Blog
-
WA Senate Election
Posted by Jordan Rastrick · March 05, 2014 12:00 PM
Following problems with the recount of Senate ballots in Western Australia last election, the Court of Disputed Returns has ordered a fresh vote be held in the state. The Federal Executive of the Future Party has considered whether or not to run candidates. Although several groups have already approached us seeking preference deals and other cooperation, the Future Party has decided not to contest the election. The main reasons for this decision were:
- A lack of current activity among our WA membership, who would need to form the backbone of any campaign on the ground.
- The difficulty of finding, vetting and pre-selecting candidates within the given time frame.
- The diversion of time, money and attention from our efforts: building up the party’s grass roots presence nationally; campaigning on critical federal issues, such as the NBN and research funding cuts; and preparing for the upcoming NSW state election.
- The large number of small parties likely to contest the election, adding to the difficulty of success, and requiring an emphasis on tactical preference negotiations over engaging with the electorate on policy.
If you would like to help organise our WA branch to put us in a position to contest seats there in the next federal election, please contact [email protected]
-
NBN Senate Committee submission: Australia is worth the investment
Posted by James Jansson · February 13, 2014 12:00 PM
Download this submission:NBN Senate Committee submission: Australia is worth the investment (PDF, 360 KB, February 2014)
Media release 10:00 am 13/02/2014
The Future Party has prepared a submission to the Senate Enquiry on NBN Co’s Strategic Review, which will be submitted to the NBN Senate Committee today. [Link]
“Measuring the value of the NBN simply using only sales revenue does not adequately capture how significant the NBN will be to economic growth of our country.” said the Future Party’s communications officer and report co-author, Kate Kilgannon.
-
Stop the lies: Density is what our cities need
Posted by James Jansson · February 11, 2014 12:00 PM
Dr Tony Recsei recently wrote that resistance to high rise development is not simply about NIMBYism. I am guilty of regularly applying the term NIMBY. The reason I use it is that there appears to be a sense of entitlement surrounding the nature of the city. Specifically, this entitlement resides in those who are lucky enough own a home who believe that the city should remain the same as it was when they handed over their deposit.
-
Choose another Australia Day?
Posted by Jordan Rastrick · January 26, 2014 12:00 PM
Today we mark our national day of national celebration, Australia Day. There is certainly a lot to celebrate. We have a long history of stable, functional liberal democracy. We are peaceful, prosperous, and, as our anthem proclaims, “young and free”. As a nation we enjoy the type of ongoing progress that makes all our lives better – scientific, technological, social and political. However, this is also a difficult occasion to celebrate with untempered enthusiasm. For of course, it is the anniversary of British settlement – that is to say, the day the First Fleet arrived and forcefully took possession of this continent from its native people. Indigenous activists have every reason to prefer to call it “Invasion Day”, as it was indeed an armed invasion. Sadly, until very recently in our history, even this simple fact was not acknowledged; possession was claimed by the Crown neither by conquest nor a negotiated treaty, but the doctrine of Terra Nullius. Essentially, this was legal pretence that the land was uninhabited, that the previous owners simply did not exist. The forceful conquest together with the refusal to acknowledge it as such was a deep and tragic injustice, and its effects are still felt to this day in the ongoing dislocation and marginalisation suffered by Indigenous Australians.
-
NSW alcohol laws are bad for our rights and bad for the law
Posted by James Jansson · January 25, 2014 12:00 PM
The recent media attention on the tragic cases of Thomas Kelly and Daniel Christie has forced NSW to finally introspect and think about violence that we see directed towards young men and women. This is welcome, but unfortunately the response of the politicians in this state has been completely wrong.
-
Submission to the NBN Co Senate Enquiry
Posted by James Jansson · January 11, 2014 12:00 PM
The Federal Government has released a report on the state of the National Broadband Network (NBN). In particular, the report discusses the possibility of budget blowouts, and a failure to meet the deadlines promised by the Coalition. The new proposal to bring the NBN under budget will use pre-existing cable TV networks to provide connections. This means slower speeds for people covered by the NBN, while many apartments will not even be connected to the NBN. Contribute to this response: [email protected] The Future Party wants to respond to this. We want members to read the report’s executive summary (and the rest of the document if possible) so we can get firm ideas for a response to the proposed reduction in the quality of the NBN. Submissions close 31st of January 2014. We see technology as an important aspect of Australia’s success in the future, and we hope that you can help us to represent your thoughts and ideas about the NBN to the government. We would love to hear your critical appraisal on the Facebook page or at our monthly meeting in Sydney on the 15th Jan 2014. Please come along to talk about the next steps.
-
Sydney January monthly meeting
Posted by James Jansson · January 08, 2014 12:00 PM
Many of you have joined us on Facebook to engage in heated debates over various controversial issues. If you’re in Sydney and would like to continue these discussions face-to-face, we meet every month on the 3rd Wednesday for our members meetings.
