With the election coming up soon (as early as the 2nd of July 2016), we need to settle on who will be representing the Science Party at the federal election. We will be running for both the Senate and the House of Representatives. 

The Science Party has a strong platform and we believe that we will be competitive in the upcoming federal election. Our principles are a very clear indication of what we stand for, and we will run on core ideals innovation, education and economic reform. 

Nominating

If you're interested in running as a candidate for the Science Party, please read the information below and email nominations@scienceparty.org.au by 5PM Tuesday 5th April 2016 indicating that you would like to run so that we can involve you in the selection process.

Meeting

We're also holding a meeting in Sydney and online at 6:30PM on Wednesday 6th of April 2016 to help plan for the election.  

Minutes of the Science Party Monthly Meeting

6.30pm, 24 March 2016

225 George St, Sydney

The Science Party First Nations Treaty policy is to establish a treaty organisation to develop treaties for ratification by parliament and indigenous groups throughout Australia. We have made this policy because it is the right thing to do.

The Science Party has a new name, and now it has a new look. As members of the Science Party, we are greater than the sum of our parts and we think Science and Technology are the building blocks of great policy. Our new logo reflects that.

Aging and death has been an unfortunate reality for all of history. The Science Party doesn’t accept that this should be the case. That’s why we’ve added a section to our Health Policy that commits us to treating aging as a disease.

In this post, we investigate the impact of the proposed voting changes on splitting of preference flows which may lead to Coalition control of the Senate. This model was produced by James Jansson and submitted to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters on the 29th February 2016. 

Under a optional preferential voting system, votes will expire. In fact, many people will simply vote "1" above the line (despite it technically being an informal vote). The authors of the legislation understand the high likelihood of this happening, and have accordingly implemented a "saving mechanism" that will ensure that the vote is counted in that column  

Parties that have overlapping demographics will split the vote, and only pass on a fraction of the votes they receive due to vote exhaustion (preferences running out). This results in a reduction the total voting power of that demographic. That's bad for democracy, no matter who you support. In particular, if you are left of centre, the existence of two nominally left-leaning parties (The Greens and the Labor party) are a threat to the representation of your views. 

We have four great events coming up in Sydney and Melbourne over the next few weeks that I encourage you all to attend.

Science party has long had a policy to establish an Australian space agency. In fact, we were the first party in Australia to have an explicit space policy in the modern era. This weekend, the Labor Science Network will hold a session as part of the NSW Labor Conference discussing whether or not the Labor Party should have a space policy. 

The federal government will run a plebiscite on marriage equality, which will cost a massive $158 million to run. Implementing marriage equality does not require a change in the constitution. In fact, most of such a change would only be undoing the Howard government bans on same-sex marriage. The only reason for running such a plebiscite would be to determine popular support, but this is the most wasteful way to determine support, and highly hypocritical of a government that routinely claims it is trying to cut government spending.