SFP stupidity causes Deer Association to recommend below the line voting in Victoria

Shooters and fishermen are by nature sensible, pragmatic, active people who brave the elements and government regulation in order to pursue their sport.  Both have to be so; they could come to grief quickly from any miscalculation or inattention. 

In order to protect what rights they have left, they have formed the Shooters and Fishers Party to try to develop some political clout.

Unfortunately, unlike the membership, this party seems to be run by a mob of tossers who through either crass stupidity, or deliberate bloody mindedness have developed a long history of favouring anti-gun parties over more shooting friendly ones.

As recently as the Western Australian senate rerun, they passed their preferences to HEMP, which has no affinity with shooters, then on to Palmer, whose candidate they were instrumental in electing.  (See count 31 and 35)  Palmer detests guns and has refused to work with Bob Katter because of that. 

Despite this, in the current Victorian election, SFP have given their first preference to PUP in three regions including two where shooters have a large presence.  In one of these, (Northern) the lead Palmer candidate previously stood as a Green. 

The concern that shooting enthusiasts may inadvertently elect supporters of gun control has caused the Australian Deer Association to advocate voting below the line.  Under Victorian electoral rules voters only have to vote for five candidates below the line: 

The how-to-vote cards demonstrate that the preferences of political parties do not necessarily reflect their policies and values. In fact, it appears that, in most cases, if they do so it is more by accident than by design. 

There are four parties which are pro- hunting and shooting contesting the elections this year: Australian Country AllianceThe Liberal DemocratsThe Nationals; andThe Shooters and Fishers Party. … 

The Shooters and Fishers Party, for example, have given their first preference in Eastern Victoria, Northern Victoria (the two regions where a party which supporters hunters and shooters and other users of public land have the best chance of being elected) and Western Victoria to the Palmer United Party. 

As we have highlighted elsewhere in this newsletter, Clive Palmer is 'anti-gun' and the Palmer Party’s main candidate in Northern Victoria was the Greens’ main Northern Victoria candidate in the 2010 state elections.  The Party’s second candidate ran as an independent in the 2004 federal election on an anti-logging platform. … 

The Liberal Democrats have given their first two preferences in Eastern Victoria to the Shooters and Fishers and Australian Country Alliance, their first preference to Country Alliance in Northern Victoria and their third in Western Victoria and their first preference to Shooters and Fishers in Western Victoria and their third in Northern Victoria. … 

… Unlike voting for the Senate in Federal elections, it is easy to vote below-the-line in the Victorian Upper House elections. All you need to do is mark at least the squares of five candidates with the numbers 1 to 5. After that you may fill in as many squares as you like with consecutive numbers. …

Follow the link to see recommendations on how to maximize the shooter friendly vote by going below the line, its simple and eliminates the danger of electing gun grabbers by mistake.

It is a shame that other shooting orientated organizations like the SSAA do not have the wit or foresight to come up with or support such ideas, but continue to blindly vote the SFP ticket in the mistaken belief that they are protecting the interests of their members.

An alternative to the advice above is to vote for the Liberal Democrats.  We have placed all shooter friendly parties above the majors, including the SFP in two regions but were duded by them on the agreement.  The Liberal Democrats have an excellent raft of shooter friendly policies, and have placed Palmer down at the bottom of the ticket with the Greens across the board. 

Leyonhjelm doing the right thing for no good reason (or something)

Statists struggle to understand libertarians on those odd occasions where they actually bother to try to get a handle on the thinking behind non-interventionism and personal liberty.

Patrick Stokes, a lecturer in philosophy at Deakin University is an example of this phenomenon.  Patrick seems to think that it is not enough to accept that it is OK to let people do stuff that you might not care to do or might even not like on the grounds that it is non-coercive and doesn’t affect you.  You have to have a good reason to leave people alone in his jaded point of view.

Stokes starts off with the antics of Philip Nitschke in the euthanasia field, then attempts to link this with the LDP’s stance on same sex marriage.  He demonstrates his confusion on the subject matter by trying to link libertarian thinking to the old left/right paradigm: 

This problem isn’t unique to the euthanasia debate. Last week, newly-minted Liberal Democrats senator David Leyonhjelm announced plans to introduce a bill to legalize same sex Marriage. 

