SENATE (in ballot order)
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
COUNTRY ALLIANCE?
(Cheryl Arnol, Debra Garth)
Country Alliance was formed for a number of reasons but primarily as a voice for those who live, work or take their recreation pursuits in rural and regional Australia.
We actively promote and support any initiatives that provide better access to secondary or tertiary education in rural Tasmania and encourage employers and apprentices to undertake training in rural areas.
Access to medical facilities both general practice and allied health care is of particular importance to many communities. Strategies must be established to entice more doctors to work outside metropolitan areas and increase improved aged care services in rural areas.
Employment is important to all Tasmanians. The decentralisation of government departments by relocation of services would provide significant employment opportunities in rural areas. We see the support of the federal government in the sustainable use of our resources as critical to Tasmania's future employment opportunities.
Poor or no mobile phone coverage is more than a convenience issue as many emergency services provide critical warnings through text and other mobile services. Country Alliance would support initiatives to upgrade telecommunications.
Country Alliance does not have policies on abortion or gay/lesbian marriage; nor do we have a position on asylum seekers. Our candidates are free to have their own opinion. This will allow them to listen to reasoned debate and make an informed decision on these important issues.
A vote for Country Alliance in the Senate is a vote for the future of Tasmania.
?AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY?
(Carol Brown, Catryna Bilyk, Lin Thorp, John Dowling)
A vote for Labor is a vote for a positive plan to build Tasmania's future. Only Labor has a plan for Tasmanian jobs through our $100 million Jobs and Growth Plan and our commitment to solving Tasmania's freight issues.
Labor has a strong track record.
Tasmania is leading the nation in the rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN) and we have introduced vital reforms such as Labor's DisabilityCare Australia and for our kids through our Better Schools Plan.
These positive, nation-building policies will only ever come from a Labor Government.
Only Labor is committed to the full $15 billion investment in Better Schools, giving students more resources and one-on-one attention to reach their full potential.
Only Labor will finish a world-class, superfast, affordable NBN to all Australian households.
And we will continue our proud record of investment in health and in Tasmanian roads, rail and ports.
The alternative is Tony Abbott's $70 billion black hole with his unfair Paid Parental Leave Plan, which pays high-paid executives $75, 000 to have a baby, and his devastating cuts to vital jobs, payments and services.
Mr Abbott will cut Tasmania's share of GST revenue by over $600 million ever year, stop the NBN rollout and wreck our vital Better Schools Plan. On Saturday 7 September you will make an important decision about the future of Tasmania and Australia.
Never has the choice been clearer between federal Labor's positive plan and what Tony Abbott offers.
?RISE UP AUSTRALIA PARTY?
(Philip Murray, Peter Gathercole)
Rise Up Australia Party (RUA) depends on 26 principles. Two principles alone, regarding industry and agriculture, will revolutionise this state, and help it to become, and remain truly Australian.
RUA seeks to abolish excessive and unnecessary tariffs imposed on industries. We aim to develop practical tariff policies to support and re-establish all types of manufacturing industries, especially those industries which are technologically rich and currently heavily taxed.
By imposing a range of national system economic policies, such as those advocated by Deputy Prime Minister, John McEwen, prudent tariffs could be used, for example to provide a truly level playing field for Australian industries and farms which incur costs in complying with OH&S industrial relations and environmental laws of Australia that some overseas competitors do not incur.
We will impose levies on the flood of incoming foreign imports of goods from overseas which are selling out our industries and shipping jobs overseas. This in turn will discourage and decrease imports of all sorts, giving precedence to Australian industry growth.
We want to support Australian owned products and foods. RUA policy is to reduce or completely stop foreign imports of fruit and vegetables. RUA recognises the inferior quality of many products from overseas when compared to Australian goods and services.
It should also be noted that most, if not all products coming into our land can be produced here in Australia. We believe in protecting Australian jobs at all costs. Rise up Australia, and keep Australia's manufacturing and farming industries Australian.
