axvoter

[axvoter]

Boy oh boy I did not expect an outcome that emphatic!

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review XXX (federal 2025): The Never-Rans

Here's a special election-night treat for you. But keep your pants on: although this is review XXX in my 2025 federal election series, a bonus to the 29 reviews I wrote before election day, you cannot get any electoral stimulation from these parties as you will not find them on any ballot nationwide. Nobody erected a corflute for these parties; nobody came to their rallies, nobody left flyers in letterboxes to arouse the attention of potential voters. They are on the AEC's register of parties but they did not or could not get up to the polls.

Back in 2013, at the end of the first edition of this blog, I did a review of the never-rans: parties that never achieved registration and did not endorse an independent candidate. Our never-rans this year are a bit different in that they are registered parties who are running nowhere. There are, amazingly, four of them. This review, then, is more like one I wrote in 2016 for 21st Century Australia, which was registered but ran no candidates (and is the reason why ever since I have not begun drafting reviews until the close of nominations). One of the four parties has a perfectly valid reason for not bothering to run this year, but as we'll see the rest are a bit odd.

Tammy Tyrrell for Tasmania (website)

A former staffer for Jacqui Lambie, Tyrrell won election to the Senate at the 2022 election as the lead candidate for Lambie's Network. But in March 2024, she quit the party for reasons that have never been explained adequately (see my JLN review for more on the party's implosion during 2024). She registered her own party in August 2024, and the website now covers her views on big issues in Tasmania (for starters, she doesn't like the new stadium for Hobart) and solicits constituent support for specific campaigns (it seems the most popular is, uh, bring Aldi to Tasmania).

Tyrrell's term runs through to 2028, so she is not up for re-election this year. Fatima Payman, after her acrimonious split from Labor, founded Australia's Voice as an attempt to seek a national supporter base even though she too is not up for re-election until 2028, so her party does have candidates this year, but the very name of Tyrrell's new party indicates that there are no aspirations for it beyond being a vehicle for Tyrrell herself. Hence, no Tammy Tyrrell for Tasmania on any ballot this election. Fair enough!

Dai Le & Frank Carbone W.S.C. (website for Dai Le)

I actually covered this one in a review as part of this year's series. You can read more on the background there, but basically: Dai Le appears on ballots today as an independent, and the party she registered is not named on ballots anywhere. In an interview with Leo Puglisi, Le kept using cliches to describe how the party registration was part of "planting a seed" for the future, but one struggles to see how that seed can grow when it is not being watered, i.e. voters are not seeing the name on ballots or corflutes or flyers. If she intends to use it in future for a cohort of candidates, building name recognition now would help.

I have 3 speculative theories why Le has not used the party name this time around, all of which are based on absolutely no insider knowledge nor any gossip:

Le thinks that running under the "independent" label is more valuable electorally because some voters have a negative perception of parties and an idealised view about independents (which I discussed in my review of the teals when I urged that group of indies to hurry up and form their own party already)

Maybe the relationship between her and Frank Carbone has cooled or their ambitions and views have diverged in consequential ways

Perhaps her and Carbone had plans that they have now postponed because they could not commit the time and resources necessary to do anything meaningful with the party

(or some mixture of "all of the above")

Kim for Canberra (outdated website)

I have not the first clue why Kim Rubenstein has maintained her party's registration rather than letting it lapse. I have a lot of time for Kim—she is a great scholar whom I know professionally, if fleetingly—and I reviewed her tilt in 2022 favourably. But if she had entertained ideas of running again in 2025, they were not aired publicly nor in any professional space to which I am privy, and she would have been wasting her time if she did try because Pocock has largely filled the electoral space that she would have occupied. I can only assume her party registration will lapse sooner or later.

Better Together (website)

Yeah OK this is the main reason I wanted to do this entry. This is the party of Lucy Bradlow and Bronwen Bock, and if those names sound familiar to you it is because in 2024 they got media attention for a proposed tilt at the now-abolished seat of Higgins as "job-sharing independent candidates". Their initial Bradlow+Bock branding made them look more like a real estate agency than aspirational politicians. After the AEC's redistribution wiped Higgins off the electoral map, they pivoted to standing for the Senate in Victoria and registered this party, still with the intention of being job-sharing candidates.

I cannot emphasise strongly enough how absolutely ridiculous this job-sharing proposal is because it is not legal, it cannot happen, and it will not happen unless and until parliament changes the Electoral Act to permit it. Only one person can be nominated for any one seat in either house of parliament; the states are multi-member electorates for the Senate but each seat must be filled by one and only one person. The job-sharing concept raises serious electoral and parliamentary difficulties that cannot be addressed easily and it is impossible to imagine parliament amending the Electoral Act to allow Bradlow and Bock to do what they want to do. It can't happen, it won't happen, and their persistence in pushing the idea became so tenacious that the AEC had to issue a press release pointing out that it would be compelled to reject any such application.

Getting a public rebuke from the AEC was not enough to stop Bradlow and Bock, who launched a Federal Court case against the Commonwealth in February. They insist that what they want is to make parliament "like any other workplace, where there are options for people who are unable or unwilling to work 24-7 and be always available". Unfortunately, legislating and running the country is not like an ordinary job. In much the same way as a national budget cannot and should not be considered equivalent to a household budget or that running the government cannot and should not be considered equivalent to running a business (despite what some pundits and politicians try to say), parliament cannot be "like any other workplace".

But, in the end, it was all moot. As well as not doing their homework about parliament, governance, or electoral law, Bradlow and Bock did not do their homework about whether they met constitutional eligibility requirements—at least not until they had got months of media attention, wasted the AEC's energy, and gone all the way to the courts. It turns out one of them is a South African citizen and ineligible for election under section 44(i) of the Australian constitution. Aaaand that was that, their tilt at the 2025 election was over.

As they say: lol, lmao even

[axvoter]

My election predictions

Polls are open around Australia, so let's have some fun making election predictions. I don't usually do this, but I have thoughts this year. Lots of 'em.

Now, I'm no oracle. In my 2022 review of the teals, I included some predictions. Here's how I fared. I predicted 2–3 out of Zoe Daniel, Monique Ryan, Allegra Spender, and Kylea Tink would win, with particular confidence Daniel would be one of the winners; all four won. I was not persuaded Kate Chaney could win; she did, 51.26% on the two-candidate-preferred count. I said David Pocock would fall a few percent short for the ACT Senate; he beat Zed Seselja (Liberal incumbent) by 7.76%!

And I predicted that "one other indie, not necessarily a teal, [would] unseat an incumbent somewhere in the country". Another teal did unseat an incumbent—quite to my surprise, Sophie Scamps won Mackellar on Sydney's Northern Beaches (a land unto itself, imperceptible from outside). Moreover, non-teal independent Dai Le famously, notoriously, hilariously thwarted Kristina Keneally's attempt to parachute into Sydney's western suburbs from Scotland Island, north of the Northern Beaches.

So, let's go more comprehensive this time. What do I think is going to happen after polls close at 6pm?

(key: 2CP = two-candidate-preferred; 3CP = three-candidate-preferred)

Who forms government?

Labor forms government: it will be tight on whether it is minority or majority, but by the end of the night I think the vibes will be majority. If it is minority, it will be like NSW after the 2023 state election, where only Chris Minns and Labor could form a government. Peter Dutton will not be prime minister tomorrow. He might well not be leader of the opposition either.

Overall, I think in net seat terms this will be a "nothing ever happens" sort of election, but that few net changes will mask volatility around the country. There are many intriguing non-classic contests to watch in tonight's count (a "classic contest" is Labor vs Lib or Nat). My preferred outcome is a Labor-led minority, as a progressive and ambitious crossbench could achieve quite a lot, but the last couple of weeks of the wheels falling off Dutton's campaign has made me suspect a Labor majority is now the most likely outcome.

How will the Greens do?

The nationwide total for the Greens will be their best (>13.1%) or second-best (12.6–13.1%) share of the vote ever, but it won't be reflected in significant gains in parliament—indeed, they will probably go backwards or hold steady on lower house seats. If they go backwards in seats held, the media narrative will be "what went wrong?" even if their vote share is a record 14%.

My prediction is that the Greens easily retain a Senator in each state, and as for the House of Reps seats most prominent in their campaign:

Melbourne: easy Greens retain

Griffith: Greens retain

Wills: narrow Greens gain from Labor

Brisbane, Richmond, Ryan: a total mess with a very tight 3CP count, where they could conceivably improve their primary vote in each and still lose the lot; I think Greens lose either/both of Brisbane (to Labor if so) and Ryan (to Liberal if so), while in Richmond the Greens could squeak a win over Labor—or come first on primary votes and lose in the end!

Macnamara: easy Labor retain

If the Greens reach the 2CP in any other seat, I don't think they will be in contention to win.

(Disclaimer: as a former Wills voter, my prediction there is laced with traces of hopium, although I haven't predicted a Greens win there before. Based on a couple of recent visits back home to Brunswick, I suspect that if Samantha Ratnam does not win we will see a very stark divide from south to north. Bell St is the traditional barrier, although my belief Ratnam can win is from the Greens vote gradually working its way up the Upfield line plus Wills gaining some very Greens territory in a redistribution from the Division of Melbourne.)

Incumbent non-teal indies?

Russell Broadbent (ex-National) will lose Monash, Ian Goodenough (ex-Liberal) will lose Moore, and David Van (ex-Liberal) is running a thoroughly doomed ungrouped independent candidacy for the Senate in Victoria. All three, most obviously Van, are doing so to get the financial perks for a sitting MP who loses their seat, which a retiring MP does not receive. George Christensen did the same thing in 2022, running as One Nation's third candidate in Queensland.

How about the more serious contenders? Helen Haines (all but a teal), Rebekha Sharkie, and Andrew Wilkie will easily retain their seats. Hard to say about Fowler: Dai Le now has incumbency perks but will the seat revert to its Labor traditions now that the party has put up Tu Le, who should have always been the candidate in 2022? Or is the choice of Keneally still rankling the locals and Labor has let Tu Le have a go one electoral cycle too late? I'm going to say Dai Le holds on.

Andrew Gee (ex-National) quit his former party for very good reasons—his support for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament—and he faces a mighty challenge to retain Calare in a contest with endorsed Nationals candidate Sam Farraway, a former NSW state minister, and independent Kate Hook, who won 20.4% of the primary vote last time (40.32% 2CP) and has Climate 200 funding. It might be even tougher for Gee to win this seat than it was for him fling an Akubra hat so far that he won the Mumbil Black Wattle Fair's Chuck Akubra contest—twice! But he could win. It may well come down to 3CP. If Hook is third and Gee is in the top two, I say that he wins. If Gee is third, Hook has a shot if she's close to Farraway. If Hook and Gee both sit ahead of Farraway, who knows! I think Farraway definitely makes the top two on 3CP but beyond that... probably Farraway? but maybe Gee?

Incumbent teals?

Most incumbents will retain. Kylea Tink is not contesting the election after North Sydney was abolished in a redistribution. Amelia Hamer has done a Georgina Downer (real ones know) and blown a good opportunity for the Liberals to regain Kooyong and Monique Ryan will be returned. Zoe Daniel, Allegra Spender, and Zali Steggall will retain their seats—Daniel hopefully doesn't need to sweat it in Goldstein because the Liberals let profoundly unlikeable man Tim Wilson try to regain the seat he still has not accepted he lost in 2022. But I think Kate Chaney narrowly loses Curtin, and I have no read at all on Sophie Scamps in Mackellar for the reasons noted above about the mysteries of the Northern Beaches. She might romp in, she might get flogged, who can say what goes on north of the Spit Bridge.

Do any more teals/community independents become MPs?

I said in my review of the teals that Alex Dyson in Wannon, Nicolette Boele in Bradfield, and Caz Heise in Cowper will all be competitive. I think Dyson narrowly wins Wannon, ousting Liberal frontbencher Dan Tehan. Boele got some bad press for making a sexualised joke to a 19-year-old hair salon employee early in the campaign but this did not blow up into a high-profile media pile-on. I thought it might stall her campaign but now I suspect she has a real chance of winning, especially as Bradfield takes in some territory formerly in Kylea Tink's seat of North Sydney. Heise might have maxed out last time, but Cowper does like indies (it was Rob Oakeshott's seat, he of the 17-minute speech in 2010 that finally concluded with him giving Gillard and Labor the crucial support necessary to govern in minority). I will be surprised but not shocked if she wins.