As a libertarian, Leyonhjelm has called for lower taxes and a massively reduced role for government. Yet his position on marriage equality aligns him with a policy more closely associated with the political left. … 

… Philosophers such as Richard Mohr have argued that committed same-sex relationships already are marriages in a substantive sense, and the law should simply recognise that.For libertarians (for the most part), the only real substantive good is individual autonomy. 

Leyonhjelm doesn’t argue, as far as I can see, that certain types of relationship have a special, substantive value; he simply thinks, “It is not the role of government to define relationships.” (In which case, we might ask, why should governments get involved in certifying marriage at all?) 

Those of us who support same-sex marriage can probably live with that tension, if it delivers the outcome we want. But the philosophical tension between approaches is still there. 

And the very moral thinness of libertarianism, its refusal to trade in any ethical currency other than liberty, sits uneasily with issues of life and death, where all sorts of other moral considerations are in play. …

There is no explanation offered as to why we should think, “that certain types of relationship have a special, substantive value.”  In an argument for marriage equality, it simply makes no sense to claim that one form of relationship is special, something that those opposing SSM claim as a key point.  Such a claim is counter-productive.

It is nice to know though, that statists arguing the issue as a special case for SSM as some kind of state granted privilege are prepared to hold their noses and accept Leyonhjelm’s support, even if they don’t really like it. 

He then goes on with the following doozy:

One reason death is viewed as normally being a harm to the person who dies is that it deprives us of goods we would have enjoyed had we lived. In a situation where there is nothing left in the patient’s future but pain and loss of dignity, there are no more goods to lose.

For those of us who deal more with the real world rather than academic navel gazing, the biggest reason for death to be considered a harm, is that we don’t get to live longer. 

At this point, he exposes the weakness of his argument under the rather dramatic heading of:

Libertarianism’s moral moonscape 

If you think, as Nitschke apparently does, that the question here is simply about exercising a right to suicide, why should it matter whether someone is terminally ill or not? If someone wants to die, and they’re clear-headed enough to make competent decisions, who are we to interfere with their personal liberty in order to stop them? … 

… When teaching classes on the ethical debate over euthanasia, I’ve found that students often seem to struggle with explaining why it should matter whether the patient is dying (or at least permanently debilitated) or not. Yet from a mercy perspective, it matters very much that there are, in fact, no truly good options left open. …

It sounds like those students have a more consistent view than their teacher.  To assume the right to deny a person the right to die, we are adopting the assumption that we have a right to insist that they live, even against their own wishes.  No explanation of this position is offered.

Assuming the right to refuse the right to die implies a form of ownership over the person involved which is an anathema to all decent civilized people.  The problem most of us have with Nitschke’s position on the recent suicide of a depressed 45 year old is that he didn’t advise him to seek psychiatric advice.

Nitschke is not a libertarian, never was, and never will be.  He is a statist leftist who proved in the Western Australian senate election rerun, that he prefers to support leftist parties, even those who oppose his cause to a libertarian party that in the main, supports his single issue.

In attempting to secure some sort of dispensation from the state in relation to his plea for special interest, he has fluked a position where the LDP has a similar morality based position.  This does not make him a libertarian in any way, shape, or form.

The LDP policy on voluntary euthanasia can be found here. 

James McGrath; another ‘Libertarian’ senator?

On the basis of Senator James McGrath’s maiden speech he has a lot going for him among libertarians. Some of his views are straight from the Liberal Democrat’s playbook, while others are consistent with our aims:
  
Getting rid of compulsory student union fees isa step in the right direction.  The idea that an organisation be allowed to charge a compulsory fee on those it claims to represent because of their employment or other status is akin to granting ownership of those people or allowing a taxation power over them.
Having a senator with a strong commitment to freedom of speech is a welcome addition to a house that sadly lacks many members who have either an understanding, or real commitment to the concept.  It will be interesting to see how many qualifications he puts on it, given that the LNP tends to be rather PC whipped and timorous on the issue.

His support for the abolition of the federal departments of Health, and Education are basically the same as the LDP case and for the same reasons.  Neither of them actually run a school or hospital and merely intrude on what is a state responsibility.

There are though a number of other departments and bodies that need the axe, the Department of Climate Change, being one that immediately comes to mind, as well as the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.  The first is designed to engage in histrionics on Global Warming, while the latter helps the new generation of carpetbaggers to invest in more expensive green energy that is compulsorily sold off to consumers under a government mandate.

