There is some interest from various people inside and outside the party for a strategic alliance between minor parties for the upcoming Federal election. Informal discussion among the National Council and interested members at public meetings has identified several minor parties with similar policies to us, so we have a working shortlist:
Reason
Flux
Secular
Australian Progressives
Online Democracy
Science
Maths Party
The purpose of this thread is to open up the discussion to the wider party. Some specific things I’d like to hear feedback on:
Policy overlaps/conflicts with those parties
How the strategic alliance could function or be branded
Other parties not mentioned
There’s a lot of chatter on the Twittersphere and elsewhere in the auspoliverse about the boring Liberal/Labour dichotomy. It’s time to break it!
I am of the opinion that we should run joint tickets with a peer party (Science and Secular would be the best examples). This would allow us both to cover the entire country rather than eg running competing tickets in just the big 3 states.
An equal allocation would give one party top billing in NSW, WA, SA & NT with the other getting VIC, QLD, TAS & ACT.
A 3 Party allocation would look something like (NSW+Tas); (Vic+SA+NT); (Qld+WA+ACT) for the leads, and then cycle through for 2nds and 3rds. Not sure if a 3 Party joint ticket is actually possible though. Edit: you could, but only two logos allowed…
4 parties could also work. There’d be two tickets in each state, but alternating. (Imagine how the top of a cardboard box fits together. A>B, B>C, C>D and then D>A…)
In conclusion, let’s go hard and maybe we won’t have to go home.
The other main electoral mechanics to consider are
Not running competing candidates in lower house seats (which shouldn’t be much of an issue for us or our peer parties)
(Hopefully mutual) cross-endorsement: “since we’re not running there, we recommend voting for X”. We endorsed Scott Ludlam in WA-2013, for instance.