Next door to Bradfield is Berowra, where Tina Brown has run a reasonably high-profile campaign, even winning support from Phillip and Heather Ruddick (the latter quitting the Liberals to work on her campaign), but I don't think she beats Julian Leeser (Liberal).

I'm bullish on Erchana Murray-Bartlett in McPherson. She has run a great campaign (literally). Although the Gold Coast has had federal MPs from the LNP and its predecessors since 1906, and just one state seat is currently in Labor hands (Gaven), Murray-Bartlett's cause is not hopeless. At state level, Gold Coast seats have been more volatile—I lived there as a teenager and witnessed Labor sweep most seats at the height of Peter Beattie's popularity in the 2000s—and I think Murray-Bartlett is pitching her campaign very well to voters who are not prepared to go Labor but are open to changing their vote from LNP. The seat is vacant, with the LNP hoping Leon Rebello can replace outgoing member Karen Andrews, so it's now or never for Murray-Bartlett. I'm going to say she might just get her nose across the finish line first on 2CP.

There's been chatter about Suzie Holt in Groom but for mine she has no chance. Kate Hulett is a rare teal competitive against an incumbent Labor MP rather than Liberal, but in the federal seat of Fremantle she won't get as close to victory as she did in the more compact state seat of the same name, where she very nearly entered the WA parliament last March (49.2% on 2CP). She might well regret renouncing her entitlement to a British passport the next time she lands at Heathrow.

Uh-oh, what about One Nation?

The Senate could be bad. They are a chance of taking a seat off the Coalition in all five mainland states. Malcolm Roberts will retain his seat in Queensland and I am worried we will see at least 2 others join him. The one thing we can count on, at least, is that most people struggle to work with Pauline and they might not be members of One Nation in a year or two: assuming Roberts does not quit the party before close of polls today, only 7/40 people ever elected for One Nation to date have served a full term from one election to the next. What's worrying is they might prove even worse out on their own, like Fraser Anning.

Beyond there, One Nation will finish in the 2CP for Hunter but Labor will retain the seat (where would we be without parliament's largest lad, Dan Repacholi, and his annual "Burgers of the Hunter" calendar?). One Nation could also get into the 2CP in Maranoa without remotely challenging the LNP's hold on the seat.

So, yeah, the Senate?

At most elections, most states split 3/3 left/right, and I think that will happen in all six this time. The territories and Tasmania are easiest to predict: NT will be 1 Labor, 1 Country Liberal; ACT will be 1 Labor, 1 David Pocock; Tasmania will be 2 Labor, 2 Liberal, 1 Green, 1 Jacqui Lambie. Anything else would be a surprise. Elsewhere, Queensland will be 2 LNP, 2 Labor, 1 One Nation, 1 Green. In the remaining four states, the left side of the 3/3 split will be 2 Labor, 1 Green.

I can't confidently predict in which states the Liberals/Nationals will hold all 3 right-wing Senate seats and in which states One Nation will win the third. But One Nation is the only realistic contender of the panoply of weird right-wing micros. Clive Palmer's money can't buy him electoral love; his Trumpets play a discordant tune. The far-right vote will be scattered, and One Nation is the one consistent brand. They will do better than the other ratbags on primaries, and so stay in the race and have preferences from others flow to them. Rennick is no chance of retaining his Senate seat as he is in Queensland, One Nation's best state; even though Pauline isn't on the ballot, Malcolm Roberts should beat Rennick. WA and NSW have elected One Nation Senators before, there is chatter One Nation is doing well in SA (especially regionally) and they came close to the sixth seat in 2022, while in Victoria the question is whether the Liberals regain the third seat or if the final quota that Ralph Babet (UAP) won in 2022 will go to One Nation this time. I'm thinking WA reverts to 3 Liberals but that maybe ON sneaks it in at least two of NSW, SA, and VIC.

And last, the classic contests between Labor and the Coalition?

I want Dutton to lose Dickson but he won't. I suspect he holds on by about 51–53% 2PP. I predict Labor will pick up a couple of seats in Queensland though: Bonner and Leichhardt. And if Dutton leads the Liberals to a bad enough national result that he quits parliament after the election, then Labor's Ali French will finally get the seat she's been trying to win for multiple electoral cycles at a Dickson by-election.

Aston will revert to the Liberals but I suspect Labor can retain Bennelong and I'm struggling to predict Gilmore. Jerome Laxale's challenger in Bennelong, Scott Yung of the Liberals, has had some missteps, and in a tight contest those matter. I feel like Glmore should be fairly straightforwardly in the column of Labor losses, but Andrew Constance is the Liberal candidate. Despite being one of the best Liberal performers in the NSW state parliament in the 2010s, Constance has been unable to transfer to the federal parliament ever since his first abortive attempt in May 2020. I am convinced he smashed a mirror during the first covid lockdown and is enduring 7 years of bad luck because each of his attempts to get to Canberra, either through election or appointment to a Senate vacancy, has been truly cursed.

WA will be interesting. In 2022, it felt like Labor might govern in minority until the WA seats came in with a stonking swing to Labor. The tide will surely go back out, but as we saw at the state election, Labor remains very popular out west. Tangney is vulnerable but I've recently switched from thinking Labor loses it to thinking they retain it by a whisker. Bullwinkel is a new seat, notionally Labor, and it is a three-cornered contest with both Liberal and National. Labor will need to do very well on primary votes to win this but it contains state seats like Kalamunda, which Labor lost on a -14.7% swing, Forrestfield, which Labor retained 54.1% 2CP despite a whopping -24.3% swing, and extends into some of the safe Nationals state seat of Central Wheatbelt. I suspect it will be more like the state contests in Albany and Warren-Blackwood where Labor won the primary but could not win the seat and whoever finishes second at 3CP out of Liberal and National wins.

My smokey is that Labor wins Sturt in SA. It was once Christopher Pyne's seat and usually pretty safe, but the Liberals held it on just 50.45% 2PP at the last election. The party, moreover, is having an absolute shocker at the moment at state level there. Labor will fancy themselves. It might be tougher for Labor in Tasmania: I don't believe they can get past Bridget Archer, who has made a strong reputation for herself in the supposed "ejector seat" of Bass, and Rebecca White is up against it in Lyons in her attempt to transfer from state to federal parliament—but if any Labor candidate can hold Lyons for the party, it's probably her.

OK, this is way longer than I expected. This is a terrible amount of words to write if I prove to be shockingly wrong. Well, let's see what happens tonight.

[axvoter]

Happy Election Eve and thank you

The federal election is tomorrow and I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve. This has been easily the most successful edition of Blatantly Partisan Party Reviews, both in terms of engagement and what I personally wanted to achieve with the reviews. I am really grateful for each and every comment I have received.

If you have not seen it yet, here is my index of reviews of every party registered to contest tomorrow's Australian federal election, plus a few unregistered parties and independents. Please share the index with anyone else who might find it helpful deciding their vote tomorrow.

I have a couple of things that I hope to find time to write tomorrow while polls are open, like a quick overview of "The Never-Rans", the four registered parties who won't appear on any ballot.

I joked earlier in the campaign that I was throwing caution to the wind, writing to my heart's content rather than trying to keep each review to 3–4 paragraphs. To my surprise, Detailed Axvoter Thought did not tank the appeal of the reviews. I indulged my instincts as a professional historian to set out the backgrounds of these parties, partly as a reference for myself in years to come. It seems the only time this backfired is when I included the history of the Division of Kennedy in my Katter's Australian Party review, the review with the least reactions at time of writing despite it being about Bob fuckin' Katter. I guess you all saw Katter and thought "I ain't spending any time on it".

Anyway, if you want some Election Eve humour, let's turn to Trumpet of Patriots. And no, not just my review (though it is the one I had the most fun writing). The headshots of their candidates on the official party website are an absolute hoot. Some of them must be screenshots taken during cooker video chats because it's otherwise hard to explain how bad they are, e.g. Brian Thiele. I'm not sure if that is the explanation for Robert Blohberger or if he was trying to unlock his phone with face recognition and accidentally took a photo, and that's the only photo ever taken of him. Five candidates don't even have pics (come on!).

Sarah Graham thinks she is on a dating website. So does Nicole Smeltz, despite the fact she is married to soccer player Shane Smeltz, and she has absolutely no bio whatsoever despite the fact she is ranked first on the SA Senate ticket ahead of actual former Family First Senator Bob Day. The Edwardian era wants Martin Brewster back. Donald Trump and Vicki Williams could share skincare and tanning tips. Amelia Paliouras needs to scrape the Vaseline off her camera lens. And the winner for me is Mark Crocker; he was high as a kite when he took his pic, just look at those dilated pupils.

But absolutely no photo can top Joseph O'Connor, who has provided one of the most outlandish candidate stories I can recall for a long time. He was already a contender for dodgiest profile pic. It's the sort of pic that makes you immediately suspicious he is the sort of man who walks into a pub and all the women cover their drinks. Well! Turns out he is—to quote the Sydney Morning Herald headline—a "serial pest in sperm donor groups". I'm not kidding. I cringed so hard I almost turned inside out. Enjoy!

[axvoter]

Hi there! I figure that you might be the best person to ask - in the past I've used Clueyvoter to plan out my Senate vote. It was a fairly good site - if you never used it, you'd rate the parties on a 1-5 scale, and it would then let you adjust candidate positions if desired, then generate a printable sheet in ballot order to take with you to copy onto your ballot. But, it looks like it's not updated for this year - any suggestions for any similar sites\services for this year's election?

First, my apologies for not answering this sooner—I meant to check, then got caught up on completing the reviews and had not looked up options until yesterday afternoon when completing my index of reviews.

I am happy to say that Cluey Voter now includes the 2025 federal election and it is the only ballot creator that I have found for this election that enables you to create a personal how-to-vote card for a below-the-line vote.

Even if you are voting above the line, though, there are a lot of parties and planning your vote ahead of time will save you hassle at the polling place. Sure, you could just make a list from most to least preferred in your word processor or notes app of choice, but having the candidates numbered in ballot order makes voting a lot quicker when you get to the booth and are trying to wrangle the big Senate ballot. You can copy column by column, left to right, rather than searching back and forth for each party or person.

So, here is a quick overview of options for anyone voting tomorrow who wants something in ballot order that they can have on their phone or print and take with them into the booth to transcribe onto the ballot. You must transcribe it onto the official ballot—you can't just stick the printout in the ballot box!

Personal how-to-vote card creators if you are voting above the line in the Senate

Donkey Votie and Build a Ballot both enable you to create a personal how-to-vote card if you are voting above the line. Donkey Votie is simpler, so it is the one I recommend; plus you can enjoy their humorous brief summaries of each party. Build a Ballot also enables you to make a personal how-to-vote card for your lower house electorate—but you have to go through a somewhat tedious quiz first (which to me seems to have been designed to suggest to soft Labor voters that the Greens align more with their views).

Personal how-to-vote card creator if you are voting below the line in the Senate

As noted above, Cluey Voter is the only one I've found. Us BTL voters are more poorly served this election than any I've voted in before when it comes to custom vote creators. I honestly find Cluey Voter a bit cumbersome: you rank parties by 5 general levels of support, then it generates a card and you can manually edit the numbers. This is fiddly, especially if you change your mind on even one candidate's position mid-ranking, but there is at least a feature to check if you have made any mistakes in the count.

If you have a complex vote like I do (reordering candidates within and across numerous tickets), here's my strategy to save time with Cluey Voter. First, list the parties/candidates from most to least preferred in your word processor or notes app of choice. Then go to Cluey Voter, select your state, ignore step 1 entirely, and click "go to step 2: rank candidates". Now, click "minimise preferences", which reduces what's there to just 12 digits. Delete all those. Now, use your ranked list to find each party/candidate, start numbering from 1, and get them into ballot order. Make sure you click "check" to see if there are any errors in your numbering. This is basically what you'd be doing if you took your notes app list into the ballot booth, but you can do it in the privacy of your own home before you go, with the added assurance that you haven't made any mistakes that would invalidate your vote.

