Australia's Voice
https://australiasvoice.com.au
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia%27s_Voice
* Founded by Labor party senator Fatima Payman who left Labor last
year in opposition to the Labor government's policy towards
recognition of Palestinian statehood during the war in Gaza.
* Want to increase housing availability by reducing property
investor tax breaks and thereby reduce demand in the housing
market lowering prices for first home buyers, and using the money
saved to build more public housing. Trouble is this will
also dampen private construction of new houses for the rental
market.
* They're into the idea of (re)establishing a public-owned national
bank to compete with the commercial banks. They want to run
branches from post offices. They're quite keen on
supporting regional businesses and farmers through this, though
I'm not sure how they plan to squeeze rooms for negotiating loans
into small regional post offices. They also want to stop existing
banks closing down branches without community consultation.
* They want to break up the major supermarket chains to encourage
competition. At least if they're "found guilty of price gouging,
exploiting suppliers, or anti-competitive behavior", which I
guess means if they offend again after the recent ACCC findings
against them.
* Want less pay to politicians, which they consider out of touch
with the life of many Australians.
* Various measures to give selected poor people more money. Also
victums of domestic vilonce.
* They want "Real climate action", but no real policies towards that
except calling it an emergency.
* Scrap AUKUS and build up a defence force based on our local
interests rather than those of the USA.
* For a repuclic, and "a leader elected by the people", which
implies to me US-style presidential elections. Urgh!
They swing much further left than Labor. Somewhat similar to the
Greens in social policy, but without much of an idea about
environmental issues beyond strong intentions. I doubt they're
really comitted to their bigger ideas, likely to side with Labor
except on foreign policy issues from which their founder fell out
with Labor in the first place.
--------------------------
