An Opinionated Guide to the 2025 Victorian Senate Election

His majesty's loyal opposition

Now that the Teals have culled the moderate faction, the hard right are running wild

• Trump is great, more of this culture war stuff. _{We just saw the polling, please forget we ever said that}
• We're the mining industry's BFF, they even write our campaign material for us. Yes the mining industry makes more profit than the entire health budget and Gina makes a 45% profit margin, but birthday invites are more important than what we could have
• Less government, and market-based solutions. But not for electricity; the government should intervene to block privately funded renewables in favour of government-backed nuclear in 10-15 years. Maybe.
• It's important to save prime agricultural land from the scourge of renewable energy. Fossil fuels are different because ... reasons
• Housing will be more affordable if we drive up prices further by forcing people to withdraw from super if they want to compete for a supply-limited good. Subsidising mortgage interest will also definitely not drive prices up further.
• Forget about NBN upgades, put everyone on satellite. Don't listen to the experts, listen to Australia's favourite KPMG consultant who always carries a high viz vest in his pocket just in case a camera shows up

Legalise Cannabis.

• Legalise Cannabis
• Hemp is the best thing since Vitamin C, Goji Berries, Ivermectin and Nanocolloidal Silver
• Microparty celeb Fiona Patten jumped ship to us!

Animal rights party

Heavy focus on animal rights (eg their education policies all relate to animal welfare)

Secondary focus on supporting (human) minorities

• Don't do anything to harm animals
• Don't kill feral animals
• Jobs Guarantee & Universal Basic Income
• No defence policy. But they have a Wombats policy!

Indigenous affairs party

No economic, health or defense policy

• Direct 10% (!) of government purchases to indigenous businesses
• Indigenous autonomy of local schools
• Treaty

Ex-ALP senator Fatima Payman got kicked out of the party over Israel/Palestine, so is going it alone

What you would expect of someone from the ALP left

• Support Palestine against Israel
• Scrap AUKUS, general defence self-reliance
• Reserve gas production for domestic use
• PM cannot declare war except through parliamentary vote
• Introduce a 5th major bank owned by the Commonwealth. Of Australia. (history rhyming)
• Glenn Druery is Chief of Staff

Merger of five micro parties (because electoral rules changed to require 1500 members)

The Greens, but if each faction had an obsession

Technically the old parties still exist as branches

• A lot of their policy platform is state issues, I'm only including policies applicable to the federal govt
• High speed rail
• No nuclear (fission) power. Fund fusion research.
• "Alternative" semiconductor supply chains (the US & China can't do this but I'm sure we can)
• More church/state separation, remove charity status for 'promotion of religion'
• Reform copyright & IP
• Environmental protection
• Stronger freedom of speech, Bill of Rights
• Massive increase in public housing
• Govt-operated real estate listing site
• Indigenous Treaty
• Remove tax breaks for housing
• Drug legalisation (copy Portugal)
• Vaccine mandates for health/aged care workers
• Don't privatise natural monopolies or essential services (health care, education, job services)
• Optional voting from 16yo
• UBI of $26k/year, flat tax rate, top-up payments for disadvantaged

The serious communists. Used to be the Socialist Equality party but ran out of members.

They "stand on the lessons of the political fight waged by Leon Trotsky" and are "irreconcilably opposed to every other party", including the "pseudo-left" Socialist Alliance and Victorian Socialists

• Overthrow the capitalist system
• True believer Trotskyists: communism would have worked if it wasn't for Stalin ruining everything

In case you can't tell from the name, Temu Trump for Australia

Mining billionaire Clive Palmer spent $123m (second only to the Coalition) last election and won ... 1 seat. He's trying to break the record for worst value-for-money electoral spending this year

Clive couldn't get 1,500 people to sign on to keep his old (United Australia) party registered so had to take over another one. You can do that when you're a billionaire

• Single handedly keeping the SMS spam industry alive with election messages
• Replicate DOGE's roaring success in Australia
• Only let in immigrants with "compatible values"
• Use up to 30% of your superannuation to inflate the housing bubble even further
• Cap home loans at 3% (Standard variable rate is currently 9% so who's funding this? Again, this definitely won't push up housing prices)
• More coal power plants. (The most recent coal plant was built in 2009 and went bankrupt because it couldn't compete with renewables. I'm sure this won't require government subsidies to work though)
• Freedom of speech. Also no more welcome to country. (I guess Freedom of Speech only covers things Clive likes?)
• Woke is bad
• Renewables bad. Nuclear good
• The UN is bad
• More manufacturing in Australia
• 15% tax on iron ore exports
• No more vaccine mandates (does he realise what year it is?)