(Be confident in your ranking from most to least preferred before you begin, because if you make an adjustment that throws off a large chunk of the ranking, even by one, you'll have to edit the lot manually.)

Once you're done, if you want a paper copy click "printer friendly" and then "print". I found, though, that even when I selected the options in the printer dialog box to try to force it to one page, this worked poorly. I had to shrink it to 70% size to fit on one side of A4 paper, which for me was too small to read comfortably. But then I blew it up to 135%, and for WA that put groups A-J on one side and K-UG on the other of a single sheet of A4. Perfect!

PS if you are wondering who I am putting 49th and last on the Western Australian Senate ballot, it is the one and only "senator in exile", Rodney Cullerton of the Great Australian Party. I thought of leaving the square blank as a wry joke about the fact he is ineligible for election and the AEC has referred him to the Federal Police for a false declaration on his nomination form, but putting the last preference against his name will be even more satisfying.

[axvoter]

Just bumping my index of reviews for the morning (WA)/midday (east) crowd. Delighted that some of you out there have found the reviews useful; I'm particularly grateful to those who've sent kind comments privately, especially one moving message last night—if you're reading this, happy voting to you and your niece.

One reply brought to my attention something I had not yet seen: the Trans Justice Pledge (thanks @pastelpunk413!). It's a very straightforward pledge for trans rights and against discrimination. A majority of Greens candidates have signed it, as have David Pocock and Andrew Wilkie, most candidates for Socialist Alliance, and half for Victorian Socialists. Beyond them, there are few signatories. Just 17 from Labor is disappointing.

I'm unsurprised nobody from the Liberals or other Coalition parties has signed, but some other details did stand out to me, both positively and negatively. I did not expect as many teal independents to be there, including almost all the incumbents. They are running on socially liberal platforms as part of differentiating themselves from regressive Liberal members/challengers (or moderates who when push comes to shove will toe the regressive party line), so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. On the other hand, I expected to see more than one candidate from Animal Justice. Only two from Fusion and three from Legalise Cannabis signed on—you will not be surprised to learn that Fiona Patten is one of them. Perhaps the name that stood out most to me was that Jacqui Lambie has signed the pledge! I definitely did not expect to see her name there.

Personally, I was pleased to see my Greens candidate in Swan in the list of signatories, and the two Australian Democrats who have signed are the WA Senate candidates. I'm still not sure why the Democrats keep going, but this adds justification to the fairly high preference I'm giving them tomorrow.

Index to the Blatantly Partisan Party Reviews, 2025 federal edition

This Saturday, 3 May 2025, is federal election day in Australia. If you are unsure who all these parties are on your ballot, I’m here for you. I’ve reviewed all parties registered with the Australian Electoral Commission except for the most widely known ones: Labor, Greens, and the Liberal/National coalition parties. I have also reviewed the teal independents, a couple of unregistered parties who are endorsing independent candidacies, and two independent Senate candidates in Western Australia.

What you will find below: an index to all my reviews, a classification of parties by broad categories of recommendation, recommendations of other sites reviewing the parties, and some voting tips and advice. It should be obvious but these are my personal views and should not be construed as reflecting those of my employer or anyone else. I write from a left-wing perspective sympathetic to democratic socialism and green politics, mixed economies and urbanism. If you have even halfway similar political perspectives to me, I hope this might be useful. Please feel free to share with anybody whom you think will also be interested.

Index to all my reviews for 2025

Read the list below as: party name (ideology / where running). For the locations, a plain state abbreviation means the party is running a Senate ticket in this state; check with the AEC here to see if they also have a candidate in your electorate of the House of Representatives. A state abbreviation with an asterisk (*) indicates that in this state, the party is running only for an electorate or electorates in the House of Representatives; again, check the AEC here to see if it is yours. In some instances, though, I have listed the specific seat.

Animal Justice Party (animal rights / all states + ACT)

Australia First, who are unregistered (neo-Nazi scum / Division of Lindsay)

Australian Christians (Christian fundamentalism / NSW, WA)

Australian Citizens Party (conspiracy theorists / all states + NT)

Australian Democrats (centre-left / NSW*, QLD, VIC, WA)

Australia’s Voice (centre-left / NSW, QLD, SA, VIC, WA)

Centre Alliance (centrism / Division of Mayo)

Dai Le and Frank Carbone W.S.C. (centre-right / Division of Fowler)

David Pocock (green social liberalism / ACT)

Family First (Christian fundamentalism / ACT*, NSW, QLD, SA, VIC)

FUSION | Planet Rescue | Whistleblower Protection | Innovation (centre-left-ish hodgepodge / NSW, QLD, SA, VIC, WA)

Gerard Rennick People First (far-right cult of personality / NSW, QLD, SA, VIC, WA)

Good Party, who are unregistered (centre-left / Divisions of Kingsford-Smith and Page)

Great Australian Party (sovereign citizens / QLD, WA)

Health Environment Accountability Rights Transparency (HEART) (antivax far-right woo / ACT, NSW, QLD, VIC)

Indigenous–Aboriginal Party of Australia (Indigenous rights / NSW, NT*, QLD, VIC, WA*)

Jacqui Lambie Network (centre-right cult of personality / NSW, QLD, SA, TAS)

Katter’s Australian Party (right-wing cult of personality / QLD)

Legalise Cannabis Australia (single issue / all states + NT)

Libertarian Party (far-right libertarianism / all states and territories)

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation (xenophobic far-right populism / all states + NT)

Shooters, Fishers, and Farmers (anti-environmentalist gun nuts / NSW*, TAS, VIC)

Socialist Alliance (socialism / NSW, QLD, VIC*, WA)

Socialist Equality Party, who are unregistered (antisocial socialism for cantankerous people / NSW as Group B, VIC as Group G, and indies in seats of Calwell, Newcastle, Oxley)

Sustainable Australia–Universal Basic Income (anti-immigration NIMBYs / all states and territories)

Teal independents (centrism / assortment of lower-house seats in all states and territories)

Trumpet of Patriots (lunar right / all states)

Ungrouped independent candidates for the Senate in WA (right-wing or plain odd personalities who should receive a low preference)

Victorian Socialists (socialism / VIC)

Classification of all parties by broad category of recommendation

At the end of each review is a recommendation of how positively or negatively you should preference each party. Let’s see how all the parties have shaken out. Within each category, I am presenting parties alphabetically rather than suggesting an order for your preferences. I have written a separate entry on how I decide the ranking of unpalatable parties.

Good preference: David Pocock, Indigenous–Aboriginal Party of Australia, Socialist Alliance, Victorian Socialists

The parties above have a positive overall platform that has few or no significant flaws for the left-wing voter.

Decent to good preference: Australian Democrats; Australia’s Voice

The parties above have a positive overall platform, but I have minor reservations.

Decent preference: Animal Justice Party, Good Party, teal independents

The parties (or independents) above have a generally positive overall platform, but I have reservations.

Middling preference: Centre Alliance, Legalise Cannabis

The parties above have a balance of positive and negative qualities, or a decent platform undermined by a notably terrible policy or characteristic.

Note on Legalise Cannabis: middling is a generalisation as candidate quality varies. In Victoria, for instance, give Fiona Patten (lead Senate candidate) a decent to good preference; in Queensland, give Belinda Jones (lead Senate candidate) a weak preference.

Weak to middling preference: Dai Le & Frank Carbone W.S.C., Fusion Party, Jacqui Lambie Network, Socialist Equality Party, Sustainable Australia

The parties above are problematic, but better than what comes below.

Weak or no preference: Australia First, Australian Christians, Australian Citizens Party, Family First, Gerard Rennick People First, Great Australian Party, HEART, Katter’s Australian Party, Libertarian Party, One Nation, Shooters, Trumpet of Patriots

The parties above have more negatives than positives (usually many more!). In the House of Representatives, where you must give full preferences, 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.

Other good reviewers

For further opinions, b_auspol has reviewed parties and independents contesting NSW, Kevin Bonham has summarised those contesting Tasmania, Notionoriety has concise left-wing overviews for QLD, NSW, and VIC, Anthony Zougras has overviews of all registered parties (more concise than me, less than Notionoriety), and Something for Cate is very comprehensive, with a Victorian emphasis, continuing the tradition of much-missed Cate Speaks.

Voting tips and advice

When you go to vote, you will receive two ballots. The smaller green one is for the House of Representatives, the lower house; whichever party/ies command a majority on the floor of the House forms government. You must number EVERY SQUARE on the small green ballot for the House. Many seats have independent candidates; make sure you look into them as they vary substantially in their platforms and competence.

The larger white ballot is for the Senate, the upper house. This is the house of review. We are voting for roughly half the Senate, as state senators serve six-year terms. This means each state elects six senators, requiring 14.3% of the vote to be elected; each territory elects just two (who serve terms aligned with the House), requiring 33.3% of the vote to be elected. On the Senate ballot you can vote above the line for PARTIES or below the line for INDIVIDUALS. Above the line you must give at least six preferences; below the line you must give at least twelve; beyond this point, you can do what you like. You can stop preferencing entirely or you give as many more preferences as you want. I strongly recommend you preference as far as possible because this increases the potential power of your vote.

If you want something more visual (and humorous), Patrick Alexander has two handy cartoon explainers: you can’t waste your vote for the House of Representatives and what’s the go with voting for the Senate?

If you want to vote below the line in the Senate, you can make your own custom how-to-vote card using Cluey Voter. It is the only site of which I am aware that allows you to construct a below-the-line vote (Donkey Votie and Build a Ballot can only make above-the-line cards). Print it off and take it into the booth with you! And do you need to find your nearest democracy sausage or cake stall? This website has you covered.

Happy voting everybody, and a delicious democracy sausage or sweet treat to one and all!

[axvoter]

Index to the Blatantly Partisan Party Reviews, 2025 federal edition

This Saturday, 3 May 2025, is federal election day in Australia. If you are unsure who all these parties are on your ballot, I’m here for you. I’ve reviewed all parties registered with the Australian Electoral Commission except for the most widely known ones: Labor, Greens, and the Liberal/National coalition parties. I have also reviewed the teal independents, a couple of unregistered parties who are endorsing independent candidacies, and two independent Senate candidates in Western Australia.

What you will find below: an index to all my reviews, a classification of parties by broad categories of recommendation, recommendations of other sites reviewing the parties, and some voting tips and advice. It should be obvious but these are my personal views and should not be construed as reflecting those of my employer or anyone else. I write from a left-wing perspective sympathetic to democratic socialism and green politics, mixed economies and urbanism. If you have even halfway similar political perspectives to me, I hope this might be useful. Please feel free to share with anybody whom you think will also be interested.

Index to all my reviews for 2025

Read the list below as: party name (ideology / where running). For the locations, a plain state abbreviation means the party is running a Senate ticket in this state; check with the AEC here to see if they also have a candidate in your electorate of the House of Representatives. A state abbreviation with an asterisk (*) indicates that in this state, the party is running only for an electorate or electorates in the House of Representatives; again, check the AEC here to see if it is yours. In some instances, though, I have listed the specific seat.