There is no place in a free society for the government picking winners or engaging in social engineering.

This raises the issue of his call to increase the GST by 50% and extend it to cover all purchases including food ‘with compensation for low income earners’.  While the taxes he mentions need to be abolished or reduced, especially payroll tax, slimming down the federal government and passing some of the savings to the states would be a better idea than a tax increase.

The idea of a consumption tax replacing stupid and iniquitous ones like payroll tax is admirable however, these taxes were supposed to be abolished under the original GST proposal, but weren’t. This seems to be rewarding bad behaviour by the states. 

Low-income earners need just as much basic foodstuffs as the rich although perhaps at a lesser quality.  There seems little point in increasing the price by 15%, then compensating them for it.  This merely creates churn, which requires more public servants to administer the scheme.

GST funding is not distributed rationally among states but is rather sent out on the basis of ‘each according to his ability, to each according to his need’, which would have to be reformed for any sort of fairness to exist.

Another problem is the ABC.  While he correctly makes the case for it to be sold or abolished, he claims that it should be done as some sort of penalty for left wing bias.  In an age where there are numerous sources of commercial TV and radio entertainment there seems to be little reason to spend over a billion dollars per year providing a government network to compete with that.

It’s rather irrelevant that it’s left wing; that is merely the consequence of being a state media entity dedicated to providing ‘high brow’ stuff that the ‘common heard’ doesn’t require and is therefore not catered fo by commercial networks.  We don’t need it.

The senate will be better for having this guy in it depending on whether he follows through, or merely votes the party line, good or bad.  

Leyonhjelm inspires another cartoonist

Giving inspiration to cartoonists can be a mixed blessing, frequently a negative one, even a brutal experience.  Still, if it is a good likeness, your name is spelt right, and whatever it is highlighting is not a really bad, it can be as good as a big advertising budget for getting your name out there.

LDP Senator, David Leyonhjelm has come off very well, getting the cover of The Spectator Australia on his election.

It is understood that the original is proudly displayed in his office.

Recently he was seen commenting on how we have a government he likened to Godzilla, a reasonable assessment of the enormous burden of the state on the population with its attendant pernicious imposition of itself into every aspect of our daily lives as well as our wallets in order to fund its depredations.

This appears to have inspired well known cartoonist Stephen Zeg Gunnell (Zeg) to come up with his offering on the subject, which rather than Godzilla uses the theme of David and Goliath to illustrate this situation and David's role in opposing it.

 

First Australian senator elected on libertarian platform gives his maiden speech

All of Australia’s libertarians are feeling the joy today with the maiden speech of David Leyonhjelm in the senate this afternoon.  We have had to wait for nine months since his election last September, for this moment.

This is the first time in Australia’s history that a libertarian party has elected anyone into federal politics. Here is what he had to say:

This has been the culmination of a long haul for many of us.  From a personal standpoint I have pursued libertarian politics since the mid 70s with the formation of the Progress Party, and later with the Liberal Democratic Party.  A few others have been at it longer, as the Workers Party preceded the Progress Party.

Nonetheless, 40 years is a long wait.  Those years have flown by like a stack of papers caught in the breeze since I first walked into a meeting called by a group that inspired me with their message; that we should control the government, rather than have it control us.

Today might seem like a culmination, but as David says, “There is much to be done.”  And as Churchill said, “This is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.”

Lets all work to take control and hand that control back to where it belongs; in the hands of the individual. 

No double-dissolution; so who’s backed down?

Prime minister, Tony Abbott has backed away from his threat of a double dissolution and now says that the next election will be in 2016.  He claims to be confident that his budget will pass, claiming that the minor parties will understand the need for tough measures.

Either he thinks that the threats he made are certain to work, or he has already put a deal in place.  On the other hand, he may be bluffing:  

... He was confident the minor parties and Senate independents would “understand” the harsh measures in his government’s first budget and accept his mandate to govern. 

“Whenever the next election comes, the people will judge us on what we’ve done and before the election we said we’d stop the boats, we’d scrap the carbon tax, we’d build the roads of the twenty-first century, we’d get the budget back under control,” he said in an appearance on ABC’s Insiders program. … 

… Mr Abbott last week warned that some of the incoming Senate crossbenchers — including Palmer United Party, Family First, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party — would be unlikely to keep their seats if there was a new election. 

