Gerard Rennick People First Party
https://peoplefirstparty.au/
* Headed by a Liberal party senator who left the party last year. An accountant
with a farming background, from Queensland.
* Advocate for small government by consolidating departments, and reduced
spending on benefits to beaurocrats and politicians. Also dropping any
multicultural or climate change departments and subsidies on renewables.
They're more detailed on this than some, but still pretty vague and
aspirational.
* Make superannuation voluntary, which I approve of in principle since I like
to think most people aren't too stupid to manage their own money. But still
I struggle to believe that the cost of paying pensions wouldn't increase
with voluntary superannuation.
* After their policies on shrinking government departments, it turns out they
want a government-owned bank (re)established. As usual for keeping physical
branches open and providing better deals on home loans. Also insurance, which
would be a big spend now since climate change is making many houses
uneconomical to insure for reasonable fees. Plus they want to do health
insurance which is in its own death spiral of increasing fees and
correspondingly decrasing subscribers. Arguably these are good reasons for
the government to step in, but this is an indirect approach to the core
problems which can only help by throwing in lots of public money.
* Quite technical economic policies headlined by tax cuts for low-middle
income families. Also simplifying taxation in various ways. They want to
tax share trading to increase stability and offset abolishing payroll tax.
Except for removing tax exemptions for indigionous groups and foreigners,
most of it's about reducing tax on low-mid income individuals and businesses.
* They want to adopt funding infrastructure development (except renewable
energy infrastructure) through government bonds issued by a national
"Infrastructure Bank". Their theory is that this will enable the RBA to
use this as a method for managing monetary policy, but surely at some
increased risk to the success of major infrastructure projects. I really
don't know how well this could work in practice, and they're not doing
much to convince me it would.
* Their also worried that the Bank of England isn't storing Australia's
gold reserve safely and want it kept over here. This is all new to me, and
the depth of the practical and economic issues is far more than their single
paragraph can overcome to enlighten me on the issue. This is really 'deep'
stuff for a micro party though.
* "Ban Foreign Ownership of Infrastructure, Farmland and Housing". Pretty
strong. Also want to ban short selling in the stock market, and various
other tweaks there especially increased public control over superannuation
funds.
* They hate renewables and want to drop the net zero emissions target.
Hydroelectric power apparantly doesn't count as renewables to them though,
they still like it.
* Another one that wants a referendum to add freedom of speech to the
constitution. I still say it's a wrong and wasteful approach to the problem.
They say "Recent events have seen governments curtail the right of
Australians to express their views, even going so far as collaborating
with foreign actors." where I'm not sure if they mean during the the
pandemic or something else.
* They want to "Cut & Cap Immigration" but with industry-supporting
exemptions to their stated ideal of zero immigration. Also deportinging
illegal immigrants and immigrants convicted of a violent crime. It's
laid out a bit too aggressively, but I like the general principle, and
I am fond of no welfare benefits for 10 years to foreign-born citizens.
* Want to cut down on new native title claims by aboriginal groups, and remove
all the Welcome to Country stuff (presumably just in government).
* They want to break up media ownership: "Media companies will be restricted
to owning only two of the three major mediums for communication TV, Radio
and Newspapers". They're sort of missing the point that ownership of those
is consolidating because consumers are moving online instead. Yet they're
not even counting the internet as a major medium for communication?
* Curiously I found no policies about national defence.
Well as a party formed around a break-away senator from one of the major
parties, the policies here are exceptionally detailed overall. But clearly
that's mainly within Gerard Rennick's field as an accountant. He also seems
to have written the economic policy such that you really need an accountancy
degree to unpack it. Overall it reads to me like he's much bigger on tax cuts
than on spending cuts, so I suspect it's a uniquely complicated model for a
commonly unworkable proposal from these micro parties. Still, he's blinded me
with enough economic jargon that I can't be sure. Away from economics his social
policies are commonly right-wing, probably reflecting the more right-wing
climate-change-denying faction of the Liberal party he left. While put off by
that aspect, the superannuation changes are somewhat attractive to me (albeit
as someone who's never had any superannuation income), and their particularly
extreme immigration policy is at least closer to my ideal that the open
floodgates of the major parties.
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