Animal Justice Party (animal rights / all states + ACT)

Australia First, who are unregistered (neo-Nazi scum / Division of Lindsay)

Australian Christians (Christian fundamentalism / NSW, WA)

Australian Citizens Party (conspiracy theorists / all states + NT)

Australian Democrats (centre-left / NSW*, QLD, VIC, WA)

Australia’s Voice (centre-left / NSW, QLD, SA, VIC, WA)

Centre Alliance (centrism / Division of Mayo)

Dai Le and Frank Carbone W.S.C. (centre-right / Division of Fowler)

David Pocock (green social liberalism / ACT)

Family First (Christian fundamentalism / ACT*, NSW, QLD, SA, VIC)

FUSION | Planet Rescue | Whistleblower Protection | Innovation (centre-left-ish hodgepodge / NSW, QLD, SA, VIC, WA)

Gerard Rennick People First (far-right cult of personality / NSW, QLD, SA, VIC, WA)

Good Party, who are unregistered (centre-left / Divisions of Kingsford-Smith and Page)

Great Australian Party (sovereign citizens / QLD, WA)

Health Environment Accountability Rights Transparency (HEART) (antivax far-right woo / ACT, NSW, QLD, VIC)

Indigenous–Aboriginal Party of Australia (Indigenous rights / NSW, NT*, QLD, VIC, WA*)

Jacqui Lambie Network (centre-right cult of personality / NSW, QLD, SA, TAS)

Katter’s Australian Party (right-wing cult of personality / QLD)

Legalise Cannabis Australia (single issue / all states + NT)

Libertarian Party (far-right libertarianism / all states and territories)

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation (xenophobic far-right populism / all states + NT)

Shooters, Fishers, and Farmers (anti-environmentalist gun nuts / NSW*, TAS, VIC)

Socialist Alliance (socialism / NSW, QLD, VIC*, WA)

Socialist Equality Party, who are unregistered (antisocial socialism for cantankerous people / NSW as Group B, VIC as Group G, and indies in seats of Calwell, Newcastle, Oxley)

Sustainable Australia–Universal Basic Income (anti-immigration NIMBYs / all states and territories)

Teal independents (centrism / assortment of lower-house seats in all states and territories)

Trumpet of Patriots (lunar right / all states)

Ungrouped independent candidates for the Senate in WA (right-wing or plain odd personalities who should receive a low preference)

Victorian Socialists (socialism / VIC)

Classification of all parties by broad category of recommendation

At the end of each review is a recommendation of how positively or negatively you should preference each party. Let’s see how all the parties have shaken out. Within each category, I am presenting parties alphabetically rather than suggesting an order for your preferences. I have written a separate entry on how I decide the ranking of unpalatable parties.

Good preference: David Pocock, Indigenous–Aboriginal Party of Australia, Socialist Alliance, Victorian Socialists

The parties above have a positive overall platform that has few or no significant flaws for the left-wing voter.

Decent to good preference: Australian Democrats; Australia’s Voice

The parties above have a positive overall platform, but I have minor reservations.

Decent preference: Animal Justice Party, Good Party, teal independents

The parties (or independents) above have a generally positive overall platform, but I have reservations.

Middling preference: Centre Alliance, Legalise Cannabis

The parties above have a balance of positive and negative qualities, or a decent platform undermined by a notably terrible policy or characteristic.

Note on Legalise Cannabis: middling is a generalisation as candidate quality varies. In Victoria, for instance, give Fiona Patten (lead Senate candidate) a decent to good preference; in Queensland, give Belinda Jones (lead Senate candidate) a weak preference.

Weak to middling preference: Dai Le & Frank Carbone W.S.C., Fusion Party, Jacqui Lambie Network, Socialist Equality Party, Sustainable Australia

The parties above are problematic, but better than what comes below.

Weak or no preference: Australia First, Australian Christians, Australian Citizens Party, Family First, Gerard Rennick People First, Great Australian Party, HEART, Katter’s Australian Party, Libertarian Party, One Nation, Shooters, Trumpet of Patriots

The parties above have more negatives than positives (usually many more!). In the House of Representatives, where you must give full preferences, 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.

Other good reviewers

For further opinions, b_auspol has reviewed parties and independents contesting NSW, Kevin Bonham has summarised those contesting Tasmania, Notionoriety has concise left-wing overviews for QLD, NSW, and VIC, Anthony Zougras has overviews of all registered parties (more concise than me, less than Notionoriety), and Something for Cate is very comprehensive, with a Victorian emphasis, continuing the tradition of much-missed Cate Speaks.

Voting tips and advice

When you go to vote, you will receive two ballots. The smaller green one is for the House of Representatives, the lower house; whichever party/ies command a majority on the floor of the House forms government. You must number EVERY SQUARE on the small green ballot for the House. Many seats have independent candidates; make sure you look into them as they vary substantially in their platforms and competence.

The larger white ballot is for the Senate, the upper house. This is the house of review. We are voting for roughly half the Senate, as state senators serve six-year terms. This means each state elects six senators, requiring 14.3% of the vote to be elected; each territory elects just two (who serve terms aligned with the House), requiring 33.3% of the vote to be elected. On the Senate ballot you can vote above the line for PARTIES or below the line for INDIVIDUALS. Above the line you must give at least six preferences; below the line you must give at least twelve; beyond this point, you can do what you like. You can stop preferencing entirely or you give as many more preferences as you want. I strongly recommend you preference as far as possible because this increases the potential power of your vote.

If you want something more visual (and humorous), Patrick Alexander has two handy cartoon explainers: you can’t waste your vote for the House of Representatives and what’s the go with voting for the Senate?

If you want to vote below the line in the Senate, you can make your own custom how-to-vote card using Cluey Voter. It is the only site of which I am aware that allows you to construct a below-the-line vote (Donkey Votie and Build a Ballot can only make above-the-line cards). Print it off and take it into the booth with you! And do you need to find your nearest democracy sausage or cake stall? This website has you covered.

Happy voting everybody, and a delicious democracy sausage or sweet treat to one and all!

[axvoter]

Trying to rank the distasteful

I have been asked by multiple readers how to approach the task of preferencing distasteful parties, of whom there are many on the ballot. I worked through my ballot yesterday evening, so I thought I might as well set out my approach.

First, though, I want to emphasise some important aspects of voting for the House of Representatives and the Senate, which use different electoral systems.

For the House: you must rank all candidates. Do so in the order of your preference. There are occasionally strategic considerations, especially for a left-wing voter where a left-leaning party cannot win the seat and you would prefer a centrist indie to beat a right-wing Lib/Nat (see recommendation section of my teals review). But as a general principle, you can safely rank candidates from most liked to most disliked.

For the Senate, you have two options:

Vote above the line: you vote for parties. You must indicate at least six preferences, and then you can give as many additional preferences as you wish. This is the option that suits most voters. The further you preference, the more powerful your vote potentially will be.

Vote below the line: you vote for individual candidates. You must indicate at least twelve preferences, and then you can give as many additional preferences as you wish. If you want to express a preference (good or bad) for ungrouped independents, or if you want to adjust the order of candidates within a party's ticket, or if you want to mix and match candidates across party tickets, you must vote this way. The further you preference, the more powerful your vote potentially will be.

(for the electoral-act-knowers: yes, there are savings provisions for both the House and the Senate so that some ballots marked contrary to the instructions are counted where the voter's intention is clear, but I see little value in dwelling on these; mark your ballot per the instructions!)

Whether you vote above or below the line in the Senate, you need to decide if you will express a preference for all parties/candidates, or stop somewhere after 6 ATL/12 BTL. As a basic principle: you should keep preferencing on your Senate ballot as far as you feel able. To play a role in the outcome, you should include at least one of the majors or a more prominent minor party with a chance of getting to 14.3% after preferences (i.e. the quota for a Senate seat). For the left-wing voter, that means that if you don't distribute full preferences, you should at least include the Greens and/or Labor.

I am a completist. I will be voting below the line. And I will preference the lot. I took the time to mark my 2019 NSW Legislative Council ballot all the way to number 346 to put Mark Banasiak, lead candidate of the Shooters Party, in last place a fortnight after the Christchurch mosque terrorist attack by an NSW-born-and-raised gunman (I must wearily note yet again that Australia has never properly grappled with the fact it produced this ghoul and many Australians do not know the Christchurch terrorist was Australian even if they remember something terrible happened across the ditch—which some do not, to this nation's deep discredit).

But how to decide who to put last? And where to rank parties more broadly? I use three parties as dividing lines: Greens, Labor, Liberal. As the last paragraph should suggest to you, I also recognise the Loathing Principle: who do you despise so much that you are itching to put them last?

I ask two questions when I contemplate what side of the dividing line a minor party sits (with thanks to b_auspol for conceptualising the second in a recent chat). They are: is this party to the political left of the dividing line? And what is the Failure Condition of voting for this party in case they win a seat in the Senate? By Failure Condition, that is: if the candidate performs poorly or does things I do not like, how bad are the outcomes likely to be relative to other parties?

Let's use an example. I eat meat and see no ethical issue with this, but an Animal Justice Senator might put up a bill mandating veganism. This hypothetical bill, however, would never pass parliament, while the the AJP Senator's contributions to other legislation, based on years of experience of AJP reps in the NSW and Victorian upper houses, is that they will aim to pull Labor left on big issues of the day. So, the AJP Senator is better than a generic Labor backbencher; the core values of the AJP might not appeal much to me but their broader principles are left of Labor. Hence, AJP falls left of the dividing line and I will give them a better preference than Labor.

But, by contrast, Legalise Cannabis has poor quality control on their candidates. They might elect someone whom it is welcome to have in the Senate (hi Fiona Patten!). But also a Legalise Cannabis Senator could be an anti-vax or anti-wind-turbine freak (hi Sophia Moermond!) who in a tight Senate sinks important legislation. So, absent any other knowledge, a generic Legalise Cannabis candidate risks worse Failure Conditions than a generic Labor candidate, and I will thus preference Legalise Cannabis below Labor. And even worse is, say, a HEART candidate who wins a seat: if you're lucky they are just some leftover hippie but the Failure Condition is kids die because they stymie vaccination legislation in a finely-balanced parliament.

In terms of placing parties to the left of my dividing lines, it is a pretty small field these days between Labor and Liberal. I populate it with random independents, Fusion—whose failures this election have been disappointing, as I had in the past usually placed them and constituent parties left of Labor—and maybe Sustainable Australia. I think it is also important to know the alignment of your Labor and Liberal(/National/whatever Coalition party) candidates. I elevate Labor Left above Labor Right, and moderate Libs/Nats above hard-liners.

The even tougher decision is what to do about the parties to the right of the Liberals and their Coalition partners. There are many such parties this election. At this point, you need to make difficult calls about who is relatively worse. This is where the Loathing Principle comes into play: which party offends you on a visceral, personal level this year? Which bigoted candidate will you feel especially gleeful pencilling in last? I have at various elections made a point of putting last the Shooters as described above, Libertarians as the most hate-filled on the ballot, Citizens Electoral Council as dangerous conspiracy theorists, and Rise Up Australia for having a leader who claimed the Black Saturday bushfires were divine punishment for giving women bodily autonomy. If there is a party you truly hate—if you, for instance, really want Lyle Shelton to eat even more shit by putting Family First last—then do it. It'll feel good. Voting all the way below the line can be deeply satisfying even within the privacy of the polling booth.

More generally, trying to rank the parties is tough but here is how I view the relative evil. Parties that are racist want to exclude some of the community (or potential community in the form of prospective migrants). They can make gestures towards religion and purported Christian traditions but it's not often the core of their agenda. Parties that espouse fundamentalist Christianity (or another religion, but we have only so far had fundie Christian parties of various denominations) want to legislate their faith for the whole community. And they have a fringe interpretation of said faith that many fellow believers would repudiate. Plus, they are usually also racists. Ergo, I generally rate Christian fundamentalist parties worse than racist parties.

But then there are dangerous conspiracy theorists whose ideas have no basis in reality. They come in various forms, such as sovereign citizens and LaRouchean fantasists, and these people having any influence or power in society would be most destructive. They cannot listen to reason and will do things that harm even the members of their own racial and/or religious community as well as target out-groups in the most venomous ways. For me, they have the worst Failure Conditions; if I must, I would take a Pauline Hanson over a Lyle Shelton, and both over a Ralph Babet or Rod Culleton. So, I put conspiracy cranks below fundies or racists. And there are a lot of them today; hi, Trumpet of Patriots!

For these reasons, as a WA voter this time around, my bottom three parties are the Citizens Party (longstanding nutjobs with deeply unsound ideas), Trumpet of Patriots (unhinged Trumpists), and the Great Australian Party (delusional sovereign citizens whose ideas have no connection with reality and whose goals are dangerous). I am delighted to have the opportunity to put Rod Culleton last on Saturday.

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review XXIX (federal 2025): Teal Independents

Running where: seats in all 8 states and territories; go to the Climate 200 website of “community candidates” to see if one is in your electorate

Prior reviews: federal 2022

What I said before: “I would largely define the teals as centre to centre-right … Three issues unite the teals. They want much stronger action on climate change, guided by scientific advice. They want integrity in politics … [and] they want gender equity.”

