Hey auspol. It's about that time again: you know, the one where you have to sit around researching about 15 minor parties that sound distantly familiar to figure out what to put as your bottom preferences.
This year I found my way to a couple of blogs which offer brief and unabashedly biased reviews of the minor parties in the federal landscape. These are not new, I'm just late.
Both blogs are written from a relatively progressive-left perspective, at least by Australian standards. Inside the spoiler below is what they say about themselves:
Summaries of bloggers
Blatantly Partisan Party Reviews
I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of a political party. I review from the perspective of a small-g green democratic socialist. I am trained and work as a political historian of Australia and New Zealand. This background guides my reviews, which originated as—and remain—notes to inform my own vote. I do not aim for any false neutrality or objectivity, and I share these remarks in the hope they are useful to others trying to navigate Australia’s plethora of micro-parties. It should be obvious but these are my personal opinions, which should not be construed as representing the views of my employer nor of any other organisation with which I am affiliated.
Something for Cate
I’m Maz. In no particular order I’m left of centre, a grandparent, a writer, trans, pansexual, a mental health lived experience worker, agnostic, supportive of unions, and supporter of the Arts. I’m committed to holding governments and media accountable and, while I can’t promise complete objectivity, I can promise to deliver the same treatment to every party and independent in this election.
I’m Loki. I’ve been in several political parties and never found one left enough for my liking. I’m a bisexual cis male, and likewise agnostic, pro-Union and pro-arts. I try not to approach anything uncritically, whether I agree with it or not. I firmly believe that objectivity is a goal that can be striven for but never actually reached. That said, in that quest I will seek, strive and not yield.
While I obviously recommend you come to your own conclusions about the parties, it can be nice to hear what other voters think of them, especially when it's some shit you never heard of before.
Something for Cate especially includes coverage of unregistered groupings, which are a deep black box of nothing to me most of the time.
Oh wow. I didn’t know it was this bad. I was planning to vote 1 for them cos they’re the only left minor party other than Greens where I am. I guess I have to rely on Greens and Labor instead.
This is only from Victoria, it doesn't mean necessarily mean that your local candidate or branch is the same (depending on where you live). Fusion is a micro party that attracts a very wide range of people, so I don't think painting them all with the same brush is a particularly smart or helpful thing to do.
That's true, but I also think it's actually sort of part of the problem. Because Fusion isn't one party, but instead a...fusion...of multiple different parties, it is inevitably very unclear where they stand. And they don't exactly make it easy to see who's who, or what they stand for.
I've got no idea where the Fusion candidate in my seat, or the ones on my state's Senate ballot, stand on important issues. But I do know that they are happy associating with a party that's willing to put Libertarians, Labor, and even the LNP and Family First ahead of the Greens. And that I find to be deeply concerning about anyone's political reliability.
Again, I don't necessarily agree with that last part because every candidate and branch may (or may not) be different. Frankly, I don't really care who is being preferenced in Victoria when I'm voting in South Australia. But yes, I absolutely agree that Fusion as a concept has a major issue in that it's values and policy positions are so broad that it makes it very difficult for me as a voter to determine which aspects of the party platform are core, where influence lies and why my candidate is running under the party banner. I like a lot about Fusion but I expect that I'm actually a minority in that regard and that people are probably more likely to be attracted by specific elements of the party, which is a problem for stability and transparency. I am fortunate to have a lower house Fusion candidate in my seat but I can't preference him above The Greens guy because it's not at all clear why he is running or what he stands for.
In a completely unrelated thread, I just know read a user say the following:
I actually don't entirely agree with it in the context it was presented. It's hard to "remove" someone from an informal ideological association (though at the least, some members of the ideology should denounce others as necessary rather than remain silent).
But in this context, I think that quote works perfectly. It's a formalised political party. By being a member of the party, and especially by being a candidate for that political party, every one of their members are explicitly expressing agreement with the party's methods.
If one Labor candidate decided to put Family First ahead of the Greens, we would widely say that reflects badly of Labor as a whole. We wouldn't excuse Labor Left because it was a Labor Right candidate who did it, we'd say that Labor Left chooses to remain unified with the ALP and in so doing they have endorsed Family First above the Greens.
We can acknowledge that they might have disagreements behind the scenes and work towards improving, while also believing it valid to tar them with the same brush that their party's public actions have crafted.
Yeah I think it's a complicated nuanced situation because there are multiple separate issues going on here. One is the ambiguity created by multiple separate parties merging into one party but semi-retaining their separate identities. Another is exactly what those individual constituent parties might stand for (just how libertarian are the Pirates, anyway?). And a third is the degree to which individual members should be held to account for the actions of the party as a whole, or other members of the party.