His comments were widely interpreted as a threat of a double dissolution election to the crossbenchers who might be contemplating voting against some of the budget’s major measures. … 

… “I’m confident that the minor parties and the independents in the Senate will understand that we could not go on living the way we were, we could not go one mortgaging the future. 

“Now if they don’t like what we’re putting up, what are they going to put up as an alternative. …

If it is a matter of pulling the required votes from the minor parties, then some of the incoming senators must have backed down from their stated opposition to key points in the budget.  The DLP senator and Xenophon have been reasonably quiet, so it’s possible that they will vote with the government, but they need another four.

Liberal Democrat, David Leyonhjelm, and FF’s Bob Day are both fiscal conservatives who oppose tax increases as a matter of principle, so it’s unlikely that they have been swayed. Leyonhjelm would be lynched by his party if he were to change his mind on this, so he is out of the equation.

This pretty much leaves the three PUP senators and their bought or rented Motoring Enthusiasts Party guy, Ricky Muir to make up the four.  Given the statements of Clive Palmer, it is difficult to see how this could happen, but Clive has plenty of media operatives around him who would be able to spin the term, “save his skin,” into something meaning the same, but sounding noble and even self-sacrificing.

There is another possibility though.

Since the 1975 ‘dismissal’ oppositions have regarded as almost sacred the idea that the government has a right to have its budget passed.  They kick and scream up till the point of the vote, then back down in the name of convention.  Shorten has been foaming at the mouth since budget night, but the line he has adopted will leave him exposed to the rotten fish smell of the fiscal profligacy of the previous government owing to his assertion that the budget position is strong.

It’s a reasonable bet that the budget will pass with Labor backing.

Palmer for talk, Liberal Democrats for action

Some years ago, I was talking to the senior mine geologist about the drilling program when a winder driver asked about a problem she had and wanted to know whether she should talk to the general manager or the underground one.  

The geologist replied, “If you want something done see the underground manager, if you just want to talk about it, the general manager is just the man for it.”

This pretty much equates to the difference between the Liberal Democrats and Palmer.

Palmer is blowing off a bit of froth today about his chances of becoming prime minister if Tony Abbott calls a double dissolution: 

… Mr Palmer has predicted a bold, new direction for Australian politics where his party has a majority in the lower house and he is prime minister. 

The mining magnate has dared Prime Minister Tony Abbott to call a double dissolution election if he cannot pass the budget and says the Palmer United Party will run in every lower house seat and can claim victory.  

“Our members think there should be an election straight away,” Mr Palmer told Fairfax Media.  “They are ready and standing by.” … 

… Asked to explain precisely how he could become prime minister, Mr Palmer predicted that his party could take votes from the Coalition and added: “I think we can get the votes we need to make Australia better.'' 

“I think there will be a new change in the dynamic of Australian politics. In the lower house we will be going out to win it.''  Mr Palmer predicted the PUP could also claim 24 to 30 seats in the Senate. …

If voters want to be sold a pup, then Clive is just their man; he even has the right party name for it.  PUP is a policy free zone; the policy section of their website lists four or five one sentence generic positions that mean as close to nothing as Palmer can get them.

If you want to know more, he refers you to a ‘policy document’ which is actually a long series of press releases, some of them contradictory, and giving no detail of any proposed actions.

PUP mirrors Clive Palmer.  Clive is mainly famous for picking and losing fights, and travelling around the nation bitching about everything going on.  This is fine as far as politics go, but sooner or later, you have to come out with meaningful solutions.

The Liberal Democrats on the other hand feature a full section of detailed policies on pretty much every aspect of matters covered by politics.  Nothing is hidden; there are no surprises if the party is elected.  It is all out in the open.

Nobody knows what Palmer would do if PUP got up.  We all know what he complains about, but there are no solutions offered; his appeal is restricted to low information voters who want to make a protest, assuming that it will all be OK.

Palmer has spent the past week howling to the moon about the budget, saying he will block it, complaining about every aspect of it, but has not had the courage of his convictions (if any) to come up with an alternative. 