What I think this year: A big story from the last election was the success of the “teals”, independent candidates—almost entirely well-educated professional women—who were grouped together for three reasons other than demographics. First, the colour of branding that some of them used; second, their alignment on broad policy objectives as described in the quote above; third, they received funding from Climate 200, a fundraising organisation that clean energy activist Simon Holmes à Court founded. The teal colour has to many observers connoted an amalgam of Greens sensibility about climate change with liberal (or Liberal) attitudes towards economic issues.

In 2022, teals only challenged (ex-)Liberal incumbents or defended seats held by existing independents whom Climate 200 chose to support (they have challenged some Labor incumbents at state level since). Liberal incumbents in 2022 lost to six independent challengers: Kate Chaney (Curtin, WA), Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, VIC), Monique Ryan (Kooyong, VIC), Sophie Scamps (Mackellar, NSW), Allegra Spender (Wentworth, NSW), and Kylea Tink (North Sydney, NSW). David Pocock won a Senate seat for the ACT; unlike the teals, he registered a party in his own name because of the different voting system in the Senate. Zali Steggall, whose victory in Warringah (NSW) at the 2019 election was a harbinger of the teal wave, retained her seat.

Climate 200 contributed to the successful campaigns of three more longstanding incumbent independents: Rebekha Sharkie and Andrew Wilkie, who are not teals in a meaningful sense, and Helen Haines, who can more readily be counted as one based on her voting record. Sharkie retained Mayo, nominally as a member of Centre Alliance but which by 2022 was close to death as a broader party. Haines held Indi in rural Victoria, continuing the legacy of her predecessor, independent MP Cathy McGowan, who was pivotal in the promotion of the “Voices of” movement (a related but distinct phenomenon). And in Tasmania, left-wing independent Wilkie won Clark (based on Hobart) in 2010 and has owned it ever since; he will not lose that seat until he resigns, dies, or throws baby Tasmanian devils into the Derwent live on air.

This year, Climate 200 is funding more candidates across the nation, although the electorates in which they have a chance remain mostly Liberal-held. Not every independent supported by Climate 200 uses teal colours—if you go to the link posted in the “running where” section above, each candidate is colour-coded based on the predominant colour used in their campaign. The incumbent teals are contesting their seats except for Kylea Tink, whose seat was abolished in a redistribution and has not chosen to stand in another seat. David Pocock has declined Climate 200 funding and believes he can retain his ACT seat without it (I expect he's right).

Where do the teals sit politically? Some comprise a lost generation of moderate Liberal women, alienated from the party because of its climate inaction/denialism and structural sexism, with Kate Chaney and Allegra Spender the most obvious examples—not just in their descent from former Liberal MPs but also in their economic views. But not all fit this categorisation. Some have more centre-left origins. What is telling is Pat Leslie’s overview, particularly figure 1 at that link. Haines, Steggall, and the cohort of 2022 form a clear grouping even if they are not of one mind on every issue (Spender sits closest to the Libs in her voting pattern). Meanwhile, Wilkie and Sharkie clearly sit on different points on the political spectrum: Wilkie is on the left close to the Greens; Sharkie votes similarly to Dai Le (an indie who is very much not a teal) and to ex-National indie Andrew Gee.

The issues underpinning the teal movement in 2022 have remained prominent for the teals as elected representatives and for those seeking to enter parliament this year. As MPs, teals backed an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, and all their electorates had majorities for Yes except Indi. There has been also in my view a strain of wowserism, driven in part by the teal MPs including a couple of medical practitioners and in part as representing electorates with many (or potentially themselves being) concerned parents of teenagers. This backfired in late 2023 in the debate about Hard Solo, which Monique Ryan led complaints about; when it was first announced, I assumed it was a novelty that would go flat quickly and be quietly withdrawn a few months later. Instead, it got more publicity than Carlton & United Breweries could have possibly anticipated, and although CUB had to change the name to Hard Rated, they have continued selling it successfully. I am convinced this fuss from an older generation is what made it cool for young people. I never expected to see it on tap at my local pub and be a popular choice for the young tradies. More substantively, though, some of this teal concern manifests in things that I support such as seeking greater regulation on gambling ads.

The biggest thing for me is TEALS PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD FORM A PROPER FUCKING POLITICAL PARTY. The teals capitalise on attitudes held among some of the Australian electorate that political parties are a bad thing and independent candidates are somehow more honest or virtuous. Parties emerged for fucking good reasons in colonial parliaments of Australia between the late 1870s and early 1910s. They provide stability of government (in the pre-party era, the average term of a premier was 1.5 to 2 years; since the rise of parties, the average term is 3.5 to 5 years; yes, I have a dataset on this). The opaque voting blocs and unpredictable legislative defeats and no-confidence votes in pre-party parliaments were based on shifting alliances, often as much personal and ideological. Parties made parliament more workable, negotiations more transparent, and outcomes more predictable. Parties also have institutional memory and enable continuity across the nation and over time. They co-ordinate policymaking and make more efficient use of resources, financial and human alike, so that teals wouldn’t have been whinging to the Saturday Paper that the election being called for 3 May rather than 12 April was bankrupting them. (I’m still flabbergasted Labor considered 12 April so seriously; 3–17 May always seemed the sensible option to me.) Party politics is a good thing.

And forming a party might also help the teals deal with their diversity problem: look at those elected or at the Climate 200 page and it’s mostly professional white women who are GenX or young Boomers. The Greens and Labor alike show how proactive party preselection processes can elevate younger, Indigenous, and ethnically diverse candidates into winnable positions. The teals can’t do that—teal voters in each electorate want their own Monique Ryan or Zali Steggall and can’t vote for a candidate from a party with that woman at the head, they have to vote for a local from the same demographic.

So, look, teals vote very similarly and need to make this official through a party structure. I suspect one reason they are averse to forming a party structure despite the obvious financial and organisational advantages it would provide is because of a misconception in Australia about party discipline. Some teals even talk about the constraints of being in a party. Our political parties have a tradition of a very firm whip, especially Labor (as seen in Fatima Payman’s departure and subsequent formation of Australia’s Voice). Even Liberal and National backbenchers cross the floor rarely, despite having more freedom to do so. It is possible to have more personal discretion for MPs in voting without going to the US extreme where a party cannot count on any serious degree of loyalty from its ostensible members. The British system of one-, two-, and three-line whips could provide inspiration. A teal party with a more permissive party whip than that of the major parties would give them all the benefits of party organisation with only modest sacrifices of their current freedom of action.

(I would also love to no longer need to tease out which indies are teals and which indies are a different and possibly anti-teal hue; Kevin Bonham has made a valiant attempt at classifying the indies)

I expect most of the incumbent teals will be returned, and some of the challengers look strong. At the last election, four made the two-candidate-preferred count, and all four are recontesting this year: Alex Dyson in Wannon (VIC), Nicolette Boele in Bradfield (NSW), Kate Hook in Calare (NSW), and Caz Heise (NSW). They will be competitive again. Erchana Murray-Bartlett is a new one to watch in McPherson (QLD) for her energetic campaign in a traditionally LNP seat that is currently vacant. Kate Hulett came within 0.81% of winning the state seat of Fremantle (WA) in March, managed to resolve a citizenship issue just in time to stand for the federal seat of the same name, and fancies her chances—although the federal division’s larger scope will make it tricky. Tina Brown in Berowra (NSW) has the apparent support of Liberal grandee Phillip Ruddock, whose wife Heather has quit the Libs to support Brown’s campaign. And there’s chatter about Suzie Holt’s chances in Groom (QLD) but I do not see that happening. Or maybe we will be surprised—I never anticipated Sophie Scamps winning Mackellar on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, but the Northern Beaches is another world and they like it that way. Anyway, whoever gets in, I hope the successful teals throw a big celebration together and party all the way to the AEC register of parties.

Recommendation: In all instances I recommend you preference a teal above a Liberal or National candidate and the various far-right crackpots. Just how strong a preference you give them will vary based on individual, but it will be generally a decent or good one—especially given how many dire candidates are on some ballots.

The Australian preferential system is designed to avoid the need for tactical voting, but there are strategic considerations in some cases. If you live in a Liberal-held seat and Labor or the Greens are not competitive to win (i.e. most of the seats mentioned above), you should ponder who is likely to end up second and third as preferences are distributed. If there are three candidates left in the count and none has 50%, the third one will be eliminated, and the preferences of their voters will decide which of the remaining two wins the seat. Where will their preferences go? If the third-placed candidate is Labor or Green, the easy majority of their voters are likely to preference the teal, which might get them over the line. If the third-placed candidate is a teal, however, a significant portion of their voters will break back to the Liberals and give the Liberal the win ahead of Labor or the Greens.

So, consider your vote very carefully if a party left of a teal indie has no chance of winning your seat: the best way to try to stop the Liberals winning might be voting 1 for the teal—or at least preferencing them above the other big parties—to help them finish in the top two at the three-candidate-preferred stage of the count. I do not normally recommend tactical voting, but in this case it’s relevant and I would personally do it if I was in a Liberal-vs-teal seat.

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review XXVIII (federal 2025): Australia First Party

Running where: Jim Saleam for Lindsay (NSW)

Prior reviews: federal 2013, federal 2016, federal 2019

What I said before: “There is literally nobody worse on the entire Australian electoral scene. Fuck this party.” (federal 2019)

What I think this year: I am making this post both for any readers out there in Lindsay, and for readers who more generally monitor micro-parties and the Australian extreme right.

Jim Saleam, independent candidate for the Division of Lindsay, is running on a “stop immigration” platform for the no-longer-registered Australia First Party. This party, which is really just a vehicle for Saleam and whoever is talking to him at a given moment in time, lost registration when the membership threshold for federal parties was increased from 500 to 1,500, so the last parliamentary contest that featured Australia First as a registered party was the 2019 federal election.

To be clear: this is a different group from the “Australia First Alliance” that is running joint tickets of multiple far-right parties for the Senate at this election. The Australia First Alliance comprises HEART, Libertarians, and Rennick First (all party name links in this entry go to my reviews of them). It’s a distasteful alliance but it is not as distasteful as the Australia First Party. And let me tell you, Saleam hates the constituents of the Australia First Alliance.

Who is Saleam? Well, put simply, he is a Nazi. He will tell you he is an “Australian nationalist”, and at times he has seen rhetorical importance in denying that he is a Nazi, but he has been a prominent figure in the Australian far-right since the 1970s. He has belonged to neo-Nazi parties, he founded the white nationalist organisation National Action, and Australia First has been his electoral vehicle for over two decades. Saleam has been convicted for multiple crimes, including the firebombing of a Maoist bookshop, fraud, and his involvement in an attempt to assassinate the Australian representative of the African National Congress in 1989. He is a deeply unlikeable individual—which is fortunate, because his sheer unlikeability means that he keeps making enemies on the far right rather than forming a common front.

This year, Saleam is keen to accuse all other far-right organisations of being fakes, frauds, and controlled opposition, much like the Socialist Equality Party rant about the “pseudo-left”. For him, Gerard Rennick is an “ex-Liberal reactionary … whose People First plays games with patriotic people” and seeks nothing more than Rennick's own re-election. Saleam adds that he “might also say the same of Craig Kelly” standing in NSW for the Libertarians. And he “give[s] nothing to One Nation[,] which is a Liberal satellite party”. Indeed, he has even accused the extremists in the National Socialist Network of having “Jewish connections” and being useful for politicians so they can denounce antisemitism and “raise sympathy for Israel”.

Saleam's preference recommendations for each state tend to include Family First, Trumpet of Patriots, the Great Australian Party, the Jacqui Lambie Network, and the Shooters, but there are two striking characteristics. The first is that the Animal Justice Party appear because “they fill the six” required preferences and “are otherwise innocuous”. It’s a surprising take, both for AJP members and because far-right activists have in the past depicted the AJP as “vegan terrorists”. But second and most striking is that in every state Australia First recommends a first preference in the Senate to Sustainable Australia. This one Saleam does not explain, but it seems that SusAus’s “my shirt that says ‘we are not anti-immigration because we support continuing immigration at just one-third its current level’ is raising a lot of questions already answered by my shirt” vibe has something in it that appeals to Australia First!