The current government

Was on target to lose the election until the Liberals started to dabble in Trumpism

• Lots of minor incremental changes. There's not actually that much in terms of new changes, half their policy documents are dedicated to what they've already done so far
• Inflation is down! (... in every country, but they're claiming credit for Australia)
• Finish the NBN properly (yes they said this last election, but they mean it this time)
• Funding more trade qualifications & apprenticeships
• Push housing prices up further in a supply-constrained market by providing government subsidies on deposits and partial mortgages. Dumb policy, but I guess it could be worse (see: Liberal Party, Trumpet of Patriots)
• 2 year ban on foreign purchases of local housing. Takes effect just in time for the election campaign
• "Tax Cuts" that really just offset bracket creep
• Business as usual for mining companies. Playing it safe after even their watered down policy triggered a mining-funding PR campaign against them

For conservative Christians who want to fight the good fight in the Culture Wars

This is not the same Family First of Steve Fielding, it's a different party of the same name and is much further right

• Ban abortion & euthanasia
• Drag Queens are coming to make your kids trans
• Bad: diversity training, pronouns, prostitution, porn, drugs, kids out of wedlock
• Good: hetero nuclear families
• Rehab for youth offenders rather than jail
• Nuclear power good, gas good, no net zero emissions
• Less immigration until housing catches up. Except for muslims: stop them completely until they change their views
• Stop the pokies
• Balance the budget
• Less government
• Abolish the Human Rights Commission
• Good: Judeo Christian values. It's unclear which values this refers to. Their policies at times violate both the Christian part, and the judeo part.
• Relax firearm laws. Purely based on the number of words written, this is apparently the second most important topic after "Economic freedom for families" (!)
• Soapbox: Lyle Shelton is the current national director. Every time I've seen him say something that sounds shocking I've gone digging further and have found that he has either misrepresented the situation and has so distorted the presentation that it amounts to a lie. This might get publicity but he has near zero credibility in my view. The ends don't always justify the means

Personality-based party most famous for constant infighting and regular meme production: please explain", I don't like it", we are in danger of being swamped by Asians, testing the patience of Rear Admirals at Senate Committees, rejecting Halal snackpacks, telling Aboriginals that it's "good to see that you're actually, you know ... working, I don't hate asians, I just don't want to see Australia become asianised, "I haven't flip-flopped. I said no originally, then I said yes. Then I have said no, and I've stuck to it."

• They convinced people are RORTING THE SYSTEM! If they were in power they'd be able to just stop that and GOVERNMENT WASTE
• No vaccine mandates! People didn't really die of covid, but with covid
• More logging. More fishing. Stop environmental groups buying fishing quotas and not using them
• Abortion bad
• Income tax splitting
• Less tax on alcohol, petrol, retirees and nuclear families (I didn't cherry-pick those, they really are the ones they listed)
• Foreign ownership bad. More tax on multi-nationals
• Immgration bad. Withdraw from UN refugee convention
• "Restore critical thinking" in education. "There should be no room for Western, white, gender, guilt shaming"
• Global warming is not man-made
• "Change the rules" to incentivize coal and gas. (Given that the current rules pick the cheapest available source, this would be quite the feat to "slash electricity bills by 20%")
• Cut the government fees that make up 44% of the cost of new homes (citation needed, Pauline!)

Centre-left party that held the balance of power on & off in the senate for 20 years until they didn't block the GST and outraged supporters decamped to the greens.

• Constitution changes: Republic, Bill of Rights, recognition of First Nations, clarifying federal/state/local government areas of responsibility
• 16yo optional voting
• No nuclear power (or subs)
• Right to Repair
• Cut down gambling
• Address climate change
• Reduce CGT discount, introduce mining super profits tax
• More funding for healthcare, education etc

Abolish Capitalism

Like Socialist Alliance but with more nationalisation & taxation

• Policies are notably less radical compared to last election
• Take power out of the hands of private corporations
• 10% wealth tax on billionaires, 90% tax on income above $300k
• Abolish GST
• Nationalise Telstra, Commbank
• Lots of public housing

The greens aren't green enough

• "Pro-immigration" ... but cut intake by over 50% and cap population at 30m
• Universal basic income of $26k
• Free tertiary education
• Ban all new fossil fuel extraction, Mining super profit tax
• Cap foreign ownership
• Reduce gambling
• Scrap CGT discount & negative gearing
• Job Guarantee program
• Renationalise natural monopolies
• Renegotiate all free trade agreements to ensure better environmental outcomes

After Craig Kelly lost his seat, Liberal senator Gerard Rennick was the last hardcore anti vaxxer left in parliament

Rennick lost Liberal party preselection, so quit the party and formed his own party

Part of the "Australia First Alliance" of right wing parties swapping preferences

• Global warming is a lie
• The reason housing is not being built is because everyone is building renewables. I didn't realise all the roofers, carpenters, plumbers, tilers were building offshore wind turbines and solar panels.
• Covid is a lie, people are dying from the vaccine, ivermectin is great
• Welcome to country is bad
• Ivermectin is awesome
• Scrap superannuation
• Childcare is a state conspiracy
• Publicly-owned Bank, Insurance, Infrastructure Bank
• Apart from the usual conspiracy stuff (covid, global warming) is basically One Nation's policies (social conservatism and economic populism) if they had been written by someone who wasn't xenophobic and could string a sentence together
• Scrap renewable subsidies. But subsidise new coal/nuclear/gas/dams

The party for those who long to return to 1890s government. Anything the government does other than defence and the justice system is tyranny. Although since taxation is theft I'm not sure how even those are supposed to be funded.

