Blatantly Partisan Party Review XLIII: Secular Party of Australia
Review from the 2013 federal election: “a secular humanist party that promotes freedom from religion and freedom of religion”
Running in: the ACT, NSW, Queensland, and Victoria for the Senate.
After the religious bigotry of Rise Up Australia, we come to the Secular Party at the exact opposite end of the theological spectrum. They profess to challenge religious privilege, promoting freedom of and freedom from religion.
Highlights:
The Secular Party are socially liberal and support the right of private citizens to pursue their own lifestyles and choices without interference, especially not of the religious variety. The removal of any blasphemy laws still on the statute books is a priority, and they maintain their past opposition to Internet censorship or government monitoring of what websites citizens access. The Secular Party supports a republic, abortion, voluntary euthanasia, and marriage equality. They want to end tax-exempt status for religions, and propose greater regulation on alternative medicines to avoid consumers being scammed by quacks and snake-oil salesmen. Their platform on drug abuse and the war on drugs is basically identical to the Drug Law Reform Party. They express opposition to welfare cuts and support the provision of public housing, but this policy is so vague as to not even indicate what cuts they oppose or what sorts of welfare they think should be supported and beefed up.
The Secular Party supports action on climate change and are scornful of Abbott Liberal plans to pay polluters to reduce emissions. They propose to address emissions and the transition to renewable energy through government taxation that would both finance activity and provide an incentive to reduce pollution. These include both a simple carbon tax and a resource rent tax to ensure Australia sees a return on non-renewable resources.
Lowlights:
The Secular Party are economically liberal as well as being socially liberal. I must state they are not libertarians, they advocate government intervention to rectify market failure, and as noted above their willingness to use taxation to modify behaviour shows they are no small government ideologues. But as a social democrat I would like to see a stronger commitment to state-owned enterprises and to public ownership of natural monopolies.
The “new atheist” movement clearly has some influence on this party, and it has an undercurrent of Islamophobia in the hands of some of its most vocal proponents. Some Secular Party policies nod in this direction too, such as their distrust of some Islamic clothing. I’m uncomfortable with their idea of making migrants sign an “Australian values statement”, including the need for witness statements proving compliance before receipt of permanent residency or citizenship. You can see this being a much more onerous test for a Middle Eastern migrant than a white British migrant! And how exactly do we define Australian values? Must these be majoritarian? (In which case they may not be entirely secular.) Are the values of rural Queenslanders the same as inner urban Sydneysiders? Are the values of young Australians the same as the elderly? Are today’s most common values the same as those of twenty, fifty, two hundred years ago? The whole idea is impractical and smacks of exclusionary racial and religious attitudes contrary to some of the party’s other rhetoric, as if to say “let’s make sure these darkies don’t bring their sinister religion and smelly food and funny clothes here”.
Summary:
In most regards I find myself either in agreement with the Secular Party or close enough to not be seriously opposed. The one position on which I diverge strongly, however, is suspicion of immigrants. I am, after all, a migrant to Australia myself, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that the Secular Party’s attitudes here do not meet a rigorous application of secular humanism. They are not talking about Pākehā like me (white New Zealanders) when they propose an Australian values statement, but are activated by the Islamophobic clash of civilisation thesis that permeates too much “new atheism”.
My recommendation: Give the Secular Party a decent preference.
Website: https://www.secular.org.au/