Recommendation: If you are a voter in Lindsay, put Saleam last. Do not do “put the Liberals last” bullshit when parties further right are worse. And don’t think One Nation should always go last either. Saleam is the worst of the worst. Put Saleam last.

Website: I have a longstanding policy of not linking to these fuckwits, but their current website is archived here on the Wayback Machine

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review XXVII (federal 2025): The Good Party

Running where: Elsa Parker for Kingsford Smith (NSW) and Jordan Colless for Page (NSW)

Prior reviews: none, this is a new party

My goal in this review is to introduce the as-yet-unregistered Good Party and say a little about their background; I won’t engage with an awful lot of their policies because they are not contesting the Senate and I am unsure if I have any readers in either electorate where they have endorsed independents. Yes, I reviewed in detail Rebekha Sharkie and Dai Le, but they are incumbent MPs. Sharkie is very likely to retain her seat and Le will be competitive in an intriguing contest, and as crossbenchers their views are relevant nationally—especially if no party wins a majority (an outcome that seemed almost certain until the wheels came off Dutton’s campaign; now Labor might retain its majority). Elsa Parker and Jordan Colless, by contrast, have no chance of winning their seats, though I understand Parker in particular has been an eager campaigner.

The Good Party is seeking to recruit enough members to gain registration, but at the moment must settle for endorsing independents. They claim to be running three candidates, not two, but VJ Gunawardana is not on the ballot for Macnamara. The party emphasises that it seeks to appeal to and represent young people: “we believe the future of young Australians has been squandered by successive federal governments … Our aim is to spearhead generational change in Parliament with youth, fresh ideas, and the values of decency, respect, and inclusiveness.”

The Good Party’s policy pages are extensive, much more extensive than you normally see for a newly minted micro-party, and this intrigued me as to their origins. Besides the candidates themselves, nobody is named on the website. As Kevin Bonham notes in his party registration tracker, the party does not have the standard (and required!) authorisation statements on its website or Facebook. The Facebook account sometimes posts reels with two grey-haired men—not young Australians at all, though presumably they were once—and it turns out these gents have a separate Facebook account called Park Bench Politics, where they actively promote the Good Party.

I have been informed privately that these “two old blokes” (as they dub themselves), Shane Barry and David Rollins, are actually behind the party. There is not an awful much about either online, and you get a lot of search hits for other people with the same name, though David Rollins is the author of that name who writes thrillers. In one of the Park Bench Politics videos that I watched, they present themselves simply as having “heard about” the Good Party, but from what I’ve been told they “heard about” it because it came out of their own mouths. The person I spoke to believed that Barry and Rollins were sincere in their intentions, which is to create a platform for younger people to run for parliament. Neither they nor I have found any information to suspect there is anything untoward here: both men want to take a back seat and promote young candidates as the face of the party.

If that is so, though, it seems Barry and Rollins are the brains behind the policies as they stand. You can do a simple comparison of the Good Party’s defence policy and Rollins’ thoughts as expressed on his Substack. The shared themes and suggestions, right down to common phrasings, are striking. This policy does not have a youthful feel. It is more favourable to AUKUS than most I have read this campaign, and it reprises two predictable stances from Australia’s political history: a fear since the 1850s that China might covet our land to settle its large population and control our resources (a fear so powerful that anti-Chinese policies played a major role in the federation movement), and military training for civilians to have a trained populace of reservists for national defence. Now, the Good Party is clear that they are not promoting mandatory national service, so this is not quite the Universal Service Scheme of 1911 or its mid-century successors, but the echo is there—and it’s not the sort of thing I normally see young politicians proposing!

In any case, if you live in the electorates of Kingsford Smith and Page, have a dig into the Good Party’s policies. They generally lean centre-left, although some specific aspects are quite bold or out-of-the-box and might prove to be dealbreakers. For me, I’m lukewarm because I disagree with much of the defence and housing policies, I don't share their support for extending parliamentary terms from three to four years, and I firmly oppose their proposed reduction in immigration numbers (for specious environmental reasons not too dissimilar to Sustainable Australia).

Recommendation: in Kingsford Smith, I would put Parker above Family First and the Liberals and below the Greens, but I would need more direct local knowledge to determine where to place her relative to the Labor candidate; in Page, there is a large field of eleven candidates—but most of them are from quite undesirable parties so likewise Colless would be in contention for at least a top three placing (maybe top four, but on a quick search I’ve got nothing for indie Richard Wells and that’s never promising).

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

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review XXVI (federal 2025): ungrouped independents in Western Australia

There are two types of independent candidates on a Senate ballot. Grouped independents are groups of two or more people running together (either without party endorsement or with the endorsement of an unregistered party) who get their own column on the ballot, including an unlabelled square above the line. Ungrouped independents are people standing solo, without any mates, and who therefore only get a square below the line in a shared column with any other ungrouped indies, located at the furthest right end of the ballot. Parties who only nominate a single candidate rather than a slate of 2+ candidates (or as part of a slate of 2+ candidates from multiple parties) also find themselves in the ungrouped column, but there are no such cases this year.

The ungrouped column has no square above the line as the candidates are unaffiliated with each other, which means that it is impossible to vote for ungrouped independents if you vote above the line. This is one reason why you might consider voting below the line: either you want to vote 1 for an ungrouped independent, or you’re a completist like me who wants to express a preference for everybody on the ballot. Fundamentally, to receive a square above the line, whether you are party-aligned or independent, you need a friend. I am routinely amazed how many people waste their time and money standing as ungrouped candidates.

This federal election, there are two ungrouped candidates in Western Australia, down from six last time. Let’s see who they are.

Ky Cao (website)

Economist and entrepreneur Ky Cao arrived in Australia in 1979 as a refugee from Vietnam. After beginning his career in economic consulting, he founded Perth Energy and managed it until his retirement in 2016; AGL acquired Perth Energy in 2019 and it provides electricity and gas to commercial and industrial customers (WA has a highly regulated residential system, with Synergy the retailer in the South West Interconnected System). Now, although he founded a solar farm in Vietnam, he pushes the furphy that any Australian action on climate change is immaterial (as if “bigger polluted are doing nothing so we shouldn't either” is a sensible argument) and he thinks that “the more you know the less you worry about climate change”. It’s safe to say that the average climate scientist doesn’t agree with Cao.

Cao is a fan of laissez-faire capitalism: as he puts it, he “believes deeply in Australia’s free market, open society foundations” because in his view competition protects citizens and fosters economic competitiveness, liberty, and “collective wisdom”. Unfortunately, a lot of his views are based on misconceptions. He argues that Australia’s productivity has collapsed because of “bloated regulations” and because “Australia’s tax burden is too high”. This is hogwash. Our productivity is positive; yes, it has slowed in the past decade but it remains positive. You can hardly say it is a “collapse” when productivity has not gone backwards for decades. And Australia’s tax-to-GDP ratio is consistently below the OECD average; we are a low-taxing society. Now, I actually support his proposal to raise the tax-free threshold to $45,000, but not for the reasons he advances. And I oppose his other proposals to reduce taxation; if we instead raised our taxes to match the OECD average, we could do so much to raise people from poverty, provide better schools and hospitals, fund alternatives to the car, and so on.

Overall, Cao pinpoints China as the source of problems for Australia and the globe. He is mad that “China has abused U.S. goodwill”, as if the US hasn’t just tanked global goodwill from friends, allies, and ambivalent countries alike. I’m hardly enthused by Chinese attempts at securing hegemony, but Cao offers little beyond fearmongering. He is mad that major economies have not acquiesced to US demands: “The U.S. offered free trade. Other countries responded with distorted trade. This time, Trump forces all nations to make a choice.” For Cao, we should acquiesce to Trump. Anything less than full acquiescence to US policy is for him acquiescence to China. Obviously, Australia should not take Cao's counsel to become a Trump lackey on the global stage.

Recommendation: if you vote below the line, give Ky Cao a weak or no preference.

Kim Mubarak (website)

Interestingly, both ungrouped candidates for WA arrived in Australia as refugees, in Kidima Mubarak Kim’s case from Uganda. He is a serial candidate, running as an independent at state and federal elections since his first tilt at the state seat of Balcatta in March 2013, and since then he has usually contested lower-house seats in Perth’s north. In 2014, he boasted in Al Wasat that at the 2013 election for the Division of Stirling he “did much better than neo right-wing political parties” despite having “no sugar daddy or vested political interest groups” (he beat Family First and Rise Up Australia but not Palmer United or Australian Christians). In that ad, placed ahead of WA’s special election for the Senate, he described himself as “Western Australia’s leading multicultural, civil and political rights advocate”. It seems he maintains this self-belief despite receiving only 109 votes at that election. His best results to date are 2.62% for Stirling at the 2016 federal election and 3.5% for Girrawheen at the state election this year (albeit last in a field of six).

Mubarak’s website is somewhat out of date and it is certainly… individual. The homepage suggests that he is standing for the Division of Perth, but he has ended up nominating for the Senate. A link titled “how to vote” does not take you to the single-sided and succinct how-to-vote card that you might expect. Instead, it goes to an extraordinary 20-page document from the 2021 election that has 157 individual numbered points and concludes with a recommendation of a second preference to the Liberal candidate while otherwise providing an open card. The “manifesto” page covers fundamentally the same ground. It's dizzying.

The "news" page contains an extraordinary number of "serious complaints", "urgent complaints", and the like (pretty much the entire second page right now), addressed to everyone from the governor-general to the prime minister, the UN secretary general, the International Criminal Court, and returning officers of the AEC, among many. Some are sweeping complaints, others relate to his business importing matoke bananas and many are personal matters such as assertions that White South Africans are stealing security lightbulbs from his home. A lot of content in the news and manifesto alike relate to a personal injury claim where he feels he has not received justice—whenever it arises, it is discussed in tedious detail that has no relevance for prospective voters.

He has proposals for more community involvement in politics and the judiciary, based on his reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He wants state governors and all judges to be elected, a mechanism for the public to recall unpopular elected members mid-term, and an “independent concerned citizens court”, which seems like a half-baked and honestly troubling idea for a parallel legal system. I wondered if this suggested influences from conspiracist circles, but he goes in some quite different directions to that crowd. For instance, his covid rant is not the usual denialism but an expression of gratitude to Scott Morrison for federal financial assistance and accusations that Mark McGowan's government did not provide enough face masks or any financial compensation for costs Mubarak incurred during the first lockdown.

Mubarak acknowledges the State of Palestine and claims to be “the First Young Politician to recognise the indigenous people in our Constitution”. He claims that major parties running African and other multicultural candidates is “Due to my perseverance, shaking our institutions like a Mango tree”. But he also accuses the major parties of "clever racism and and cheap political games against the Black people", including that the Greens connive with Labor and the Liberals against him. This year he likes Legalise Cannabis and Australian Christians (even though he is Muslim) because they preferenced him favourably in Girrawheen.

As I said, the “how to vote” and “manifesto” sections have not been updated since 2021. The only content that accurately describes his tilt this election as an independent for the Senate is a pop-up about “a fair go for all” and “more money for sports”. Please enjoy (respectfully):

Recommendation: if you vote below the line, give Kim Mubarak a weak or no preference.

Summary: If you vote above the line, you are not missing out on a chance to help elect a great candidate. Neither option is great. Ky Cao seems the more competent of the two, but that he would not use his competence for positive ends. Mubarak is a classic ungrouped candidate with peculiarities and grievances that underpin a bemusing platform.

