Glenn Floyd
Independent (Liberty Party of Australia)

Summary

Policies & Commentary

Oh look, yet another not-party. Is it a fashion thing? Is the hottest new trend on the Australian political runway in 2022 draping oneself in a party flag that can be torn away to reveal a stunning Independent outfit, a la Blake Lively at the Met Gala? Was there some collective decision made that the Prêt-à-Party look is out-of-date, sooooo 2019 dontcha know? Seriously, what’s going on?

Because here we are with an Independent, Glenn Floyd, whose website can only be found through a torturous process of Google guesswork. Said website proudly titles itself as a party, but helpfully informs us that it’s “An ASSOCIATION (Not a Party), Of Australian Totally Independent Federal Senate Candidates.” Really and truly. Honest.

Who is Floyd? All the website will tell you is that he is the contact for the Liberty Party of Australia (hereafter referred to as LPA). I should point out that the website as a whole is either under construction or in the process of being dismantled, as every link from the main page leads to a 404 error. Likewise, the domain used by Floyd in the 2016 election has been suspended. A quick Google search, however, turns up the fact that he is the owner of a gallery in Maldon which he runs with his wife, the poet Initially No. (The gallery, incidentally, is advertised on the Reignite Democracy Australia website (archived at Web Archive).) It also reveals that Floyd is utterly opposed to vaccines, masks, social distancing, and public health orders.

Locally, he’s known to be a serial pest, harassing people on the street and expounding at length on his beliefs to anyone unfortunate enough to encounter him. There’s a small but vocal presence on social media complaining about Floyd and No’s behaviour that claims their activities have had a detrimental effect on local businesses.

Floyd certainly doesn’t shy away from publicity. In fact, while Victoria was under Covid-19 restrictions, Floyd walked into Castlemaine Police Station without a mask and… demanded to be fined for it. He accompanied this demand with a rather incoherent speech riddled with conspiracy theories and complaints. I’m not going to go into the details of what he actually said, because I’m sure by now you can guess, but if you’re really interested, the article has an embedded video helpfully made by Floyd himself.

Floyd also published a “summons” demanding that Victoria’s Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton appear in the Federal Court to answer a raft of charges relating to pandemic public health orders. The document is the kind of pseudo-legal claptrap that characterises anti-vax and anti-lockdown protests, and is certainly not in any way a legitimate summons. Nor could I find any record that Floyd had lodged writs with the Federal Court.

Back in 2016, Floyd and No’s bugbear was psychiatry, which, he claimed, was responsible for a “pandemic” of killing, causing more deaths worldwide than cancer, heart attacks, road deaths, and terrorism combined. In 2022, he’s shifted his campaign focus to the real Covid-19 pandemic, and some depressingly familiar sovereign citizen rhetoric.

Floyd’s policy statement is headed up with a statement that reads like an excitable tabloid headline writer didn’t know when to stop screaming:

WE OPPOSE ‘ALL’ FREEDOM-CRUSHING LIES OF GOVERNMENT BRIBED BY MEDICAL-MAFIA TO ‘FORCE’ 7 BILLION LETHAL, DANGEROUS VACCINES ON US JUST FOR $TRILLIONS-OF-DOLLARS IN EVIL PROFITS!

Medical Mafia. Uh-huh. I mean, I could talk about the utter absurdity of the idea that scientists are meeting in seedy restaurants to make people an offer they can’t refuse … but really, that headline speaks for itself.

The policies that follow read like a list of demands. End this! Stop that! Void the other! Really, all it needs is an “OR ELSE” tacked on at the bottom.

Unsurprisingly, Floyd wants to do away with all vaccine mandates, masks, lockdowns, border closures, check-ins, and the “cashless society” (referring, no doubt, to the practice adopted by some businesses of using contactless payment rather than handle cash). Given that Victoria has now done away with all restrictions except vaccine mandates, most of Floyd’s Covid-specific policies are no longer relevant. Presumably, however, Floyd’s presence in the Senate would ensure that those restrictions never happen again – although how he proposes to legislate away Victoria’s constitutional responsibilities is unclear.

And make no mistake, this is about Victoria. Floyd appears to have considerable personal antagonism towards Premier Dan Andrews, who he consistently refers to as ”Denial Andrews”. One of his policies is aimed at curbing Chinese influence – not in Australia as a whole, but specifically in Victoria. Apparently the Chinese can do what they like anywhere else.

The rest of Floyd’s policies are an inconsistent mish-mash, calling for everything from a return to the 1901 constitution (the pitfalls of which I’ve addressed in my review of Australia One) to nationalisation of infrastructure to – naturally – withdrawal from international treaties and agreements. There’s a tiny little dogwhistle in their water policy, which states that only people “tied to the land” should be able to hold water rights. I’m not quite sure what that actually means in practice, but it clearly excludes Them Shady Furriners.

Perhaps the weirdest policy of the lot – and I’m aware this is a big call – is Floyd’s insistence that Australia stop printing “fiat money and restore our real treasury and reserve bank and notes.” In other words, every banknote and coin should no longer be legal tender. Instead, Floyd wants to usher in a system that appears to be entirely based on fiction. Notions of “real” and “false” governments and treasuries are rife in sovereign citizen ideology, based on inadvertent (or perhaps wilful) misreadings and misinterpretations of everything from the Australian Constitution to the Magna Carta.

That these conspiracy theories are now appearing on candidates’ policy statements, hand-in-hand with anti-vax hysteria (and often, sadly, lies about global Freemason paedophile networks) is a concerning development in Australian politics. And Floyd’s unhinged manifesto is a prime example of this problem.

A fuller example of Floyd’s beliefs, and some excellent rebuttals, is available here.

When Cate reviewed Glenn Floyd back in 2016, she ended her article with a sincere wish: ”I hope he will be OK”. I’m sorry to report that not only does it appear that Floyd is not okay, it also seems that he has retreated further from the world of facts. Voting for him would be a waste of your vote.

Just a reminder that Loki and I lack the necessary Eurovision knowledge to choose the songs that Catherine liked to include, but we’d love to see what you suggest in the comments below 🙂