Australian Citizens Party

Last updated

Australian Citizens Party
AbbreviationACP, Citizens Party
National LeaderCraig Isherwood
National ChairmanAnn Lawler
Founder
  • Craig Isherwood
  • Maurice Hetherington
Founded1988;36 years ago (1988) [1]
Headquarters Coburg, Victoria, Australia
Newspaper The New Citizen
Ideology
Political position Syncretic [2] [3]
International affiliation LaRouche movement
Colours  Green-Brown
House of Representatives
0 / 151
Senate
0 / 76
Website
citizensparty.org.au

The Australian Citizens Party (ACP), formerly the Citizens Electoral Council of Australia (CEC), is a minor [4] [5] [6] political party in Australia affiliated with the international LaRouche Movement which was led by American political activist and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche.

Contents

The party has pushed conspiracy theories, including that international action on climate change and indigenous land rights are part of a conscious fraud masterminded by Prince Philip, as part of the British Royal Family’s scheme to depopulate the planet. [7] [8] It ‘believes Prince Philip is trying to break up nation-states through the World Wide Fund for Nature and is involved in a "racist plot to splinter Australia"’. [9]

Founded in 1988, the party has been led by Craig Isherwood ever since. [10]

History

The original CEC was established in 1988 by residents of the Kingaroy region of Queensland.[ citation needed ] CEC candidate Trevor Perrett won the 1988 Barambah state by-election in Queensland, after former Queensland Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen resigned from State Parliament in 1987. However, Perrett switched to the National Party in December 1988. [11] Members of the Australian League of Rights, an extreme right-wing group led by Eric Butler, tried unsuccessfully to take over the new party. [12] Its purpose was to lobby for binding voter-initiated referendums. [13] [14]

By 1989, the CEC leadership was under the influence of the Lyndon LaRouche movement. [12] By 1992, the CEC identified itself as the Australian branch of the broad international LaRouche movement. National Secretary Craig Isherwood moved the headquarters from rural Queensland to a Melbourne suburb, with direct communications links to LaRouche's US headquarters established. [13]

In 1996, then-Liberal Party MP Ken Aldred, was disendorsed by the Liberal Party after using parliamentary privilege to make allegations of involvement in espionage and drug trafficking against a prominent Jewish lawyer and a senior foreign affairs official, using documents that were later found to be forged, supplied to him by the CEC. [15] [12] [16]

In 2004, the CEC received the largest contribution of any political party, $862,000 from a central Queensland cattle farmer and former CEC candidate named Ray Gillham. [17] [18] The party collected $2.3 million in donations in 2020-21. [19] The party’s leader is National Secretary and National Treasurer Craig Isherwood of Melbourne, who has been an election candidate for the party numerous times.

Platform

The ACP has lobbied for "the establishment of a National Bank and State Banks to provide loans at 2% or less to agriculture (family farms), industry and for infrastructure development", launching a petition in 2002 to drive support with a full page advertisement in The Australian newspaper. [20] In early 2008 the CEC started campaigning for a "Bank Homeowners Protection Bill of 2008", calling for legislation in the spirit of the Australian moratorium laws enacted in the 1920s and 1930s. [21]

The party follows the LaRouche line of climate change denial towards the theory of anthropogenic global warming, referring to fears of global warming as "Hitler-Nazi race science". [22] The party espouses the claim that the Port Arthur massacre, in which Martin Bryant murdered 35 people and injured 37 others, was instigated by mental health institute the Tavistock Institute on the orders of the royal family, [23] and that the Australian Liberal Party was founded by pro-Hitler fascists. [24]

The CEC's policies have included introducing a national Glass-Steagall Act to "break up the banks", establishing a national bank, introducing a moratorium on home & farm foreclosures, constructing high speed rail and the Bradfield Scheme, joining China's Belt and Road Initiative, shutting down Pine Gap and opposing the existence of climate change among others. [25]

Criticism

The Anti-Defamation Commission of the Australian branch of B'nai B'rith (an international Jewish organisation) has published a Briefing Paper with details of the CEC's alleged antisemitic, anti-gay, anti-Aboriginal and racist underpinnings. The document cites CEC publications and quotes former CEC members. [12] The CEC in turn published a response to the ADC's stating it was an antiracist organisation. [26]

