FUSION: Science Pirate Secular Climate Emergency
* I've been wondering where a lot of the single-issue micro parties from previous years have
gone, and it turns out a few of them have, well... fused, into FUSION. They were:
Climate Change Justice Party
Pirate Party
Science Party
Secular Party of Australia
Vote Planet
* OK, now I know why all the tiny parties disappeared, they explain that this was something
of a forced fusion in reaction to changes to the electoral law raising the minimum number
of members required in a political party from 500 to 1,500:
https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/party-registration-changes-unfair-to-small-parties-too-restrictive/
* Now the consequences of this are actually a bit odd. The other parties apparantly still exist
as separate branches of FUSION, each retaining their own set of FUSION-branch candidates.
They do however have candidate pages which claim to outline the specific policies that each
is particularly concerned with. For example the Pirate Party's website is still current:
https://pirateparty.org.au/
And it lists their five candidates with links to their candidate pages on the FUSION website,
which list the top three policies they're most concerned with ("Civil + Digital Liberties" is
there in the case of all the Pirate party's candidates of course). Therefore you could still
vote for candidates according to their individual branch, rather than for FUSION as a whole.
Indeed the Pirate Party still have their own set of policies here:
https://pirateparty.org.au/our-vision/
But I'll take to opportunity to make this task easier and just assess FUSION as a whole.
* They're all-in on the idea of 'negative carbon' to not just stop, but reverse, global warming.
The reversal starts after we reach zero emissions in ten years. Their long-term aim is to
achieve an "800% renewable energy target" by turning Australia into an exporter of renewable
energy.
* The Science party get their say on increased funding for research into clean energy including,
heh, fusion. They are also still in favour of building up a space industry. Sounds nice.
* General increases to education funding.
* They want monetary policies to be considered in parallel with environmental and 'personal'
("Opportunity, Education, Health and Wellbeing") concerns, which is a mindset that I much
appreciate. To this end they intend to "Consider a tax reform package based on land value
tax and UBI with a negative income tax as a potential approach.". Though vague, I actually
appreciate the cautious wording of this, as I'm vaguely attracted to the UBI concept myself.
* They're big on free speech, as I am. The former Secular Party seems to take this on as part
of their anti-religion adjenda though, as their policy is "Remove censorship, blasphemy, and
other laws against speech". I like a broad brush on free speech, but where in Aus are people
getting locked up for blasphemy exactly? What rules churches apply to their members are of
no interest to me at all, and I don't see how that could refer to anything else.
* They also want a bill of rights to help pursue individual freedoms, but again I think this
is unnecessary for their aims and would just waste resources on excessive debate.
* They want all fossil fuel extraction to cease within two years, which is quite strong,
possibly too strong. Does it really make sense to mandate that extraction should stop
without also mandating that usage should stop within two years as well? One presumes
they're not proposing the latter, it would hit aviation rather hard for starters.
* They also have a heavy focus on restoring natural environments, though they're not saying
which environments they plan to restore. I'd fear that they're not very friendly to
farmers.
* Similar to other parties in wanting to any religious references in government processes
and laws, including no tax exemptions for religions. Meh.
* Part of their defence strategy is to "Develop strategic alternative supply chains for
critical elements of the economy", which I like to hear. They even have a list of
those critical elements. It would be nice if they had said they'd prioritise Australian
manufacturers of these supplies though, it reads a bit like "anywhere besides China".
* Otherwise their defence policies shy away from suggesting much real change, but they want
to expand diplomacy and foreign aid while trying to be "defence focused" and
non-agressive. Probably much easier said than done.
* The pirates get their piece in the "Civil + Digital Liberties" policies, which include
"Modernise copyright with a Creative Works Act, so that our culture is not merely sold
back to us under the control of rent-seeking monopolies" and "Review trade agreements
that inflict foreign regulations on Australian creators". I have some sympathy for this,
particularly the latter, which presumably applies to things such as the partly-aborted
Trans-Pacific Partnership deal. It's all a matter of how far it goes though. The Pirate
party's own site has much, much more detail, and notes that the Creative Works Act is actually
a complete replacement for the Copyright Act:
https://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/Platform#Copyright
There's a lot to it, but the stand-out difference is that copyright duration drops way
down to 15 years after publication. I quite like this. Even movies, the most expensive
copyrighted works, are judged on their immediate box-office profits rather than sales
15 years later. Though one can imagine that it would piss the foreign entertainment
industry off enough that many big players might pull out of Australia in protest - they
haven't got a great deal to lose from that after all. Still, I see the merit on some
levels, 15 years is probably just taking it too far. I do like the idea of an Orphan Works
Office which can make a work public domain if rights holders stop publishing it in a way
that's accessible in Australia. Interestingly, they want to protect software under
separate (and unspecified) laws.
* On internet privacy the Pirates had another almost excessively detailed policy:
https://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/Platform#Privacy
But FUSION just has "Enshrine network neutrality and freedom of expression in law.", which
doesn't even hook back into the Pirate policy like the "Creative Works Act" reference in
their copyright policy. So, is stuff such as "End warrantless monitoring of internet use
among the general public" and "Ensure individuals have a legally protected right to control
data collection on devices they own" part of the FUSION policy or not? I guess on the face of
it, not. That's disappointing because I liked that side to the Pirate party much more than
the copyright stuff.
I've given this party a lot of focus, probably at the expense of not having time to cover
some others at all. This is because there were things in the policies of the science party
and the pirate party that I quite liked at past elections. Ideally joining up would allow
for a more rounded set of policies that I like more overall, but actually I'm very
disappointed that the Pirate's detailed privacy policies seem to have been cast aside
entirely. I'll blame the current Liberal government for this though, given that they
forced the parties together in the first place by trippling the minimum membership count.
Being able to blame the government for no longer being able to vote for who you want is
a dodgy circumstance in a democracy, for that matter.
The two candidates running for Victoria are both from the Climate Change parties. The
emissions and environmental policies read to me as both vague and potentially a bit
extreme, so combine that with the loss of what I liked most about the Pirate's policy (I
almost said "what I like most about the Pirate party", but that would of course have been
their name) and overall they end up about a mid-place pick for me. Very frustrating,
expecially after all that research!
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