Australian Democrats
https://www.australian-democrats.org.au/
* Cloudflare-powered website demands Javascript to load. Grr.... And with javascript enabled I get
a "Join Us" pop-up! Ho hum.
* In spite of the website, I really liked this mob last election. They've have a long past, with
decent overall success as a minor party but a very rocky recent history.
* They support "right to repair"! Not just in name either, they have a long list of policies for
it, including mandatory minimum duration of software support for 'products': 4-year feature and
6-year security. Also a five-star product repairability rating, and lots more. I love that an
Australian party is thinking about this, I don't think I've ever seen any mention it in past
elections.
* They want to focus vechicle taxation more on usage rather than fixed fees for registration and
driving licences, unified under a federal scheme rather than current individual state systems.
At the same time they want to promote rail usage for passenger and freight, and promote electric
vehicle adoption by "Align[ing] Australia's vehicle emission standards with Europe" (though I'd
rather electric vehicles were incentivised than petrol vehicles disincentivised myself). Electric
hybrid aircraft seems a stretch, but they mostly seem realistic.
* Last election I couldn't find mention of foreign policy. This time they have a number of points
about it, but mostly fairly popularist: reverse cuts to foreign aid, reducing tensions with
China (somehow), and send COVID vaccines out to countries in our region. They do seem to be
focused on the local region and indpendent defence which is nice, particularly "Commit to never
being drawn into wars that are not sanctioned by the UN General Assembly and the Australian
Parliament" is nice, though practically impossible without kicking the US bases out of Aus,
which they don't plan to do.
* I like their fairly detailed policies on "adapting to climate change" with a focus on supporting
agriculture, as I did last election. Net-zero by 2050 target, reduced by 66% by 2030.
* Lots of opinionated stuff about defence. Supposably saving money by focusing on defence assets
rather than 'offencive' assets for deploying overseas. Practically I'm not sure it's quite
so clear cut, and I don't know how accurate their pricing can be.
* They're big on accountability, and even have a "rort watch" section on their website which
is quite extensive:
https://www.democrats.org.au/rort-watch/
* Unfortunately they seem to have dropped even the weak support that they had last election
for a sustainable national population.
* Strong attitude and plans for improving aged care.
A lot of the points that I liked about them last time are still there, with the nice addition
of a foreign policy, even if some of it seems to just be a direct reaction to media stories
from the last few months. I'm overjoyed to see "right to repair" in their policies, but I'm
disappointed that they no longer seem to care about maintaining a stable population. In all
they end up about the same as before: I'm big on the sustainable population point and they've
abandoned me on that, but other things balance me out.
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