Former members of the CEC and families of current members have accused the group of "brainwashing" members and engaging in campaigns involving "dirty tricks". [27] For example, former CEC staffer Donald Veitch has claimed that new recruits undergo "deprogramming sessions" and that recruits are probed for sexual peccadilloes. Veitch has stated: "The mind control operations commenced by Lyndon LaRouche in the USA in the mid-1970s are still being practised today within his movement in Australia". [28]

The Australian Citizens Party engages in climate change denial. [29]

Electoral results

CEC members demonstrate outside an election meeting organised by the Australian Jewish News in Melbourne, September 2004. Aaron Isherwood (second from right) was the CEC candidate in the seat of Melbourne Ports at the 2004 federal election. Cec2.jpg
CEC members demonstrate outside an election meeting organised by the Australian Jewish News in Melbourne, September 2004. Aaron Isherwood (second from right) was the CEC candidate in the seat of Melbourne Ports at the 2004 federal election.

Despite running in "almost every election of the past two decades", in no election has the CEC ever garnered more than 2% of the vote. [30]

At the 2007 federal election, the CEC's previous form continued. Its first preference votes in the lower house was 27,879 (0.22%), and 8,677 (0.07%) in the upper house, both results were 0.14% down from 2004. [31]

At the 2016 federal election, CEC fielded senate candidates in every state and the Northern Territory and seven candidates for seats in the House of Representatives. [32] Nationally, the party received 5,175 votes (0.04%) in the lower house and 9,850 votes (0.07%) in the upper house. [33]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lyndon LaRouche</span> American political activist (1922–2019)

Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche Jr. was an American political activist who founded the LaRouche movement and its main organization, the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC). He was a prominent conspiracy theorist and perennial presidential candidate. He began in far-left politics in the 1940s and later supported the Civil Rights movement, but in the 1970s he moved to the far-right. His movement is sometimes described as, or likened to, a cult. Convicted of fraud, he served five years in prison from 1989 to 1994.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Australia First Party</span> Political party in Australia

The Australia First Party (AFP), officially known as the Australia First Party (NSW) Incorporated, is an Australian nationalist political party founded in 1996 by Graeme Campbell, a former member of the Australian Labor Party. The policies of the party have been described as nationalist, anti-multicultural and economically protectionist, advocating for strict immigration controls, the prioritization of Australian citizens in employment, and the promotion of Australian culture and values. The party's logo includes the Southern Cross of the Eureka Flag.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Family First Party</span> Political party in Australia

The Family First Party was a conservative political party in Australia which existed from 2002 to 2017. It was founded in South Australia where it enjoyed its greatest electoral support. Since the demise of the Australian Conservatives into which it merged, it has been refounded in that state as the Family First Party (2021), where it contested the state election in 2022, but failed to win a seat.

Lyndon LaRouche's United States presidential campaigns were a controversial staple of American politics between 1976 and 2004. LaRouche ran for president on eight consecutive occasions, a record for any candidate, and tied Harold Stassen's record as a perennial candidate. LaRouche ran for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States seven times, beginning in 1980.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elections in Palestine</span> Elections in the Palestinian territories

Elections for the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) were held in Palestinian Autonomous areas from 1994 until their transition into the State of Palestine in 2013. Elections were scheduled to be held in 2009, but was postponed because of the Fatah–Hamas conflict. President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to stay on until the next election, but he is recognized as president only in the West Bank and not by Hamas in Gaza. The Palestinian National Authority has held several elections in the Palestinian territories, including elections for president, the legislature and local councils. The PNA has a multi-party system, with numerous parties. In this system, Fatah is the dominant party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lord Mayor of Brisbane</span> Head of the Brisbane City Council

The Lord Mayor of Brisbane is the chief executive of the City of Brisbane, the capital of the Australian state of Queensland, and the head of the Brisbane City Council. Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner of the Liberal National Party was sworn in on 8 April 2019, following the resignation of Graham Quirk.

