decade, that you see not just how the parties change over time, but how the person writing them did. It should come as little surprise that Catherine improved as a writer over this time, or that she took this work more seriously the more she did it.

But I hadn’t noticed, until the contrast was right there in front of me, the growing sophistication and subtlety of Catherine’s perceptions over the years. One understands these things in a general way, that we change as the years pass, hopefully into a better version of ourselves. But in reading four posts about the same party written a few years apart each time, that understanding is no longer general, but specific, almost quantifiable.

Writing these posts, carrying on this important work, has been a privilege, a responsibility, and an honour. Thank you to each and every one of you who read these, who posted comments, or sent links to friends, or let us know how much you appreciated this work. We didn’t do it for the praise, but it’s still nice to receive it.

The other thing I didn’t foresee going into this was that it was running headlong into my grief at Catherine’s loss. I felt her presence and her absence constantly. For the first week or so, I wanted to ask her if I was doing it right approximately every half hour. Let me tell you, it’s not imposter syndrome when you actually are replacing someone.

That’s all I have for now. See you back here when the Victorian State Election draws closer, and thank you for your time. It means the world to me.

Something for Cate

Page 4 of 9

Family First

Summary

Missing
Inaction…

Health Australia Party

Summary

Transport Matters Party

Summary

Angry Victorians Party

Summary

Companions and Pets Party

Summary

Getting ready

Voting for Victorians

Abortion in Australia

How my Democracy Sausage was made

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