?LIBERAL?
(Richard Colbeck, David Bushby, Sally Chandler, Sarah Courtney)
Only the Coalition offers a plan to grow the economy and create jobs that Tasmania desperately needs.
Our Economic Growth Plan is focussed squarely on creating jobs, with measures including:
?*A major projects approval agency, to cut through red and green tape;
?*A trial jobs programme to assist the long-term unemployed off Centrelink and into work;
?*An expansion of Hobart International Airport, to support boost our freight links and grow our tourism industry;
?*$16 million to support the creation of 320 new jobs at Cadbury and allow for the expansion of our dairy industry, right around the state;
?*$400 million to progressively upgrade the Midland Highway to make it safer;
?*A comprehensive review of Bass Strait transport to finds way to improve it, while guaranteeing to retain the BSPVES and TFES and backing Will Hodgman's $33 million plan to reintroduce an international shipping service; and,
?*No more lock-ups of our renewable native forests, and committing to provide $100 million in economic support as well as funds to assist sawmillers and contractors, who have been the pawns in job-destroying Labor-Greens forest deal.
Importantly, Tony Abbott has made it clear that we will not govern in minority, and we will do no deals with the Greens.
We've all seen the damage that the Labor-Greens minority government has done to our state.
The only way to ensure growth, jobs, and to keep the Greens' hands off the levers of power in Canberra, is to vote for the Liberals.
PALMER UNITED PARTY?
(Jacqui Lambie, Kevin John Deakin)
The Palmer United Party will provide $400 million towards freight and passenger services over Bass Strait and is committed to finding a way around the issues currently holding us to ransom on the National Highway debate.
We will increase the old age pension rate by 20 per cent - ($220.00 extra for couples and $150.00 for singles a fortnight).
We will increase the Disability Pension rate by 20 per cent, to help lighten the load for those already suffering.
Palmer United Party will provide $80 billion additional funding for health across Australia and will make such funding available directly to our hospitals.
We will inject an extra $20 billion into the education system within our first 3 years of government. We know that educating our children to higher standards will in return become Australia's most valuable asset well into the future.
The Palmer United Party will give an immediate duty off care to the men and women that have been physically or psychologically damaged because of military service that they received by placing their lives on the line for our country. These funds will be taken from the foreign aid budget which currently stands at $5.2 billion, because we believe in looking after our own backyard first.
We will encourage the use of some of the mineral resource wealth of Western Australia and Queensland to support downstream manufacturing into Tasmania. This will create jobs and increase our exports out of Tasmania.
We know that higher export revenue has the ability to circulate onto better education, health services and a higher standard of living for all Tasmanians. ?
AUSTRALIAN CHRISTIANS?
(Kevin Swarts, Ans Jongeling)
Boat people, broadband and budget cuts are policy issues that are getting a lot of attention this election. Yet there are other policy issues that are important for Tasmania.
Australian Christians is a political party that aims to address these issues and represent Christian values in public policy.
Marriage is an important institution that needs to be strengthened, rather than redefined. In other countries, the redefinition of marriage is having significant impacts on religious liberty. Our vision for Tasmania is to strengthen the institution of marriage. We support free pre-marriage education and mediation between separated parents. We also support strategies to reinforce the importance of fatherhood in our society. We believe in standing up for marriage.
As a compassionate caring nation, Australia needs to find a better way to deal with un-planned pregnancies; a way that produces a positive outcome for the mother, father and the baby. Currently, federal funds are used to offset the costs of acquiring an abortion through Medicare.
Our vision for Tasmania is a healthcare system that delivers a positive outcome for all the family. We support better funding and assistance for women with unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. We believe in standing up for the rights of the unborn child.
The economy and jobs are important for Tasmania. Our vision for Tasmania is one where we can unite together around a common plan. We support using our natural competitive advantages to develop a strategic plan to focus our economy. We believe in a united economic plan.