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review XXV (federal 2025): Socialist Equality Party

Running where: two grouped independent tickets for the Senate, Group B in NSW (Max Boddy and Warwick Dove) and Group G in Victoria (Keo Vongvixay and Taylor Hernan), plus independents for three seats in the House: Robert Creech in Newcastle (NSW), Mike Head in Oxley (QLD), and Morgan Peach in Calwell (VIC)

Prior reviews: federal 2013, federal 2016, federal 2019, federal 2022, NSW 2023

What I said before: “SEP are the cranks of the Australian socialist space … still ranting that all other left-wing parties and trade unions, including other socialist parties, are on the ‘pseudo-left’. It’s tedious and childish. Just because you have minor ideological disagreements does not mean everyone else is some stooge of global capital. The SEP also love to rant against identity politics … They wouldn’t know solidarity if it bit them on the bum and they are sure as shit not intersectional.” (federal 2022)

What I think this year: If you want a form of socialist internationalism that proclaims global solidarity yet cannot even play nice with other local socialists, then the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) is the party for you! Since 2022, they have had to run independent campaigns because they cannot meet requirements for party registration. They did not even make a serious attempt before the last federal election to meet the increased membership threshold of 1,500, submitting a list of just 700 party members. What does this say about their organisational abilities or the extent of their appeal? In this era of the Internet and global hyperconnection, if you cannot find 1,500 people around Australia to join your party and affirm their membership when the AEC rings for confirmation, take a hint.

The SEP are nothing if not stubborn, so they have continued to contest elections. Their candidates are listed on the ballot without any label, be it a party name or “independent” (candidates without endorsement by a registered party can choose whether to have that). They keep throwing away thousands of dollars on candidate deposits despite their belief that “this election will resolve absolutely nothing for working people. The official campaign is a fraud”.

This party believes they are being persecuted and prevented from spreading "the truth" to voters. They contend that Labor and the Coalition are engaging in a “pantomime debate” and that no matter who wins the election, they will impose “massive” austerity and that “their own agenda parallels what [Trump] is imposing” (if you really want to see an agenda paralleling Trump, turn to my reviews of the Libertarians or Trumpet of Patriots). For this, the SEP “have been effectively banned from having our party name on the ballot. The Australian Electoral Commission, enforcing anti-democratic measures imposed by Labor and the Coalition, rejected our application for formal party registration”. This, they assert, “was aimed not just at keeping the name of the SEP off the ballot, but keeping the truth out of the election”.

I don’t see how not printing three words below a few candidates' names keeps the truth out of an election, but go off. They are always free to bellow this “truth” as independents—or as a party with actual grassroots support of at least 1,500 members, which they can’t seem to find. They do claim to have “met the onerous requirement of submitting a membership list of more than 1,500”, but this is untrue. As the AEC’s notice of decision explains, the SEP only submitted a list of 700 members, this was not updated at any point in the deliberation or appeals process, and a review affirmed SEP’s de-registration on 23 January 2023. There has been no subsequent application for re-registration.

You can see why the SEP can’t scrabble their way to re-registration when you look at the rantings that purport to be a platform. No wonder they have few friends. They have a tremendously simplistic foreign policy agenda that is not just reflexively anti-American, but which also grants unthinking support to rivals of the US, particularly Russia. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is the most inane kind of foreign policy. I’m not even sure the SEP realises that the Cold War is over, the USSR does not exist, and Putin is a corrupt authoritarian nationalist rather than a socialist, a dictator with an imperialist rather than internationalist outlook. This means the SEP advance ludicrous claims about the war in Ukraine being a “US-NATO proxy war against Russia”. Yes, a war against Russia. They think the country that violated another’s sovereignty and which could end the war this second if they simply pulled back to their own borders is somehow the victim here. It’s fatuous, contemptible nonsense.

The SEP seem to actively try to alienate anyone left-wing who might be amenable to any of the principles they espouse. They depict the Greens as having “no fundamental differences” with Labor or the Coalition and they dismiss everybody else purporting to be left of the Greens as “the pseudo-left”. This disagreeable attitude is one the SEP has had for years. They believe that they and they alone are genuine socialists and that Socialist Alliance and Victorian Socialists “have nothing to do with socialism or the working class”. These two groups instead “speak for an affluent layer of the upper middle class”.

Now, you might think that even if this were true, a socialist party would welcome affluent people coming over to the cause. Not so! SEP describes both parties as operating “within the framework of capitalism”. What might that include? Oh, uh, “identity politics based on race, gender and sexuality, as opposed to class”. Yup, we’re back with a classic SEP line: racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia are to them a distraction. They simply cannot hold multiple thoughts in their head or weave priorities into an inclusive and comprehensive platform. They are obsessed with class to the exclusion of everything else.

Even if other parts of the SEP’s rhetoric touches on issues of genuine interest to socialists, they are neither a serious nor safe option.

Recommendation: Give candidates endorsed by the Socialist Equality Party a weak or no preference in the Senate. In Calwell, Newcastle, and Oxley, I would suggest preferencing the SEP-endorsed candidates below other left-wing or centrist candidates but above right-wing ones.

Website: https://www.wsws.org/en/special/pages/sep/australia/home.html

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review XXIV (federal 2025): Victorian Socialists

Running where: well it’s not going to be Queensland now is it?

(but seriously, they are running in VIC for the Senate and for four seats in the House: Bendigo, Cooper, Fraser, Scullin)

Prior reviews: VIC 2018, federal 2019, federal 2022, VIC 2022

What I said before: “Victorian Socialists are exactly what they say they are. No misleading party name here, just a straight-up socialist platform.” (VIC 2022)

What I think this year: Much like my review of Socialist Alliance, I am broadly sympathetic to the platform of Victorian Socialists (VS), with some specific quibbles. You will probably be favourably disposed towards it too if you are interested in things such as greater taxation of multinational corporations and wealthy individuals, scrapping negative gearing, greater royalties on resources, nationalising essential services (VS focus on energy, telecommunications, and the Internet), investment in a rapid transition to renewable energy, increasing the minimum wage from $24.10/hr to $30/hr, improving the rights of workers (especially casual employees, and restoring rights to strike), and opposing the AUKUS deal.

Certainly some of VS’s taxation proposals might not instantly appeal to more moderate voters, let alone the right (e.g. marginal tax rate of 90% above 300k/pa, scrapping GST, ending tax exemptions for religious institutions). But given the state of tax discourse in Australia, I welcome any attempt to pull the Overton window back towards systems of higher taxation, given Australia's tax-to-GDP ratio is below the OECD average and has been for a long time. We are a low-taxing country and we should have a conversation about all the things we could afford and all the people we could lift out of poverty if we simply taxed at the OECD average. VS’s proposals are a provocative and useful part of that conversation.

My qualms are with VS’s housing policy and, by extension, a certain candidate. If I’m honest, since I began this edition of the reviews, this entry is one I’ve been least looking forward to writing, a stark contrast with my review of Trumpet of Patriots yesterday. It’s great fun to rip into the platforms of unhinged far-right parties whom I can assume my regular readership also scorns unreservedly. In this case, however, I have previously reviewed VS positively and once voted 1 for them, but if I still lived in Victoria I would not do so this year: I’m not hugely keen on Purplepingers, or as he is listed on the Senate ballot, VS lead candidate Jordan van den Lamb. I know my social media circles include fans of him, but he does not excite me. I’m not saying I dislike him: shitrentals.org is great and I contributed a review of one of Melbourne’s very worst agencies, Walshe & Whitelock. Nonetheless, the fact so much of the VS campaign is based around him as if he is a “celebrity” candidate makes me less enthused about the party as a whole.

I like VS’s strong emphasis on renters’ rights—I rent and don’t expect to ever not rent—but I feel that their response to the housing crisis is incomplete. VS emphasises rapid expansion of public housing, which I think is an important part of the response but not the only part or even the main part in the short/medium term. Australia has lower levels of public or social housing than the average advanced economy, so I agree we certainly need more. But I don’t think it can immediately be the leading plank of a response, and it will take time to erode widespread perceptions of public housing as undesirable or an option of last resort (we won’t become Singapore overnight).

As noted in my Socialist Alliance review, I support a mixed economy, and I think there will be (and should be) a role for private housing development for years to come. Hence, for me, VS need to articulate broader policies to foster dense, walkable cities that are accessible and efficient. We should build up, not out, for social, environmental, and economic reasons alike. VS, however, do not have policies for this; at the end of their climate policy is a point about “new regulations for urban planning and design to ensure environmental efficiency and sustainability”, but nothing about ending restrictive zoning or absurd heritage policies that limit housing supply, lock people out from many suburbs, and impede the replacement of mouldy old homes with warm modern ones. I am a professional historian who is not a fan of heritage regulations in their current form; perhaps that is surprising, but urban history shows us that the most vibrant cities are those that grow and evolve, while those put in aspic stagnate.

I see why VS chose Purplepingers as lead candidate. I’ve said before that VS has a younger vibe than Socialist Alliance, and Pingers made his reputation on social media. VS would certainly hope that he brings with him a cohort of socialism-curious voters and reach new audiences. But as well as exposing shit rentals and appalling landlords, Pingers also promotes squatting, which I don’t think is a meaningful solution; it is not pro-housing praxis to occupy dwellings so rundown that they fail paltry minimum standards for slumlords to rent them on the open market. Last week a story broke that a woman found the locks had been changed on her deceased father’s house, the address of which Pingers had shared. What struck me on my socials was that people who were already voting for him thought this was great and spent the day mocking the woman, while many who were not already in his camp found it questionable or distasteful, and saw his "I don't want her to feel bad" response as unserious. So, he’s shoring up a base but I’m not sure he’s the candidate to bring socialism to more mainstream audiences who need persuasion—and I very much want a seat-winning constituency for socialist candidates.

We have too much of the far-right in state and federal parliaments; a socialist MP would be a tonic and expand our political discourse. VS are exactly what they say on the tin and I think they will appeal not just to self-identified socialists but also to other left-wing voters. And despite my reservations above, Pingers and I concur about needing more homes—ultimately, my view is that his activism ironically does not go far enough and that there are more levers to pull. Like him, I want to stop land-banking and negligent landlords, and to ensure good minimum standards. I want more houses, I want them to be part of dense and accessible cities, and I want this yesterday. So, VS has what I consider to be part of the solution, and many of their other policies sit in a similar ideological area to my views. I hope they grow their vote this year.

Recommendation: Give Victorian Socialists a good preference.

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

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review XXIII (federal 2025): Trumpet of Patriots

Running where: for the Senate and a majority of House seats in all six states (no candidates in the ACT or NT)

Prior review as the Australian Federation Party: federal 2022 (which links to older reviews of the Country Alliance, with no relevance today but of historical interest regarding the party’s origins)

See also my reviews of the Palmer United Party/United Australia Party: federal 2013, VIC 2014, federal 2016, VIC 2018, federal 2019, federal 2022, VIC 2022, NSW 2023

What I said before: “The AusFeds are covid conspiracists … a hotbed of fringe politics and anti-vax advocacy, and must be rejected.” (federal 2022)

What I think this year: Here's the review I've been anticipating writing ever since I began this year's series.

You know the feeling when you are familiar with a band—you don’t necessarily like them, you’re just aware they exist—as a tiny wee outfit, gigging around the place and releasing a couple of albums with very niche appeal, and overnight they have a number one hit and everybody’s talking about them as some brand-new thing? That whole “I knew them before they were famous” vibe? Yeah, that’s how us micro-party nerds feel about the Australian Federation Party/Trumpet of Patriots (TOP). They were our gag, the weirdos we would trot out to amuse people who went through their lives blissfully unaware of updates to the AEC’s register of parties.

But now TOP are headline news, to the point that some people even think Clive Palmer founded them this year. Oh you sweet summer electoral children (are you even 18 years old and eligible to vote?). TOP are so much more than that: they are crackpots to whom Clive has hitched his wagon. He is, after all, simply not capable of concocting a party name as outlandish as Trumpet of Patriots by himself.

The original Trumpet of Patriots formed in August 2021 and applied for registration in December that year. It was one of the many groupings to emerge from the “Freedom” movement of covid denialists, antivaxxers, and assorted selfish people horrified they were required to do anything for the common good or care about other people. It used the slogans “make Australia free again” and “unifying the voice of reason” and held all the views you would expect: appropriation of “bodily autonomy” in the antivaxxer sense, hostility to the United Nations and any other international agreements to which Australia is a signatory, conspiracy theories about “The Great Reset”, the end of judicial and ministerial immunities (recall the violent demands on social media and at rallies that cookers have made about arresting and even executing prominent politicians), and so on.