This article provides details on candidates who stood at the 2007 Australian federal election.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Two-party-preferred vote</span> Result of election after distribution of preferences

In Australian politics, the two-party-preferred vote is the result of an election or opinion poll after preferences have been distributed to the highest two candidates, who in some cases can be independents. For the purposes of TPP, the Liberal/National Coalition is usually considered a single party, with Labor being the other major party. Typically the TPP is expressed as the percentages of votes attracted by each of the two major parties, e.g. "Coalition 50%, Labor 50%", where the values include both primary votes and preferences. The TPP is an indicator of how much swing has been attained/is required to change the result, taking into consideration preferences, which may have a significant effect on the result.

The Curtin Labor Alliance was a minor Australian political coalition that was formed between two minor right-wing groups, the Citizens Electoral Council (CEC) and the Western Australian Municipal Employees' Union, in 2001. The name sparked outrage from the Australian Labor Party both for confusing electors and invoking former Australian Labor Prime Minister John Curtin. The Alliance claimed that Curtin was a nationalist, and that they represented the views that he would have espoused if he was alive. The Alliance was accused by Labor politicians of racism and extremist views, which were denied by the leader of the CEC, Craig Isherwood. It fielded candidates at the 2001 federal election, but achieved only mediocre results. The party was deregistered in 2005 after not contesting the 2004 election.

Kenneth James Aldred was an Australian politician who represented the Liberal Party in the Australian House of Representatives between 1975 and 1980 and again from 1983 to 1996.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rob Mitchell (Victorian politician)</span> Australian politician

Robert George Mitchell is an Australian politician. He has been an Australian Labor Party member of the Australian House of Representatives since August 2010, representing the electorate of McEwen. He was a member of the Victorian Legislative Council from 2002 to 2006, and was Second Deputy Speaker of the Australian House of Representatives from 2013 to 2022.

Anton "Tony" Chaitkin is an author, historian, and a former political activist with the LaRouche movement. He served as History Editor for Executive Intelligence Review.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adrian Bennett</span> Australian politician (1933–2006)

Adrian Frank Bennett was an Australian politician. He was a member of the House of Representatives from 1969 to 1975, holding the Western Australian seat of Swan for the Australian Labor Party (ALP). In later life he was associated with the LaRouche movement and helped establish the Curtin Labor Alliance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LaRouche movement</span> Political movement promoting Lyndon LaRouche and his ideas

The LaRouche movement is a political and cultural network promoting the late Lyndon LaRouche and his ideas. It has included many organizations and companies around the world, which campaign, gather information and publish books and periodicals. LaRouche-aligned organizations include the National Caucus of Labor Committees, the Schiller Institute, the Worldwide LaRouche Youth Movement and, formerly, the U.S. Labor Party. The LaRouche movement has been called "cult-like" by The New York Times.

The 1988 Barambah state by-election was a by-election held on 16 April 1988 for the Queensland Legislative Assembly seat of Barambah, based in the town of Kingaroy. The by-election was triggered by the resignation of National MP and former Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Until the by-election, the seat had been considered the Nationals' safest seat in Queensland.

The Queensland Party was a political party based in Queensland, Australia. It was registered with the Electoral Commission of Queensland between August 2010 and March 2012. The Queensland Party was formed by Aidan McLindon, the Member for Beaudesert, after he resigned from the Liberal National Party in May, 2010.

Katter's Australian Party (KAP) is an agrarian populist political party in Australia that advocates for a synthesis of agrarian socialist economic policies and conservative social policies. It was founded by Bob Katter, an independent and former Nationals MP for the seat of Kennedy, with a registration application lodged to the Australian Electoral Commission in 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Australian Christians (political party)</span> Political party in Australia

The Australian Christians is a political party in Australia that is described as socially conservative and Christian-conservative. It was founded in 2011 and was registered by the Australian Electoral Commission on 15 December 2011. It is primarily active in Western Australia and contests both state and federal election, although it is yet to elect any representatives. The party aims to represent Christian values.

Far-right politics in Australia describes authoritarian ideologies, including fascism and White supremacy as they manifest in Australia.