The Liberal Democrats on the other hand released a full and detailed budget a day prior to Abbott.  In fact, we were the only party to do so.  It may not appeal to everyone but everyone detests the LNP one.

We all have to step into the big unknown at some stage, but voting for Palmer is a step too far.

OK Liberals West Australia, what will you do about it?

 “If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute.” – Thomas Paine

Liberals WA has a posting (below) up on their Facebook page today complaining of the way in which GST revenue from that state is distributed across the nation.  The reality is that of all revenue raised by this tax in the state, 38c (soon to go down to11c) in the dollar goes back there.  The rest goes to other states. 

Being Liberals, they tend to have a short attention span and have not gone on to check just how badly WA is treated by the tax system as a whole.  The same principle applies across the entire system; it is not just GST, but income, company and every other tax that rips them off.  The figure of $3.6 billion is only a small part of it; the total figure is around $20 billion from all taxes.

This issue was first raised by Liberal Democrat senator elect, David Leyonhjelm in the lead up to the West Australian senate election #2.

This welfare system involves two states – Western Australia and New South Wales – transferring funds to the other states and territories. WA transfers $20 billion a year, equivalent to more than $8,000 a year from each West Australian, while NSW transfers more than $2 billion a year, over $300 per person. 

Out of this system Tasmania and the Northern Territory draw nearly $4 billion a year each. That means each Tasmanian, rich or poor, gets nearly $8,000 per year from the people of WA and NSW while Northern Territorians get more than $16,000. 

The state-to-state welfare system is complicated and to unravel it is no easy task. Some think it simply involves the GST, but that only plays a small part. Of the $8,000 a year that each West Australian transfers to the east, only $600 is a result of paying GST to Canberra.

During the senate rerun, Clive Palmer threw huge resources at the issue and made significant inroads as a result.  We all remember those Youtube videos of Canberra snatching bread from hungry babes.  Clive, of course didn’t actually present a policy on the issue and tell the people what he was going to do about it; there was no need.  The implication that he disapproved of it was enough.

In view of this, it’s no wonder the WA Liberals have now found sufficient voice to bitch about it.

The problem they have with this, is that their version of ‘the world’s greatest treasurer’, Joe Hockey ridiculed Palmer for raising the issue and challenged him to say just what he would do about it, given his senators from Tasmania and Queensland.

So dudes, what are you going to do about it given your federal party believe that you have a duty to support the green obsessions of the Apple Isle?

The truth is that out of all the critics of the system, only the Liberal Democrats have a policy against tax transfers: 

The LDP will seek to: 

•                 Limit the federal government to defence, immigration, basic public services (eg passport services, regulation of hazardous materials, air and sea transport regulation), and assistance to the least well off. 

•                Stop all transfers from the federal government to other levels of government, including grants from the pool of GST revenues.

Abbott threatens election; goose calls for Christmas in July

Cartoon: By Bill Leak 

"Elections are when people find out what politicians stand for and politicians find out what people will fall for."– Alfred E Neuman

The Abbott budget appears to be in trouble with a reasonable likelihood that it could be blocked in the senate.  The last time this happened was in 1975, resulting in the dismissal of the Whitlam government.

The contentious nature of the move, and the resultant furor has resulted in a reluctance to repeat the exercise.  Some on the left claim an injustice owing to the oppositions aim to force an election, however the government of the day was mired in scandal, corruption and incompetence.  The one that replaced it was not much better.

In an effort to intimidate the senators from minor parties, Abbott has now threatened to go to another election, which would have to be a double dissolution.

… Laying out a political strategy towards the next election, the Prime Minister said he would not accept attempts to “completely frustrate” the government. 

Parliament will start to debate key budget bills within days as the Coalition prepares to force votes as quickly as possible, so that changes such as the new deficit tax can take effect on July 1. 

Plans for a $7 fee on visits to the doctor appear set for defeat in the upper house, undermining a wider plan to make $10.5 billion in healthcare savings over the next four years and channel the money into a medical research fund. 

Labor frontbenchers met last night to consider supporting the 2 per cent extra tax on incomes of more than $180,000 when Bill Shorten delivers his budget reply speech to federal parliament ­tonight. … 

… While open to “horse-trading” on details, Mr Abbott indicated he would insist on the passage of the overall legislation. 