Using major parties like Labor, or even popular third parties like The Greens, as an example misses the point. The reason they are more trustworthy is because their candidates are screened more intensely. There is a much stronger connection between the party and the candidate, and the actions of one can often be an insight into the other.
On the other hand, it is quite normal for micro-parties to be a confusing clusterfuck, and for that reason you can't assume a local candidate is good or bad based on how the broader party is operating in other areas. Micro-parties are not organisations/institutions in the same way as larger parties, they are ultimately just collections of individuals who share some kind of common sentiment and that makes them much more volatile.
One thing you can assume about the candidates though, at least until they quit the party or at least indicate otherwise, is that they are willing to be associated with that minor party. So the best case scenario is a really good candidate who is slumming it with a party whose leadership is both absorbing and doing external deals with parties that are fundamentally opposed to their own stated principles. And then the worst case scenario is a candidate who is actively opposed to the party's goals, camouflaging themselves in ideals they don't believe in.
To me, being part of the Fusion party right now--given the state of its leadership and decision-making--is a red flag even on a candidate who otherwise seems good.
Again, you are missing the point if you assume that what happens in VIctoria has any connection to what is happening in other states. You are vastly overestimating how organised party politics is at this level, it is much more about powerful and loud individuals making acting on behalf of everyone else (often without even informing them) than it is about collaborative decision making. People are often there for their own selfish reasons, that's why these micro-parties tend to implode and have loads of weird drama that you just don't see in larger parties. I very much doubt my SA candidates are even aware of the preference deal controversy happening over there.
Huh? No, I think you're missing the point. Of course it has a connection. It's the same party. But it's also not just "what happens in Victoria". The linked review shows the official national Facebook page for the party saying
Not only do they spread completely false Labor talking points (time and time again, the Greens have tried to get Labor to come to the negotiating table, only for Labor to be the ones who refuse to negotiate, or refuse to negotiate in good faith), they are using their official national account to attack the people who at least seem to be their most natural allies.
I can't find a HTV for Fusion in Qld, or for their candidate in Ryan. So I don't even have any possible counter evidence that maybe up here they might be more sensible.
Yeah that's a fair point, I did miss that those comments were made on the national page. In line with my argument, I would say that the social media accounts for a micro-party are not necessarily as reliable as those of larger parties and are more prone to individual influence. You can see in one of the screenshots in the article at the top of this comment chain that whoever was operating the Twitter account at the time was actually out of touch with decisions that had been about HTV cards in one electorate. To me, the whole fiasco looks a lot more like the usual micro-party clusterfuck where you have too many different competing egos and influences, leading to a disorganised and poorly communicated mess. I wouldn't definitively state that it's evidence of some party-wide shift to the right, like some in this thread are claiming. But I can see why voters on the left would steer clear of Fusion at this election, particularly when there are some more stable and cohesive left-wing micro-parties like the AJP running in the same electorates.
Absolutely true, and in service of that point, at least some of the Facebook comments were signed off by someone called "Simon". Probably Simon Gnieslaw, #2 on the Fusion ballot in Victoria.
My issue though remains. Why would someone sign up for a party if they do not trust that party's leadership? That goes extra for smaller parties where you won't be able to fall back on the party establishment rather than its personal leadership as you could for larger parties.
I think it's simply due to personal ambition. That's ultimately the problem with a lot of these micro-parties - they are formed by people who have rejected larger, more established parties because they didn't feel like they had enough influence (or because their efforts to exert influence rocked the boat so much they were essentially expelled). That doesn't necessarily mean ambition to become a career politician and make a lot of money, it could also just be ambition to change Australian politics and pass more ambitious policy. Although the former would explain why I have this generic business undergrad running in my seat. This is why I don't particularly like this idea of writing off entire micro-parties based on controversies or internal drama, because ultimately you might actually still have a local candidate who otherwise aligns with your values who could end up splitting from the party altogether.
At the same time, I think it is very fair to question the narrative Fusion is trying to push about these new, seemingly unsuitable, members and parties working harmoniously with the rest for the greater good. Maybe some of them genuinely believe that, but the much more likely reason is because these people or groups feel they can use Fusion as a springboard to advance their own agenda and/or career.
The problems are much deeper than Victorian preference deals. As noted in the BPPR Fusion review (separate post to the preference deal fiasco), Fusion absorbed two additional parties this election season: the centrist Australian Progressives and right-wing Democracy First.
This is not a Victoria issue, this is the party expanding by absorbing other parties which don't stand for the ideals of the existing sub-parties. If the SA candidates are completely unaware of what Fusion is doing and what parties are actually in the party, that might be even worse than them pragmatically accepting it.