?DLP DEMOCRATIC LABOUR?
(Robyne Ferri, Glen Anthony McNamara)
The DLP stands for integrity and transparency in politics.
Fostering of the family as the basic unit of society, the first teacher of our children and the most efficient distributor of social welfare.
Respect for human life from conception to natural death.
Providing favourable conditions for farms and small businesses to flourish. Small businesses, in aggregate, are Australia's largest employers. The explosion of farm debt is not being addressed by governments.
Natural resource-based industries, such as mining, along with farming, fishing and forestry, which are the original source of the commonwealth.
Promotion of manufacturing to add value to the output of our natural resources and provide jobs. The loss of two paper mills, a pigment factory, sawmills, farmland to unviable pulpwood plantations and further hydro-electric power developments, to name a few, is not ringing alarm bells in the right quarters.
``A country is what a country makes'' (Senator John Madigan, DLP, Victoria). A post-industrial society is one on its way back to the stone age.
Responsible environmental protection: The DLP was the first party to promote it.
A new hospital funding system: Levels of nursing staff should be based on patient needs, not nurse/patient ratios.
Investment in infrastructure: Skimping on road and railway construction and maintenance has made remedial work more expensive.
The foregoing items are only a sample of the many points contained in DLP policy which can be found at www.dlp.org.au
?PIRATE PARTY?
(Thomas Randle, Thomas Storey)
Pirate Party Australia is a new political party centred around the core tenets of:
?*freedom of knowledge, culture and information,
?*civil and digital liberties,
?*privacy and anonymity,
?*government transparency, and
?*participatory democracy.
The first Pirate Party was founded in Sweden in 2006, largely in response to a toughening of copyright laws after police raids on the Pirate Bay website.
Shortly after, Pirate Parties began forming around the world and there are now over 40 established Pirate Parties.
Pirates have been elected to local councils, state and national parliaments worldwide, as well as the European Parliament.
Pirate Party Australia was founded in 2009 and has grown from a small group of information activists in to a fledging political movement.
We exist to resolve a complete failing of the laws and governance of Australia in the Internet Age.
We live under a political class incapable of resolving that dysfunction, while at the same time we have barely begun to ask what a connected world can mean for improving our democracy and society.
So a new form of politics is needed for the Internet Age, a renewal of transparency and participation, and new protections for our freedoms and liberties.
In Tasmania the Pirate Party has been active for less than a year, we offer a return to values and principles based politics. At this election instead of splashing cash, the Pirate Party offers detailed and evidence based policies across many important issues, find our full policies online and consider the Pirate Party in the Senate this election.
?AUSTRALIAN GREENS?
(Peter Whish-Wilson, Helen Burnet, Penelope Ann)
Many Tasmanians tell me that the old parties are the same on important issues and they are right. The Greens are a strong alternative for voters. We have a proud record in delivering for Australia, tackling dangerous climate change, delivering tens of thousands of new clean energy jobs, free dental care and education reform.
The Greens have a Tasmanian plan and vision to grow jobs, especially for our youth. In my first 12 months I have delivered $3m to convert historic Macquarie House into a high tech hub developing the jobs and industries of the future. I am also fighting for a cash for cans scheme which will deliver investment in recycling infrastructure and create 300 jobs. I am working with farmers and small business on a range of exciting new initiatives around agriculture, brand and tourism.
It is also important to protect existing jobs. We are the only party opposing cuts to the University of Tasmania, which threatens 150 jobs. I will continue to champion the UTAS vision for developing an Allied Health School and Wellbeing Centre, a project capable of transforming Launceston.
A healthy democracy requires that no one political party in Australia has absolute power over both houses of Parliament. We are only a few Senate seats away from the dangerous prospect of an Abbott lead Government seizing total control. The Greens are the only party with the track record and guts to save the Senate and stand up on the issues that matter.
