Animal Justice Party

Summary

Policies & Commentary

Since the AJP has more than 50 assorted position statements, I’m not going to talk about all of them here. I do recommend looking at them yourself if you’re considering a vote for this party – more information is always good. What I am going to talk about here is the ten planks of their Platform – the key policies they’re running with for this election – and then briefly summarise their Position Statements. This will wind up covering about two thirds of their policies, leaving mostly the smaller more specific ones.

Okay. Walkies.

Protection for Animals
Fully half the platform falls under this heading. Some of them are fairly straightforward, like ending live export, phasing out factory farming and increasing criminal penalties for animal cruelty. End Wildlife Slaughter is a little broader, calling for the end of all culls, poisons, recreational hunting, trapping and so on. It also calls for an end to the export of products derived from wildlife, including kangaroo meat and skins. There’s also a bit of money being thrown around here:

• Fund research into non-lethal alternatives for environmental management, including fertility control, wildlife-safe deterrents and others
• Fund evidence based approaches to reduce wildlife road fatalities, such as virtual fencing
• Support farmers and communities in coexisting with wildlife, funding education, mitigation measures, compensation and habitat restoration

Finally, in this section, there’s Veticare, a subsidy scheme: Up to $1,000 per year of Veticare subsidy will be available to all people with an income that is either equivalent to or below the Australian median income. Similar to Medicare, there will be a standard schedule of fees which will be constructed in consultation with peak veterinary bodies. This will lower cost of living and reduce rates of animal surrender. Veticare will be funded by savings from other parts of the platform, which presumably means in the other sections, because everything in this section is a cost (either in expenditure or lost income).

Protection for People
The key part of this section is AJP’s plan for A Fairer Tax System:

• Lower income taxes and balance this by cracking down on big businesses currently escaping the tax net (at a cost of around $24Bn per year to Australia).
• Tax polluters/pollution (including greenhouse gases) to ensure a fast transition to a clean economy and a safe climate.
• Increase the fees that companies pay to extract natural resources like minerals, coal, and gas so that the public gets a fair share of the profits based on market value.
• Advocate for the states to get rid of Payroll Tax (which makes employing people more expensive) and Stamp Duties (which unfairly charge people for moving house) and replace them with fairer and more efficient taxes based on unimproved land value and profits from rezoning.
• Gradually adjust Capital Gains Tax and Negative Gearing to create a fairer tax and housing system.

This sounds pretty good to me – it’s clear that the intention here is to be revenue neutral, and realistically, the only reform on my wish list not on theirs is removing the GST. Maybe next election. This is presumably where the money for everything else they want is coming from.

Under Funding to Prevent Family Violence and Assist Victims, there’s more excellent policy: full funding of the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022–2032, a billion dollars set aside to fund emergency and animal friendly short-term accommodation for victims/survivors of family violence, and broad-based funding to help prevent family violence by shifting cultural attitudes. I particularly like the “animal-friendly” element there – if you’re fleeing an abusive partner, having your pet/s along with you can be a comfort (and leaving them behind to be abused by a vengeful ex-partner is a source of both stress and guilt). It’s easy to mock the AJP for their intense focus on animals – but in this case, their different perspective sees something that others miss.

They also have a policy for affordable housing, which hits all the usual points a you would expect a left-leaning party to hit – increased public housing, the previously mentioned changes to negative gearing, a vacancy tax for unoccupied rentals, and so on. It’s all good stuff, but I’m not going into detail here because it’s nothing we haven’t seen before.

Protection for the Planet
As always, the Animal Justice Party would like us all to eat fewer, or better yet, no animal products (the party name is a clue there), but they couch this mostly in terms of human health and environmental issues. They’d like to fund research into plant based substitutes for meat products, and to promote greater consumption of fruit and vegetables. And then there’s their environmental policies:

• The AJP will advocate to end environmentally destructive industries, such as fossil fuel extraction and exports. We will end the subsidies. We will support all workers in these industries to re-train and move into new secure jobs, and we will redirect funds towards initiatives that restore ecosystems and protect species.
• Rapidly transition to 100% clean energy economy. The AJP will introduce carbon pricing for all industries and provide incentives for the transition.
• End Carbon and Biodiversity Offset Schemes – as these are proving ineffective and liable to speculation and fraud.
• Work towards a sustainable plant-based agricultural system and regenerative farming. We will support farmers to transition and to invest in reforestation for carbon draw-down.
• Invest in climate rescue technologies. The AJP will fund research into greenhouse gases drawdown and solar reflection solutions.
• Create a National Biodiversity Fund – Invest in an annual Biodiversity Fund that will support the restoration of Australian ecosystems and biodiversity over the next 30 years, protecting endangered species, ending deforestation and habitat destruction, and supporting sustainable practices.
• Establish a Rights of Nature Process – Enable communities to establish rights for ecologically and socially significant natural systems (e.g., The Barka, The Great Barrier Reef). Nature rights would offer the natural system significant protections through enforceable legal frameworks​ while ensuring First Peoples’ rights to access and manage Country.
• Transition to a Circular Economy – Promote and enable a circular economy that minimises waste, reduces resource extraction, and prioritises sustainable production and consumption practices.

There’s a lot here, and I like most of it. I was going to say that I’d like to hear more details about the Rights of Nature Process, but the party has provided them here – fundamentally, they will be local adaptations of similar overseas laws, such as the legal personhood of Whanganui River. All in all, this is a pretty solid policy. If you’re looking for an party that cares about the environment, you could do worse.

Position Statements
The AJP’s position statements are intended to clarify how they would vote on issues of importance to likely voters not otherwise covered in their policy offerings. It’s a sensible compromise, allowing them to appeal to more voters while remaining focused on what’s important to them.

Briefly, they are in favour of legalising marijuana, a right to abortion, a right to adequate housing, raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14, vaccinations, voluntary euthanasia, and equality of all regardless of race, gender or sexuality. The party also recognises the horrific treatment of First Nations people since European arrival and endorses every effort to rectify these long-standing injustices. They are against gambling, the mistreatment of refugees (and yes, they mean our current detention regime) and political corruption (in particular, they support state and federal ICAC’s). They want to maintain and extend our current healthcare system, including Medicare. And finally, they like the electoral system pretty much the way it is, although they would like to tighten the laws around lobbying and political advertising, and lower the voting age to 16.

All in all, for what can too easily by dismissed as a single issue party, the Animal Justice Party has a well-thought out and internally consistent set of policies. They will be ranking highly on my ballot.