Summary
| Website: | https://www.shootersfishersandfarmers.org.au/ |
| Facebook: | https://www.facebook.com/SFFparty/ |
| Previous Names: | Shooters Party Shooters and Fishers Party |
| Slogans: |
It’s Your Powerful Voice |
| Themes: | Loosening gun restrictions, recreational access to national parks, promotion of shooting, hunting, fishing and four wheel driving. Conservative. Right wing economic policies. Recent headlines suggest a stronger emphasis on the ‘Farming’ part of their name. Not happy with the Nationals. |
| Electorate: |
Upper House: NSW, QLD, SA, TAS, VIC, WA Lower House: Burt, Calare, Cowan, Forrest, Gippsland, Hasluck, Mallee, Pearce |
| Preferences: | OK, this is a bit ugly. The SFF favour Australian Better Families in every state in which they are running. Mmm, MRAs with guns, just what Australia needs. In Tasmania, this actually means that their how to vote cards aren’t valid, because the ABF candidate is an ungrouped independent, and you can’t vote both above and below the line, so that’s fun. One Nation is in the top three in every state, and the Australian Conservatives are also in the top six on every card. The Liberal Democrats appear three times, The Christian Democrats and the Australian Christians are in the top three in every state they are running in, Sustainable Australia appears twice, and there are guest appearances from the Small Business Party, the DLP, Katter, Rise Up Australia and the UAP.
Interestingly, the Liberals and Nationals appear in their top six only in WA, and the ALP is sixth on their ballot in SA. Either they are expecting a LOT of votes in the other states, or they are VERY confident about their preferences not exhausting. I don’t think this confidence is well-founded. |
| Previous reviews |
Policies & Commentary
I reviewed the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers back in November for the Victorian State Election. Not a lot has changed since then, except that the Christchurch massacre has made me feel even more strongly that we should be keeping our gun laws just as they are.
But let’s have a scan at the News section of their website over the last five months.
- The SFF are angry about ‘politicisation’ of the Christchurch attack. They want to make it clear that they support existing age restrictions on guns and do not want to bring semi-automatics into NSW. But they feel that the Liberals and Nationals are ‘funding, encouraging and fanning the flames of hatred and extremism whilst trying to scapegoat others.’
- The SFF want to save Greyhound racing.
- They have a 10 point plan for regional health, and they want regional Australia to get its fair share.
- They really hate the Nationals. This is not new. But there is an air of complete unsurprise at the discovery that the National Party was accidentally recruiting neo-Nazis. The SFF would, one gathers, expect as much. Ha, and they have an article calling on Gladys Berejiklian to renounce her association with ‘a dangerous, extremist minor party’. Which is the Nationals. I really thought that article was going to be about the Greens, so well done, SFF, you have pleasantly surprised me.
- They don’t have anything good to say about One Nation, either, incidentally.
- The SFF are very unhappy about $1 milk, which is destroying farmers’ livelihoods.
- Mark Latham is a lying liar who lies.
- They want to bring back paper applications for firearms, because apparently online ones are not accessible for people on farms where there is no NBN. You know, I’m generally in favour of anything that makes it harder to get guns, but yeah, that’s ridiculous.
- They are even more unhappy about dead fish in the Murray Darling. They blame the Nationals and the Federal government for this. Also, they are sick of people lying and saying that it was caused by drought, rather than water mismanagement.
- The SFF are angry about extreme animal rights groups who have been invading farms. This is war, and these groups are terrorists. (I have to say, I have some sympathy with them here – publishing names and addresses of farms and encouraging vigilante action is irresponsible and also counter-productive, because it tends to be the smaller, more ethical farms that are the most vulnerable to attack. It’s not a great way to win others to the cause.)
- They are unhappy about farmers not being able to use travelling stock reserves in times of drought.
Based on that set of new items, it looks to me as though the SFF are taking the ‘farmers’ part of their name pretty seriously these days, which is good. I still think that farmers versus the environment is a false, and ultimately destructive, opposition, but there are far worse parties in our political eco-system at present.
Eurovision Theme Song as determined by me, very objectively
I do not know of any Eurovision songs about fish, alas. Nor have I found any Eurovision songs featuring guns. Or greyhounds. Or hunting.
But the SFF are really very concerned about dairy farmers. Very concerned. Which is laudable.
Clearly, they deserve a nice wholesome Eurovision song about girls churning milk into butter in a not at all suggestive way.
Cream and butter tastes so good
We prepare for you delicious food…
Anecdotally the water issues are a huge drawcard for them. I fully expect them to pick up votes in currently National seats solely because Barnaby and the water buybacks have really pissed them off. After the NSW elections there were 4 callers in a row from formerly Nationals safe seats, all wanting to talk about water. (Raf Epstein wanted to talk about firearms, and 3/4 went “screw that! Water!!” while the other explained why our existing gun laws are frustrating and then went “BUT WATER!!”
Yep, I’m really hoping they respond to that by shifting direction a bit, since that seems to be what the voters care about.
I think that is happening – don’t get me wrong, they still care about shooting and fishing, but their base is much more concerned about water. There was a really good article in the Sunday Age on it.
And look, I think there really is a need for someone to fill the gap left by the Nationals. There are certainly worse choices.
https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/sold-down-the-river-20190426-p51hfb.html
I think that the demand for paper firearms application forms does have a fair basis. Certainly a lot of farmers out there don’t have an internet connection, not just due to the NBN not reaching them (they can probably get satellite internet), but simply because they don’t know how to use a computer (and are likely of the opinion that they don’t need to learn, probably justified given how much difficulty some might have in doing so).
I think it’s a good example of the sort of issue that matters in farming communities, but which the Nationals aren’t seen to pay much attention to. There are more in their policies, though this one doesn’t seem to have actually made it into one of their policy PDFs yet.
Yes, I agree – looking at my wording above, I see I was unclear, but I did, in fact, intend to say that it was ridiculous to require people in rural areas with poor (or no) internet connections to fill in an online form to get approval for something they require for their work.