?AUSTRALIAN INDEPENDENTS
(Neville Ward Solomon, Steven Keith Wood)
(Yet to be submitted)
?SEX PARTY?
(Robbie Swan, Liam Eales)
The Australian Sex Party sees Tasmania falling into a severe economic depression if the state continues to rely on the old industries that once made it great like forestry and mining. Tasmania needs to raise new and substantial revenue streams within a few years or face severe economic conditions. We propose two major initiatives:
?*Tax and regulate the sale of marijuana.
?*Tax religious institutions and businesses at the same rate as other businesses in the community.
Two million Australians use marijuana. Making it illegal does not stop people using it. Prohibition costs non-marijuana smokers $2 billion a year to police. So why not tax it like alcohol and put millions back into the Tasmanian economy each year?
Tasmania is ideally suited to growing medical marijuana as well, alongside the poppy crops. This could bring hundreds of millions of dollars to Tasmania in its first year of operation.
Australia's religious organisations are one of the largest real estate owners in the country and yet they pay no land tax. Religious insurance companies, religious food companies, religious music businesses and the like pay no income tax. The church's charitable works should remain tax exempt but making religious groups in Tasmania pay tax would net millions of dollars a year in revenue and make a more equitable tax share.
The Sex Party also wants to see voluntary euthanasia to allow people to die with dignity, no retention of peoples online data, marriage equality and uniform censorship laws to allow the sale of adult films around the country.
SENATOR ONLINE (INTERNET VOTING BILLS/ISSUES)
(David Bullard, Sven Wiener)
Senator Online is an innovative internet based party that gives all Australians the opportunity to directly participate in the political process on all issues that affect them via their PC, smart phone, or tablet.
Senator Online will conduct online polls on bills and issues put before Parliament, in conjunction with providing accurate impartial information and facts via www.senatoronline.org.au, both for and against any bill to assist your decision making process. Senator Online’s elected candidates will vote in accordance with the majority outcome of each online poll.
Unlike other political parties, Senator Online’s elected representatives vote in accordance with their electorate, in either the House of Representatives or the Senate. This way Senator Online can truly represent the people that put them in parliament and are not tied to big business or union influences. Senator Online is not aligned to any other political party.
Senator Online has jettisoned traditional antiquated political methods in favour of 21st century technology, providing all Australians direct access to the political process via online voting.
Many are disillusioned with the current political status quo of negative and petty debate. None of the major parties exclusively have “all the answers” and not all our best minds are in Canberra. By having a party where every individual gets to have their say on issues that matter to them via online voting, Australians will truly get a say in how this country is run. With Senator Online, you get your say all the time, not just at election time!
?KATTER'S AUSTRALIAN PARTY?
(Geoff Herbert)
(Yet to be submitted)
?NO CARBON TAX CLIMATE SCEPTICS?
(James Hawes, Petta Hines)
The No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics (NCTCS) Party is standing two candidates for the Senate in Tasmania - Column Q on the Senate ballot paper.
The central plank in the party's platform is to expose the bogus science which supports the anthropogenic global warming/climate change hypothesis and so bring real science to bear on the misguided efforts by Governments to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
Thus, our elected representatives will aim to block implementation of any schemes such as carbon taxes, emission trading schemes and/or direct action policies aimed at reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Cessation of these programmes will prevent further escalation in the spiraling costs of electricity, gas, liquid fuels and refrigerant gases.
For the same reasons, our representatives would also oppose governmental subsidies for renewable energy projects. The billions saved can then be re-directed to real problems.
The NCTCS Party is also opposed to big government, excessive regulation and growth of bureaucracies particularly those which stifle business initiatives, employment opportunities and personal freedoms.
Our candidates would promote and support federal and state government action to maintain and grow Tasmania's metal refining industries and mining sectors as well as reinvigoration of the timber/paper industries.
In general, we are at opposite ends of the political spectrum to the Australian Greens and so would be working to save Tasmania from the extreme anti-development environmentalism which tries to deny humans access to resources through such proposals as establishing further marine parks and declaring the Tarkine a heritage area.