Used to be the Liberal Democrats, but the Liberal Party successfully argued in court that the name was confusingly similar

At the state level, was previously quite willing to compromise as long as legislation moved the status quo in a direction they liked. Since the last election their platform has embraced culture wars and more covid denialism (eg has a lot to say about trans issues despite an ideology that elevates individual choice over government directives). Policies are notably less principled than last time

Part of the "Australia First Alliance" of right wing parties swapping preferences

• Covid was a Wuhan conspiracy, vaccines killed people. Notably their previous position that it's ok for employers to mandate vaccines has been dropped, now they only talk of vaccine mandates as always bad
• The Laffer Curve peak is at 20%, so we need a flat 20% tax. In their fantasy land this will be revenue neutral (they disagree with almost every economist in the world: the LDP's modelling says it will work, and Reagan/Stockman's failed experiment in the 80s doesn't count because reasons). While almost all of the savings would flow to the rich, this is a good thing.
• Zero company tax
• Privatise everything: ABC, SBS, NBN, Post Office, Public transport, Electricity
• Cut ATO workforce in half [great news for tax evaders!]
• No government funding for childcare, paid parental leave, health or education. Privatise them all
• No superannuation
• Reserve Bank should ignore GDP & unemployment, only focus on currency stability
• No energy subsidies of any form. Allow nuclear (but don't subsidise it). No wind/solar on public land
• No uni subsidies, students can pay 100% of the cost through HELP loans. No uni regulation
• Let public toilet owners decide which genders are allowed in. Then legislate to define 'woman' as biological woman anyway (but why legislate if you just allowed people to do whatever they want?)
• Prevent trans people from playing in women's sports teams (government intervention is good now?)
• Drop points-based immigration in favour of paying a 'significant fee' to immigrate
• 10 years to get citizenship (Pfft. Real libertarians believe in open borders)
• Free speech, explicitly allowing misinformation (inc from doctors)
• No government surveillance (corporations tracking you is fine though)
• American-style gun permits (including concealed carry)
• Increase allowable blood alcohol limit
• Cut any regulation possible: no minimum wage, trading hour restrictions, schools, universities, medicine
• Give employers the freedom to fire employees for any reason
• Govt out of private affairs: same-sex marriage, repeal drug laws, allow assisted suicide

The third largest party

Internally split between the "hard greens" who won't compromise and the pragmatists

Mostly the green left policy positions you would expect

• 10% wealth tax on billionaires, 40% super tax on Company profits above $100m
• Net zero by 2030, then net carbon negative. No native forest logging
• Grandfather CGT, negative gearing concessions on housing. 600k million govt funded homes
• Ban gambling advertising
• Double refugee intake, give TPV holders a pathway to citizenship
• Allow dual nationality MPs
• Anti-racism training for MPs
• Wipe student debt, make uni/tafe free
• A lot of small random pro-LGBTIQA+ programs
• 26 weeks of paid parental leave at 100% of the carer's wage
• Ban hate speech
• Digital services tax on Google, Facebook etc to stop offshoring profits
• End horse/greyhound racing, live exports, legally define animal sentience
• Ban big Company donations to political parties, stop ministers joining Co after leaving parliament

Citizens Electoral Council renamed.

Anti-globalisation followers of Lyndon LaRouche, who saw plenty of international conspiracies and rarely met a problem that nationalisation of 20th century industries couldn't fix.

For good measure he also threw in a bunch of conspiracy theories (eg the Queen controls the international drug trade. And our politics behind the scenes. Doesn't hate jews, just jewish bankers who control the world)

Preoccupation with international affairs.

• China, Russia, Palestine are nice. The US is not; no AUKUS.
• Only parliament should declare war.
• Create a national bank &, more regulation of existing banks.
• Grandfather out negative gearing & limit CGT exemptions
• Nationalise electricity. Build nuclear.
• Lots of government infrastructure projects
• Intervention in agriculture (eg tariffs, fertiliser price controls)

Shooting and fishing and pseudo-libertarian country folk.

Last election was pretty upset about covid vaccines but unlike most of the other conservative micro parties has moved on.

• Develop nuclear weapons & delivery systems (missiles, bombers, submarines) to stop communist China
• Climate scientists are "extremist groups"; the SFFP's "approach is based on rational skepticism"
• Various policies focused on govt support for regional areas and small business
• More guns. Also make it easier to claim self-defence when shooting people
• No marine parks, allow fishing anywhere, protectionism for the fishing industry
• More mines & but restrict Natural Gas exports. (has dropped previous support for fracking due to agricultural impact concerns)
• Nuclear power
• Allow commercial use of national parks

"Independent" who is currently a union delegate to the ALP. Presumably running because he didn't get preselection. Policies broadly align with ALP but have different focuses

• A number of things that are state responsibilities, not federal
• Support regional development
• Expand mental healthcare
• Given the lack of specificity and lots of 'Support xyz' policies, I am treating this as a variation a on ALP policies