These charmers did not achieve registration before the 2022 federal election (or at all), with prospective Trumpet of Patriots candidates instead standing under the banner of the Australian Federation Party, one of the most cracked parties at that election. This dalliance proved to be no electoral one-night stand: the two saw in each other something that they liked. For the AusFeds, it was a catchier name; for TOP, it was federal registration. And so the two merged in late 2024, with the AusFeds’ registered name updated to be Trumpet of Patriots.

Clive Palmer did not enter the picture until early this year, and he only did so because his United Australia Party (UAP) had been de-registered and the High Court affirmed that it could not contest this election. As I said in my review of One Nation, everybody involved with UAP is unintelligent and incurious even by the low standards of the far-right. They de-registered the party, evidently to avoid financial disclosure requirements, and did not realise this meant they could not re-register ahead of the next election—despite the fact this restriction has existed for over forty years to avoid cynical de-/re-registration, misleading registrations posing as a recently de-registered party, or squatting on a name but not contesting elections (and Australia, the land of the squattocracy, knows all about squatting).

Clive decided that in lieu of the UAP contesting this federal election, he would bankroll Trumpet of Patriots. Former leader Nick Duffield handed the leadership to Suellen Wrightson, who ran for Palmer United at various elections in 2013–16, stood for the UAP in 2019–22 (and was for a time the NSW assistant state director), and in 2019 her husband Dean stood for the UAP in Watson and her daughter Meg in McMahon. The party website was promptly updated with the UAP’s garish bright yellow colour scheme, redirected from a dot com domain to a dot org domain, and the old TOP logo (a boring navy-blue-and-white one with a lion and the Southern Cross) replaced with some of the most shithouse AI art you have seen in your life of a lion blowing a trumpet.

Anyway, what does TOP stand for besides Clive trying to pollute federal parliament with even more numpties like current senator Ralph Babet? I think you can guess: this is full-throated Trump worship seeking to bring his destructive and hate-filled policies to Australia. If you’ve paid even the slightest attention to Babet, you can tell the man wishes he was in the US Congress and keeps trying to fight US political and culture wars; he has his head plunged in the social media septic tank and seems to barely even grasp that Australia is a separate country with its own issues.

TOP would like to Americanise—or Trumpise—our politics even further. The homepage boasts that “In the USA, government waste and corruption is finally being exposed” and that in Australia “We will drain the swamp!” They have a policy to replicate the Department of Government Efficiency here, so that we too can claim fictitious savings by destroying public institutions, wrecking lives, and ending high-value programmes Trumpists simply don't like or refuse to understand. Like parties such as Sustainable Australia, TOP thinks we can solve housing issues by cutting immigration rather than improving supply. They depict coal power as cheap and renewables as expensive and unreliable when the truth is the opposite and that the likes of AGL have been seeking to offload old outdated coal-fired assets in favour of cheaper renewable sources of electricity. TOP's policies go on like this: fearmongering about banking and cash, racist opposition to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags and to Welcomes to Country, nonsense about schools having a “woke agenda”, antisemitic dogwhistles about “globalism is the scourge of the free world”, on and on and on.

It's all very wearying and the sooner the Trumpet of Patriots falls silent, the better our politics will be.

Recommendation: Give Trumpet of Patriots a very low preference in the House (a fitting pick for your very last preference!) and a weak or no preference in the Senate

Website: https://trumpetofpatriots.org/

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review XXII (federal 2025): The Great Australian Party

Running where: for the House, Hasluck (WA); for the Senate, WA and sorta QLD

On QLD ballots in the Senate, Group K will show a lead candidate for the Great Australian Party, William Bay, and a second candidate representing HEART. Literally the day I drafted this entry, Bay quit GAP (he is now endorsing Rennick First but it is too late to alter Senate ballots)

Prior reviews: federal 20l9, federal 2022

What I said before: “The Great Australian Party (GAP) is a brainworm colony in party form … GAP were anti-vax before covid. They were sovereign citizens before covid. Sovereign citizens, put simply, believe the law does not apply to them, and if they recite magical phrases and use special punctuation then cops and courts and the tax office will simply vanish in a puff of smoke.” (federal 2022)

What I think this year: Must admit I’m surprised the Great Australian Party (GAP) is even still around. I wish they weren’t. By “they” I largely mean Rod Culleton, former WA senator for One Nation and party founder, but it seems he has enough friends that GAP can still be described in the plural.

GAP’s website starts, uh, promisingly. It states that “The Commonwealth Constitution dictates that you are the ‘Supreme, Absolute, Uncontrollable Authority’ in this country”. Such a phrase never appears in the Australian constitution, which I am sure you are not surprised to learn, and indeed the word “uncontrollable” is not in the text at all. GAP, nonetheless, says that quote is what the party is all about.

Founded on a falsehood, their policies embody further falsehoods, misconceptions, lies, and conspiracies. GAP is obsessed with the constitution, yet they are singularly incapable of comprehending it. I would describe their constitutional interpretations as the equivalent of somebody who claims to love cricket instead describing the rules of rugby, but in GAP’s case they don’t understand rugby either.

Specific policies are scarcely worth discussing because they are all subordinate to GAP’s broader conspiratorial agenda and their total misunderstanding of constitutional law. For instance, the “communications, IT, and the arts” policy (gee now there’s a combo) is mainly an excuse for GAP to rant that privatisation of Telstra was unconstitutional (spoiler: it’s not). There is a heavy vehicles policy because “Rod Culleton use [sic] to own and operate his own fleet of trucks”, which manages to invoke two sections of the constitution. GAP wants “net zero immigration”, it is hostile to the United Nations, and boy do they like guns, believing firearm ownership is “a right, not a privilege”. Almost every policy page contains something bonkers. But most outlandish of all is the environment policy, which “is critical of piddle-power projects that masquerade as significant energy sources”. Piddle-power!

Culleton continues to proclaim that he is a “senator in exile”. He even wrote to Donald Trump earlier this year protesting that he “was unlawfully prevented from returning to my office … upon pointing out that Australia had departed from its foundation law”, among other absurd claims (you can safely ignore the legal assertions in the rest of the document; it is rubbish). On page 3, Culleton’s letter is co-signed by two other former senators: Len Harris of One Nation (and more recently The Silent Majority, a majority so silent that they gave Len only 0.44% of the vote in the state of his candidacy, Queensland) and Bob Day, who wishes he still controlled Family First and is now standing for Trumpet of Patriots.

What actually happened to Culleton is that when he was elected as One Nation’s lead candidate for WA at the 2016 election, he was awaiting sentence for a crime punishable by a sentence of at least a year. This disqualified him from being elected under section 44 of the constitution (Anne Twomey, Australia’s leading constitutional law expert and the one good YouTuber, has dealt with this from 7:25 in this video). Unlike other victims of section 44, he has never moved on.

Moreover, this is not Culleton’s only brush with the law. He is an undischarged bankrupt, so in both 2022 and again this year, the AEC has had to refer his nomination as a candidate to the Australian Federal Police for false declarations on his nomination form. The AEC itself has no power to deal with this: it must accept a fully completed candidate nomination even if the form contains false or incorrect responses. All it can do in cases where it has reason to suspect a declaration is false or incorrect is to make the referrals so made.

If you clicked through to the AEC’s 2025 media release linked above, you might have noticed something: Culleton’s name is spelt “Cullerton”. What’s going on there? Honestly, I don’t know. In reply to a question on Twitter, the AEC stated:

Now, in previous years he appeared as “Culleton”, so has he changed his name via deed poll? Is this some weird sovereign citizen thing? I saw one suggestion that there was a typo on his nomination form, but that does not gel with the tweet above that this is his legal name on the electoral roll.

GAP’s WA how-to-vote card has an odd quirk. It makes suggestions both above- and below-the-line. After GAP, both tickets then recommend Rennick First, Trumpet of Patriots, Australian Christians, and Libertarians. But then the above-the-line recommendations continue to One Nation, while the below-the-line recommendation only suggests the first two (of three) Libertarians before recommending preferences to the National Party, and does not suggest any BTL preference to One Nation. Make of that what you will.

Also, the second candidate on the WA ticket is one William Newton-Wordsworth. I invite you to make your own GAP ballot-filler candidate name by using the first name of a famous playwright and hyphenating the last names of an influential scientist and a notable poet. Hello, I am Oscar Copernicus-Byron.

Recommendation: Give the Great Australian Party a weak or no preference in the Senate; if you are an elector in Hasluck, put the GAP candidate last.

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

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review XXI (federal 2025): Sustainable Australia–Universal Basic Income

Running where: all states and territories for the Senate (no House candidates)

Prior reviews (under many variations on their name): federal 2013, federal 2016, VIC 2018, NSW 2019, federal 2019, federal 2022, VIC 2022, NSW 2023, WA 2025

What I said before: “I am aware of some well-meaning people in this party with centrist or centre-left environmental views, but the overall thrust is NIMBY and anti-immigration and I cannot in good faith offer any endorsement.” (NSW 2023)

What I think this year: Personally, I would be embarrassed to stand for a party with so few principles that it modifies its registered name to include a slogan to lure in low-info voters. SusAus, however, have fewer scruples. To lightly plagiarise my WA 2025 state election review, SusAus is the party that has never had a name it didn’t want to change. Starting life as the Stable Population Party, the federal party rebadged from “Sustainable Australia Party–Stop Overdevelopment/Corruption” to “Sustainable Australia Party–Universal Basic Income” in November 2023. If they could stop tacking slogans or policy principles onto their name, that would be grand.

SusAus have adopted a policy to provide a Universal Basic Income (UBI) of $500 per week to Australian citizens. I have noticed pronouncements in favour of a UBI have been spreading among some minor parties and candidates over the last couple of electoral cycles, and not always from the left. Whether promoting a UBI this prominently will win SusAus much of the vote remains to be seen. What strikes me is that they position a UBI as an environmental measure as part of a degrowth mindset to reduce demand and consumption, i.e. people will need to work less (and thus produce less) if they have a guaranteed $500 per week. This makes it tremendously ironic, then, that SusAus’s page on a UBI has a summary from ChatGPT. No, I’m not just saying it looks like a ChatGPT summary; it is headed “We asked ChatGPT to summarise the below article and this was the result”. Yes, ChatGPT, an environmentally destructive technology with a gluttonous demand for electricity and water. Perhaps SusAus needs to reflect on their own practices before lecturing anybody else about consumption and waste.

Beyond this, SusAus is what SusAus has always been: an anti-immigration party of NIMBYs. Their supposed solution to Australia’s housing crisis is merely to reduce demand by slashing immigration. They have a completely outlandish claim on their website that “SAP is a pro-immigration party. As part of our plan, we simply support returning Australia's annual permanent immigration program from around 200,000pa to the normal Twentieth Century average level of 70,000pa.” Folks, please. If you want fewer people to come here, you are anti-immigration by definition. Slashing migration to just 35% of its current level is quite obviously an anti-immigration stance. Moreover, the twentieth-century average needs to be calibrated with respect to the population of the time: i.e. if 70,000 people migrated to Australia in 1925, proportionally that is a much bigger intake than today, as the population a century ago was about 5.94 million, less than 22% the current population of roughly 27.31 million.

Moreover, a steep reduction in future immigration does not solve housing problems for everybody already here, nor does it address the serious effects of suburban sprawl, but SusAus seem quite happy with sprawl because they also want to “stop overdevelopment” (until recently so important it was part of their name), which is code for apartments. Heaven forbid we have compact cities that support active and public transport and where car use is unnecessary or undesirable for most purposes. You won’t find SusAus advocating for that.

To echo what I said in my WA 2025 review, “To be honest, I am not terribly interested in engaging with the rest of their policies because their core principles are discrediting.” If you are an environmentalist but you share One Nation’s attitudes on migration, this is the party for you. Everybody else, look elsewhere.

Recommendation: Give Sustainable Australia–Universal Basic Income a weak or no preference. In terms of parties that might have a superficial appeal for left-wing voters but about which I have serious reservations, I suggest that SusAus be placed below Fusion, except in Queensland where Fusion’s lead Senate candidate is affiliated with Democracy First.

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