-
Australia's poorest will be hurt by the Minerals Resource Rent Tax repeal
Posted by James Jansson · November 19, 2013 12:00 PM
Download this submission:
Submission to the Minerals Resource Rent Tax Repeal (PDF, 139 KB, 31 October 31 2013)Media release
Release: Australia’s poorest will be hurt by the Minerals Resource Rent Tax Repeal
The Future Party is publicly releasing its submission on the Minerals Resource Rent Tax Repeal and Other Measures Bill 2013 (MRRT Repeal) today. The submission focuses on the impact that the repeal will have on the incomes of the poorest in our country.
James Jansson, the Future Party leader, has stated “The proposed legislation doesn’t only repeal the mining tax; it will also repeal the benefits to all families with children and those who receive government support that were meant to be funded by the tax.”
-
20/20: Growing Australia for a Prosperous Future
Posted by James Jansson · August 29, 2013 12:00 PM
UPDATE 13/05/2020: This report was important in the formation of our founding immigration policy. In 2020, the numbers may have changed, and so we no longer refer to this report in our policy, but we remain in favour of migration. See our up-to-date immigration policy here.
Download this report:
20/20: Growing Australia for a prosperous future (PDF, 931 KB)
The Future Party today announced their 20/20 vision report – a plan to have a total net migration intake of 20 million people over the next 20 years to guarantee Australia's future prosperity. The plan is built on the back of modelling results that show a demographic crisis will occur within 20 years without an immediate change to immigration policy.
-
Senate preferences 2013
Posted by Jordan Rastrick · August 22, 2013 7:48 PM
Below you can find our preference list along with a short explanation of our choices.
- Future Party
- Wikileaks
- Building Australia Party
- Help End Marijuana Prohibition (HEMP)
- Secular Party
- Bullet Train for Australia
- Australian Independents Party
- Senator Online
- Stop CSG
- Drug Law Reform Party
- Sex Party
- Animal Justice Party
- Wang, Tom (unaffiliated group AG)
- Carers Alliance
- Australian Democrats
- Voluntary Euthanasia Party
- The Greens
- Liberal Democrats (LDP)
- Pirate Party*
- Labor **
- Liberal/Nationals **
- Palmer United Party
- Socialist Alliance
- Socialist Equality
- Shooters and Fishers
- Australian Fishing and Lifestyle Party
- Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party
- Australian Republicans
- Smokers Rights Party
- Stable Population Party
- Non-custodial Parents Party
- Katter’s Australia Party
- Democratic Labor Party
- Family First
- Uniting Australia Party
- Stop the Greens
- No Carbon Tax / Climate Skeptics
- Australian Protectionist Party
- Whelan, Andrew (unaffiliated group F) ***
- Ungrouped candidates***
- Australian Voice Party
- Christian Democrat Party (Fred Nile Group)
- One Nation
- Rise Up Australia
- Australia First
The group ticket was determined on the basis of three criteria:
- Policy and values overlap
- Negotiated preference deals.
- A bias toward smaller parties over large parties
To see every party’s official preferences for the NSW Senate seat, click here.
Notes on some of the specific choices within this list:
* The Pirate Party told us they would not be doing preference deals and were instead having a vote of the membership to determine the group ticket, which they would publish on their website. This was certainly a decision we could respect as the Group Ticketing system is fundamentally flawed and undemocratic, with a high degree of incentive toward tactical voting and backroom deals. Accordingly at their request we wrote an open letter to their membership pointing out the high degree of policy overlap we had and offering to unilaterally preference them as least as high as they voted to preference us. However as the end of the draw on Friday, less than 24 hours before close of group ticket lodgements, they had not apparently had a vote, or decided on a preference list by other means. Hence we ultimately preferenced them lower than we had originally intended.
** The choice of how to preference the major parties was not a light one. Unfortunately under Abbott’s leadership the small l liberal aspect of the Coalition has been strongly de-emphasised and conservatism has become front and centre. Furthermore the Coalition’s primary message now almost entirely concerns managerial competence and not policy ambition, which may be a legitimate case to make regarding the house of representatives but has no role in the Senate. Their economics have been almost entirely populist rather than liberal, and of course exploiting xenophobia against asylum seekers for electoral gain is antithetical to Future Party values. On many major issues where the Coalition does have stated policy, it stands in direct opposition to our own, for instance, carbon pricing and the NBN. We also had to consider the likelihood of a Coalition victory in the lower house and the advantages of a Senate acting as a counterbalance to the government of the day.
*** Our basic methodology in distributing preferences beyond groups we had deals with was to first split the parties into “tiers” and then rank them within those tiers. In the case of both the unendorsed and ungrouped candidates we had no way of evaluating what they stood for and thus erred on the side of caution, ranking them behind all other tiers bar the last one. The exception was the “AG” column unendorsed group, headed by Tom Wang. We spoke to a representative of theirs in person at the ballot draw and therefore were able to form a (favourable) view on their policy platform.
We ranked individual candidates from each party in the order printed on the ticket (top down); for the ungrouped candidates we ranked them bottom up, on an ‘anti-donkey’ vote principle.