“We’re happy to talk respectfully to the independents and the minor parties in the Senate, and obviously a certain amount of horse-trading is something that you just accept is part of the business,” he said early yesterday. 

“What we won’t accept, though, is an attempt to completely frustrate the business of government. I don’t believe that they will try to completely frustrate the business of government because, if there was an election again, hardly any of them would win their seats.” …

Abbott has blown most of the political capital he was handed in the election when voters saw the back of the Labor Greens government with a sense of relief.  After two terms of wild spending and mounting deficits, voters understood the need for fiscal restraint.

The problem they have now though, is that during the election campaign, in an effort to make himself a small target, Abbott comprehensively ruled out most of the things he has now proposed in the budget.  This makes a clear case that voters were deceived.

The threat to minor parties is real.  A committee of major party MPs has analyzed the voting in the 2013 election and unsurprisingly come up with a list of recommendations for a new system for senate elections designed to prevent minor parties being elected.

On the other hand, in a double dissolution the number of votes required to elect a senator is halved owing to the need to elect twelve per state, rather than the normal six.  The 25-27% of disillusioned voters is likely to stay constant and they will still be voting for someone other than the Liberal/Labor/Green triumvirate. 

This should be good for the Liberal Democrats who only have to hold their vote in NSW for David Leyonhjelm to be reelected outright with a nice base for a second senator.  If the 2013 vote holds for us, we could pick up a senator in most states.

With the possibility of a number of the single issue parties falling out, the LDP policies virtually make it inevitable that their memberships will come over to us.  These include, the Sex Party, Shooters, Wiki, Fishing & lifestyle, HEMP, and some of the saner members of PUP.

Our message to Tony; bring it on dickhead.

Antony Green seeing libertarians everywhere

Like Frank N. Furter of Rocky Horror fame, Antony Green, the ABCs election guru, is not backward in his desire to show us his favorite obsession.  In Frank’s case, it was making a man with blond hair and a tan, in Antony’s it is minor parties.

The rise of minor parties has driven him to distraction to the point where he rails against them at every opportunity, real or contrived.  One of his serious bugbears is the success that some of them have had since they started sticking together and preferencing each other ahead of the majors in elections.

The thing that really gets right up his nose though, especially since the 2013 election of LDP senator elect, David Leyonhjelm is libertarians in general and the LDP in particular.  During the cold war the Liberal and National Parties saw reds under the beds, Antony is seeing libertarians every where, tens of thousands of them, running rampant across the entire political landscape that he knew and loved, like a plague of rabbits:

It appears there is a growth industry in libertarian parties. One of the consequences of the Senate's registered ticket vote system is that it is possible for multiple parties to occupy the same area of the political spectrum without hurting their chances of election. 

In every other electoral system in the world, the current batch of libertarian political parties would be cutting their own political throats by running against each other, but ticket voting allows multiple parties to swap preferences with impunity, having first expanded their pool of first preference votes by standing multiple parties. 

At the 2013 election, the Liberal Democrats, as well as the advantage of a name that could be confused with the Liberal Party, and the advantage of the first column on the NSW ballot paper, also boosted their chances with other parties feeding them preferences. …

What bastards!  Can you imagine the Libs, Labor, Greens, or Nationals being so unprincipled as to attempt to maximize their vote?

Not likely; they would be too couth and cultured to do such a thing other of course, than granting themselves an unlimited pit of taxpayer dollars via the electoral funding scheme that hands them funds in the tens of millions.  In addition to this, they have a mutual grooming relationship with big business, (You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours) that brings even more in via corporate sponsorship.

Antony is looking at single-issue parties and assuming that those who are based on wanting their cause liberalised are libertarian.  This is a common error, also made by ‘glass half full’ libertarians who see any party or person holding a policy that they agree with as a sign of them being libertarian.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  Most of the single issue parties tend to be quite authoritarian but feel that the government has gone too far in relation to their particular cause. Rather than questioning whether the government has a place in it at all, or in any of the other causes SIPs represent, they accept unlimited government authority as a fact of life and only want changes to what their own problem is.