References

  1. ↑ "Citizens Electoral Council of Australia's Submission to the Parliament of Victoria's Electoral Matters Committee" (PDF). parliament.vic.gov.au. Parliament of Victoria. 14 July 2008.
  2. ↑ "Fringe party making more than $2m from small donors" . Retrieved 5 June 2023.
  3. ↑ "Our Policies". Citizens Electoral Council. Archived from the original on 5 December 2019. Retrieved 5 December 2019.
  4. ↑ The LaRouche Cult: The Citizens Electoral Council (PDF) (PDF), B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission Inc., 2001
  5. ↑ "AJN | Latest Nicotine News". www.ajn.com.au. Archived from the original on 3 October 2007.
  6. ↑ "Fascist Australia". The Age . Melbourne. 24 August 2004. Archived from the original on 13 May 2011. Retrieved 15 July 2010.
  7. ↑ "Monckton's Melbourne meeting: A gathering of men in Richie Benaud blazers". 4 February 2010.
  8. ↑ Aboriginal "land rights": Prince Philip's racist plot to splinter Australia. Citizens Electoral Council of Australia. 1997.
  9. ↑ "Right-wing groups making their mark". 9 February 2001.
  10. ↑ "Laughing all the way to the postal bank: The LaRouchites in the 2022 Election". 17 May 2022.
  11. ↑ "2006 Queensland Election. Nanango Electorate Profile. Australian Broadcasting Corp". ABC. 7 September 2006. Archived from the original on 14 October 2008. Retrieved 15 July 2010.
  12. 1 2 3 4 The LaRouche Cult: The Citizens Electoral Council (PDF), B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission Inc., 2001
  13. 1 2 "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 August 2008. Retrieved 9 June 2008.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  14. ↑ Eric Butler; Jeremy Lee; Betty Luks; James Reed. "OnTarget Vol.31 – No.34". ALOR. Archived from the original on 16 September 2009. Retrieved 15 July 2010.
  15. ↑ Antisemitic claims in parliament (including HANSARD transcript):
  16. ↑ Archived 3 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  17. ↑ "Fed: Latham gone but the money flowed to ALP, AAP General News Wire. Sydney: 1 February 2005. pg. 1
  18. ↑ "Ex-defence chief shies from 'cult' petition" By Martin Daly The Age 16 June 2004
  19. ↑ "Election 2022: Minor parties running for the Victorian Senate".
  20. ↑ "Community leaders launch bid for new national bank". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 26 September 2002. Retrieved 15 July 2010.[ permanent dead link ]
  21. ↑ "Bank Homeowners Protection Bill in the news". Cooberpedyregionaltimes.wordpress.com. 9 October 2008. Archived from the original on 18 July 2011. Retrieved 15 July 2010.
  22. ↑ Sterling, Bruce. "Australian coal junketeers blow the genocide whistle". Wired. Archived from the original on 3 August 2020. Retrieved 21 January 2020.
  23. ↑ Sweetman, Terry (8 June 2001). "Dark side of the loons". Courier Mail.
  24. ↑ Green, Jonathan (20 May 2004). "Workers of the world, take fright". The Age. Melbourne. Archived from the original on 5 November 2012. Retrieved 24 September 2008.
  25. ↑ "Our Policies". Citizens Electoral Council. Archived from the original on 5 December 2019. Retrieved 5 December 2019.
  26. ↑ "LaRouche's Record on Fighting Racism". Citizens Electoral Council of Australia. Archived from the original on 13 July 2007. Retrieved 15 September 2010.
  27. ↑ Families fight back, Martin Daly, The Age, 30 January 1996; Dark side of the loons, Terry Sweetman, Courier Mail, 8 June 2001; Parents say candidate brainwashed, Adam Cooper, Australian Associated Press, 19 June 2001; and Jana Wendt (3 October 2004). "On the fringe". nineMSN. Archived from the original on 6 July 2011. Retrieved 12 November 2010.
  28. ↑ Veitch, Don, Beyond Common Sense – Psycho-Politics in Australia, 1996
  29. ↑ "Climate Change | Australian Citizens Party".
  30. ↑ "Sex, socialism and shooting lead the charge in microparty race". Sydney Morning Heralddate=20 August 2010. 20 August 2010. Archived from the original on 8 November 2012. Retrieved 20 February 2020.
  31. ↑ "First Preferences by Party". Results.aec.gov.au. Archived from the original on 23 July 2010. Retrieved 15 July 2010.
  32. ↑ "Candidates for the 2016 federal election". Australian Electoral Commission. 11 June 2016. Archived from the original on 13 June 2016. Retrieved 11 June 2016.
  33. ↑ First Preferences by Party – National Archived 19 September 2016 at the Wayback Machine , AEC
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.