Blatantly Partisan Party Review XXVII (federal 2025): The Good Party
Running where: Elsa Parker for Kingsford Smith (NSW) and Jordan Colless for Page (NSW)
Prior reviews: none, this is a new party
My goal in this review is to introduce the as-yet-unregistered Good Party and say a little about their background; I won’t engage with an awful lot of their policies because they are not contesting the Senate and I am unsure if I have any readers in either electorate where they have endorsed independents. Yes, I reviewed in detail Rebekha Sharkie and Dai Le, but they are incumbent MPs. Sharkie is very likely to retain her seat and Le will be competitive in an intriguing contest, and as crossbenchers their views are relevant nationally—especially if no party wins a majority (an outcome that seemed almost certain until the wheels came off Dutton’s campaign; now Labor might retain its majority). Elsa Parker and Jordan Colless, by contrast, have no chance of winning their seats, though I understand Parker in particular has been an eager campaigner.
The Good Party is seeking to recruit enough members to gain registration, but at the moment must settle for endorsing independents. They claim to be running three candidates, not two, but VJ Gunawardana is not on the ballot for Macnamara. The party emphasises that it seeks to appeal to and represent young people: “we believe the future of young Australians has been squandered by successive federal governments … Our aim is to spearhead generational change in Parliament with youth, fresh ideas, and the values of decency, respect, and inclusiveness.”
The Good Party’s policy pages are extensive, much more extensive than you normally see for a newly minted micro-party, and this intrigued me as to their origins. Besides the candidates themselves, nobody is named on the website. As Kevin Bonham notes in his party registration tracker, the party does not have the standard (and required!) authorisation statements on its website or Facebook. The Facebook account sometimes posts reels with two grey-haired men—not young Australians at all, though presumably they were once—and it turns out these gents have a separate Facebook account called Park Bench Politics, where they actively promote the Good Party.
I have been informed privately that these “two old blokes” (as they dub themselves), Shane Barry and David Rollins, are actually behind the party. There is not an awful much about either online, and you get a lot of search hits for other people with the same name, though David Rollins is the author of that name who writes thrillers. In one of the Park Bench Politics videos that I watched, they present themselves simply as having “heard about” the Good Party, but from what I’ve been told they “heard about” it because it came out of their own mouths. The person I spoke to believed that Barry and Rollins were sincere in their intentions, which is to create a platform for younger people to run for parliament. Neither they nor I have found any information to suspect there is anything untoward here: both men want to take a back seat and promote young candidates as the face of the party.
If that is so, though, it seems Barry and Rollins are the brains behind the policies as they stand. You can do a simple comparison of the Good Party’s defence policy and Rollins’ thoughts as expressed on his Substack. The shared themes and suggestions, right down to common phrasings, are striking. This policy does not have a youthful feel. It is more favourable to AUKUS than most I have read this campaign, and it reprises two predictable stances from Australia’s political history: a fear since the 1850s that China might covet our land to settle its large population and control our resources (a fear so powerful that anti-Chinese policies played a major role in the federation movement), and military training for civilians to have a trained populace of reservists for national defence. Now, the Good Party is clear that they are not promoting mandatory national service, so this is not quite the Universal Service Scheme of 1911 or its mid-century successors, but the echo is there—and it’s not the sort of thing I normally see young politicians proposing!
In any case, if you live in the electorates of Kingsford Smith and Page, have a dig into the Good Party’s policies. They generally lean centre-left, although some specific aspects are quite bold or out-of-the-box and might prove to be dealbreakers. For me, I’m lukewarm because I disagree with much of the defence and housing policies, I don't share their support for extending parliamentary terms from three to four years, and I firmly oppose their proposed reduction in immigration numbers (for specious environmental reasons not too dissimilar to Sustainable Australia).
Recommendation: in Kingsford Smith, I would put Parker above Family First and the Liberals and below the Greens, but I would need more direct local knowledge to determine where to place her relative to the Labor candidate; in Page, there is a large field of eleven candidates—but most of them are from quite undesirable parties so likewise Colless would be in contention for at least a top three placing (maybe top four, but on a quick search I’ve got nothing for indie Richard Wells and that’s never promising).
Website: https://www.goodparty.com.au/