Some treat the concerns of other SIPs with the same contempt and disdain that ruling classes have traditionally held for their downtrodden minorities in the past.  Few of them did the LDP any favors and most of them preferenced as part of the minor party coalition which the LDP were not part of, and away from us in strange and counter productive ways:

Shooters and Fishers; at elimination their votes went to HEMP, which has no policy on guns. Considering their leftist inclinations, they are probably opposed.  When Hemp was eliminated, SFP preferences played a large part in electing PUP which is definitely anti- firearms.

Sex ; their votes went to ALP.  Labor has no history of support for Eros Foundation (neither do we, but we have libertarian outlook which addresses most of their concerns)

Voluntary Euthanasia; went to HEMP which has no policy on VE.  We support it directly.

Wikileaks; votes went to HEMP after the Greens which has no policy on government transparency.  Assange claims to be a libertarian.  

Motoring Enthusiasts; votes went to Shooters then PUP.  Libertarian, ORP have directly supportive policys.

Fishing and Lifestyle; votes went to the Liberals, then to the Greens ahead of the LDP.

If Green were to take his job seriously, he would do a bit of basic research and discover what the term ’libertarian’ means, and do a proper analysis of the nature of the parties that he assumes fall into that category. After that he would issue an apology for his stuff-up.

Sporting Shooters deceives its members AGAIN

Image: SSAA response to Liberal Democrat gun policies

The Sporting Shooters Association of Australia has a habit in federal elections of sending out questionnaires to candidates asking them to respond to a number of policy positions that are in the interests of members.  They also have a habit of only publishing a selective list, consisting of the Shooters and Fishers Party, and a few others with worse policies.

The Liberal Democratic Party has responded in the 2007, 2010, 2013, and again in tomorrow’s Western Australian half senate election re-run.  This will make the fourth time that SSAA has refused to publish the LDP response: 

Liberal Democratic Party policies – recreational firearm use

 What is your party’s policy on recreational sports shooting? 

The Liberal Democrats fully support the responsible use of firearms in all sporting contexts as well as for self-defence, collecting, agricultural purposes, and any other non-coercive use.   

We have a high proportion of firearm owners among our members owing to our firearm-friendly policies. These are found at: http://www.ldp.org.au/index.php/policies/1152-firearms 

Recreational sports shooting is a legitimate, healthy pursuit enjoyed by large numbers of men and women.  It is safe, can be undertaken by people with disabilities, and offers all of the benefits of other sports including family participation and social opportunities. 

What is your party’s policy on recreational hunting? 

Our attitude towards recreational hunting is the same as toward sports shooting. It is a legitimate and safe activity. 

Hunting for food is also a natural activity, older than civilization itself. 

What is your party’s policy on utilising trained and competent hunters to cull introduced species on public lands? 

We fully support the use of volunteer hunters to cull introduced species on public lands. Volunteers are essential to the control of bushfires and in responding to natural disasters, and they could also become integral to feral animal control. 

Do you have any policies that assist or support the sport of shooting and the recreation of hunting? 

Liberal Democrat policies are friendly to all forms of shooting related sports, including large and small bore, rifles, and pistols, single shot and semi-automatic, as well as paintball and airsoft.  

Our elected representatives will oppose any attempt at further restricting the rights of law-abiding and responsible shooters and will support any measure to roll back existing restrictions. That includes abandoning the National Firearms Agreement. 

The Liberal Democrats are also opposed to the absurd laws that make it illegal to own firearms for self-defense, or even non-lethal items such as mace and pepper spray. 

The police simply cannot be there to protect us every time there is a threat, and few of us would like to live in the sort of society where they can.

After the 2013 federal election in which New South Wales elected David Leyonhjelm of the Liberal Democrats to the senate, the media was obsessed with his firearms friendly attitude.  David proved himself to be the most articulate advocate for firearms owners in the country.

As result, we were inundated with calls from angry shooters who were unable to understand why they were not informed of our position and policies.  Many of them are now members of our party.

It is now quite apparent that SSAA is little more than a shill for the SFP and are not interested in providing its membership with any genuine information on alternatives to that party.  Worse still, the SFP has in previous elections habitually preferenced the Liberals ahead of us, despite that party being responsible for the 1996 gun confiscation.

Regardless of who wins tomorrow, shooters will need the support of our senator or senators when firearms related matters come up.  The hostility of the SSAA towards our party is going to make it extremely difficult to work with their representatives.

Fortunately, there are other organisations such as the Shooters Union who appear to be more willing to listen to us.