Blatantly Partisan Party Review I (federal 2025): Animal Justice Party
Running where: Senate in every state and the ACT, plus a smattering of House divisions in the ACT and five states (none in WA)
Prior reviews: federal 2013, VIC 2014, federal 2016, VIC 2018, NSW 2019, federal 2019, federal 2022, VIC 2022, NSW 2023, WA 2025
What I said before: “I’ll make this simple because nothing has changed. The Animal Justice Party promotes policies that support veganism and which oppose harm to all animals, including invasive species that wreak havoc on Australia’s ecosystem.” (WA 2025)
What I think this year: AJP’s placement in the alphabet means that I usually get to start my series of reviews in a very straightforward manner. They’re a stable part of the micro-party landscape with representation in the upper houses of the NSW and Victorian state parliaments, and at the time of writing they are in contention for the yet-to-be-declared 37th and final seat in WA’s upper house. (This entry will be edited once the WAEC announces the results sometime this week)
Indeed, the question this time around is whether I can highlight something about AJP that I have not noted before. My friend at b_auspol guided my attention to their housing policy, which has a classic left-wing slant in promoting more public housing and which speaks to a common YIMBY demand to “make zoning laws more flexible to allow for higher-density housing developments, and infill (the replacement of houses with higher density dwellings), near public transport and essential services”. As someone who is a big fan of dense, walkable cities that prioritise a choice of active and public transport modes, this goes down well for me.
This election, “The Animal Justice Party stands for Animals, People and the Planet” and they offer a 10-pillar platform that embodies their main priorities. Some pillars will be familiar to long-term micro-party enthusiasts. AJP retains their policy for “Veticare” to provide support for vet bills akin to Medicare, and their policies on animal cruelty are what you would expect (with my usual caveat that their promotion of only “non-lethal” forms of pest control is naïve, but other aspects are more reasonable). How much you like their proposals to “fix the food system” will depend on how much you support vegan/vegetarian diets and whether you think governments should promote a major reduction in meat consumption. It is, though, a bit more moderately phrased a dietary policy than in previous years, with the emphasis on increasing the daily intake of fruit and vegetables for the average Australian.
Other policies are conventional left-wing stuff, such as increasing taxation on big business, promoting a transition to clean energy, and more funding to prevent domestic violence and support victims. Honestly, some of the policies to reduce tax on ordinary people while making sure big business pays their way and can’t exploit loopholes could be bolder! And although the AJP’s policy about supporting victims of domestic violence to keep their pets might seem an extremely niche concern, the b_auspol review makes an important point: “one of the biggest predictors of danger to humans is if the abusive person threatens, injures or kills the family pets, and a lot of shelters don’t allow people to bring pets with them”. I have personal experience here to know how important this is, in what I saw when multiple friends' parents split acrimoniously while we were at school.
As an aside, I am mildly surprised AJP is not running any candidates for divisions of the House of Representatives in WA. I had an AJP candidate in my lower-house seat at last month’s state election, and they stood in ten other state seats.
Recommendation: Give the Animal Justice Party a middling to decent preference. Calibrate this recommendation in accordance with your views on eating meat and consuming other animal products. I am leaning decent this year; beyond my reservations about some aspects of their special interests, they are not a bad left-wing option.
Website: https://www.animaljusticeparty.org/
