By James Vassilopoulos
The Unity — Say No to Hanson party is barely 10 weeks old yet already it has 3000 members. It is standing 74 candidates in Victoria, NSW, Queensland and WA.
In three states, its Senate tickets have a direct preference swap with the ALP. This shovels anti-racism votes gained from its name directly to Labor.
Unity's main policies are support for multiculturalism, reconciliation and native title. It says it "represents all Australians", is neither "left nor a right" and supports "tolerant, middle-ground Australian values".
Unity calls for the repeal of native title legislation. Its calls for an increase in immigration to about 95,000 people a year.
Unity does not oppose a GST, calling instead for "a tax convention" to decide on tax reform. It opposes up-front fees for higher education, but does not oppose the Higher Education Contribution Scheme. Rather, it advocates making HECS "more equitable".
Tatiana Haralambous, the Unity candidate for the Sydney seat of Kingsford-Smith, told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly that Unity had approached the ALP, the Democrats and the Greens for preferences. Unity allocated preferences on the basis of which parties' policies were closest to its own.
Unity did not give the Australian Democrats its Senate preferences because of the Democrats' "zero net immigration" policy. The Greens missed out because, Haralambous said, their immigration policy was in the process of changing and was unclear. So Unity decided to give its preferences to the ALP.
Even before the recent change in the Greens' immigration policy to support immigration, the Greens still had far stronger anti-racism policies than the ALP. When in government, Labor cut the immigration intake by thousands.
The Greens rejected Howard's 10-point plan to extinguish native title, taking the strongest pro-native title stand of all the parliamentary parties. In contrast, Labor supported eight of Howard's 10 points.
In the light of this, it seems odd that the Greens were not placed before the ALP in Unity's preferences.
The Unity party did not even consider swapping preferences with other left and progressive parties like the Nuclear Disarmament Party, Democratic Socialists or No Aircraft Noise because it "did not have the time to look" into these group's policies, Haralambous said.
Unity put the racist Coalition government parties before the Democratic Socialists. Together with the radical youth group Resistance, the Democratic Socialists have campaigned strongly against racism and helped organise the recent anti-Hanson secondary student walkouts.
In Queensland, Unity has put the far-right Christian Democratic Party (Fred Nile Group) before the Democratic Socialists. Haralambous said this was because Unity "was not aware" of the Democratic Socialists and that Fred Nile's party had approached them for preferences.
In WA, Unity has put the far-right group Abolish Child Support before the Democratic Socialists.