?STABLE POPULATION PARTY?
(Todd Dudley, Pierre Richardson)
The Stable Population Party was established because no other political party in Australia was addressing this issue despite the fact that opinion polls consistently show that the majority of Australians support stabilising rather than rapidly increasing our population.
In Tasmania we are fortunate to live in a place that, unlike much of the world, is not suffering from significant overpopulation and its consequences such as food shortages, major urban sprawl and unsustainable demands on the natural environment and infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, and roads. Despite this we have still had considerable impacts on the Tasmanian landscape.
Unfortunately there is now an emerging push to substantially increase Tasmania's population. At the same time there has also been an aggressive and misleading attack on the planning system in Tasmania characterising environmental and planning laws and processes as red and green tape with the agenda being to reduce third party appeal rights, weaken environmental laws and diminish the independent role of the Tasmanian Planning Commission.
If the push for rapid increase in population and dismantling of our planning system is successful then the natural and lifestyle values that most Tasmanians enjoy (and probably take for granted ) will be threatened like never before.
Our party supports a diverse and resilient economy based on ecologically sustainable principles. As custodians of Tasmania we have a moral responsibility to pass on an ecologically sustainable state to its future inhabitants but this wont be possible without a stable population and good environmental laws and standards.
?FAMILY FIRST
(Peter Madden, Andrew Goelst, Nick Cramp, Mihi Mgawhare)
Family First is a mainstream conservative party which believes in strong families, strong values and a strong Australia. Tasmania needs a new and strong voice in Canberra.
We've been bound by ideological, environmental imbalances that have strangled development, forestry, mining, industry and jobs and that have consequently deeply hurt Tasmanian families. As a family centred, economically and socially conservative political party, Family First provides a true alternative to the two major parties, particularly in the Senate.
Tasmania recently rated the lowest of all Australia states in all 10 major economic indicators, added to this are the very concerning real social problems arising from the resultant unemployment situation.
We need a truly conservative party who can work to restore our state to prosperity and turn both unemployment and its social consequences around. Family First stands to be that strong independent voice in Canberra that can say what needs to be said on behalf of the Tasmanian people without the hindrance of big party politics.
Tasmania prospered when Brain Harradine was that strong independent voice but has gone backward under the Greens holding that place. Should Family First become that independent voice, possibly holding the balance of power, we will fight to return to Tasmanians the basics of having a job, owning a home and retiring comfortably.
We will fight to uphold the values that have made Australia great and we will fight to restore and accelerate Tasmanian small business, new development projects and to break the stranglehold on our primary industry.
?INDEPENDENT?
(Andrew Roberts)
Andrew Roberts, True Green and True Tasmanian
Andrew Roberts' vision for Tasmania, True Green represents a philosophy, a way of life. It is about transparency and honesty, a rawness that is grass roots by the people and for the people, genuine and true blue.
Tasmania is an island gem of pristine wilderness and fertile farmed richness, and to many will always be the apple isle, having a special place amongst the colonies of the Commonwealth.
True Green is the synthesis of these unparalleled qualities, recognising the agricultural sector that greens our state, and the wilderness sector that beautifies our state, and the type of honesty that identifies us as Tasmanians.
Why True Green? Because truth matters and we live in a state where our farms and our forests are part of our livelihood and our lifestyle.
True Green is central to the political spectrum - neither leftist socialist, yet championing the rights of the worker, nor right wing capitalist, yet promoting individual creativity and business enterprise by reducing red tape and bureaucracy.
Neither does True Green share the philosophy of the Greens movement. We are for unlocking the state in recognising a balanced use of natural resource.
Simply, True Green nestles between the Labor/Liberal divide, in what could be considered a return to good old common-sense standing for those values that return true freedom to the people.
Andrew's True Green policy and principles can be found on www.truegreen.info.