Anti-woman preferencing decisions

Since the Wikileaks Party submitted its Federal Election voting preferences, it has come under heavy criticism from left activists for potentially leading to a Coalition-dominated Senate, and for giving high preferences to conservative parties already having parliamentary representation.  Such an outcome would be viewed by many as worse for women, but we want to focus on the politics explicitly endorsed by the parties receiving a high preference from the Wikileaks Party.

The website of the racist Australia First Party, preferenced quite highly in New South Wales, contains an August 12 spiel which can modestly be described as vilifying of lesbians, gay men, bisexual people and the transgendered. It is safe to say that it prefers society’s current gender arrangements where women are the spouses of men and do their sexual and reproductive duty.

The Non-Custodial Parents Party (an MPA – male privilege agitators – group) seeks further reductions to custodial and child support decisions which have been judged to be in the best interests of the child rather than father.

The Shooters and Fishers Party, preferenced highly in New South Wales, lumps in asylum seekers with exotic diseases and illicit drugs, and repeats the falsehood that those arriving in Australia in order to claim asylum are “illegal”. Given that vilification and mistreatment of refugees and asylum seekers intersect nastily with the mistreatment of girls and women, this is also a feminist issue.

Interestingly, the SFP also vows to “table a Bill outlawing animal liberation based hate campaigning and terrorism”. It is unclear whether this means they intend to decriminalise all other terrorism, or whether animal-welfare campaigning not currently considered terrorism is to be reclassified as such.

The Nationals, a party generally opposed to the provision of freely accessible abortion for all women who seek it, appear fifth on the WA list.

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For more detail and analysis about the Wikileaks Party’s preferencing decisions, see this piece by David Jackmanson and this insider account of the preferencing debacle by former Party member Daniel Mathews.