Vic Senate voter here. Assembled my preference list the other day and made the decision to put the Citizens Party first among the real dregs of the ballot (I believe I described it as the start of the 'oh Jesus' section) -- so, below most of the mainstream right, but above the hateful fringe (Libertarians, GRPF, Trumpet of Patriots, One Nation, Family First) -- mainly on the grounds that they're all conspiracists but at least the ACP isn't as toxically right/hateful. What are your reckons?
This is a good question to which I'm going to give a long and not entirely committal answer. The Australian Citizens Party (ACP), formerly the Citizens Electoral Council (CEC), are the Australian branch of the LaRouche movement, which emerged in the 1960s in the US ostensibly on the left and is now a far-right cult.
I first want to return to my recommendations about the ACP/CEC from when they posted their views online without making any attempt to appear sane:
2013 review: "The CEC are without question the most radically unhinged, delusional political party on the Australian landscape. Do not vote for them. Do not let your preferences get anywhere near them. While other parties may be ignorant or regressive, the CEC are actually destructive."
2016 review: "Do not under any circumstances give any preference to the CEC in the Senate. If the CEC are standing for your lower house seat, put them dead last. The only party that may be worth putting below them is Australia First."
(Who are Australia First? Literal Nazis. I last reviewed them in 2019 and their leader, Jim Saleam, is standing as an independent for the NSW Division of Lindsay this year—avoid him!)
Anyway, how should we approach the ACP-formerly-CEC in 2025? I have two main considerations in play here:
The ACP/CEC will never win a seat. Their best result to date is 0.21% of the national vote in 2004, followed by 0.2% in 2022. They usually get below 0..1%.
The ACP/CEC are uniquely unusual in the Australian political landscape. They hold attitudes so insane, conspiracy theories so laughable, and goals so clearly damaging that they should not be supported under any circumstance. They are divorced from reality and have been so for a very long time.
Now, I won't be confident of my exact ranking this year until I have finished writing all my reviews, and even once I make a draft I often shuffle a few candidates around in the days before voting. But the first consideration above suggests that it doesn't ultimately matter too much where you put the ACP because they're going to be cut very early in the process and there is no realistic scenario under which your vote will play a role deciding between the ACP and some other cretins. If you despise bilious racists more than LaRouchean fantasists, put them lower.
And a complicating factor with consideration two above is the rise of sovereign citizens and similarly deranged conspiracists within parties such as Trumpet of Patriots. Some of these people and their supporters are actively dangerous; they can be physically violent. The ACP once had no competition in terms of which party on the ballot was most divorced from reality, but today's sovcits give them a run for their money.
In general, I have considered the risks of somebody from the ACP having any degree of power to be scarcely worth contemplating, and that they pose a bigger risk across the board than One Nation-style racists and Family First-style religious fundamentalists. But I am now inclined to agree that some other parties and candidates on the hateful lunar right pose more of a threat to the rule of law and public safety. I would probably still put some of the hateful fringe above ACP, but my very last preferences will likely go to aggressive Trumpian creeps and sovereign citizen crackpots.
