Australia First Party

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The Australia First Party (AFP) is a minor political party in Australia. The party's policies are generally nationalist and anti-immigration/multiculturalism [1] The AFP is not a registered political party with the Australian Electoral Commission, has no parliamentary representation and has not contested a federal election since 1998. The party is currently attempting to be re-registered.

History

The Australia First Party was founded in June 1996 by Graeme Campbell, who was an Australian Labor Party member of the Australian House of Representatives for the seat of Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, from 1980 until he was expelled from the party in November 1995. Campbell had become increasingly critical of the policies of the Labor government of Paul Keating, particularly in matters relating to economic deregulation, Aboriginal land rights and multiculturalism.

Campbell hoped to see the AFP became a serious political party, drawing on a current of populist opinion which rejected the policies of both the Labor Party and the opposition Liberal Party. The AFP however was overshadowed by the appearance in 1997 of Pauline Hanson's One Nation, a rival populist party led by an independent MP, Pauline Hanson.

Following Campbell's resignation in June, 2001, Diane Teasdale became the national president of the Australia First Party, but at the national level the party had not been very active 2001-2004 (it did not contest the 2001 election).

In 2002, a new AFP branch was formed in Sydney. The party announced the formation of a new "nationalist youth organisation," the Patriotic Youth League. This body's website suggests that it is affiliated to the British National Party, an extreme right wing group in the United Kingdom. The phraseology at the AFP website, such as "the politics of New World Order liberal-globalist-capitalism," also suggests that the party has been revived by people of a more systematically extreme-right persuasion than was the case under Campbell's leadership. The Secretary of the Sydney Branch is Dr. Jim Saleam, a stalwart of the Australian far right who was convicted of organising a shotgun attack on the home of a local representative of the African National Congress in the late 1980s [2]. Dr. Jim Saleam has maintained his innocence of the charge, claiming he was framed by politicised police, and his legal defence has been published on the internet [3].

Policies

According to their Murray Branch/National Office website, the Australia First Party has eight core policies:

• Ensure Australia Retains Full Independence.
• Rebuild Australian Manufacturing Industries.
• Control Foreign Ownership.
• Reduce and Limit Immigration.
• Abolish Multiculturalism
• Introduce Citizen's Initiated Referenda.
• Strengthen the Family
• Strive To Rebuild A United Australia.

Electoral Performance

At the October 1998 federal election, Campbell lost his seat, polling only 22 percent of the vote in a seat he had represented for 18 years. The AFP failed to win significant support elsewhere, being heavily outvoted by One Nation. In June 2001, Campbell left the AFP in order to stand (unsuccessfully) as a One Nation senate candidate in Western Australia.

The AFP did not contest the 2001 election.

The AFP website says that the party fielded candidates in the 2004 local council elections in Sydney, Newcastle and Coffs Harbour. But the real extent of the AFP's organisation and membership is not known.

In November 2005, AFP president Diane Teasdale stood in the elections for the Shepparton Council Office and received 1373 first preference votes, representing 4.37% of valid votes cast [4].

In November 2006 Adelaide AFP representative Bruce Peerce was elected as Councillor for the St John's Wood Ward of the City of Prospect. [5] Preece is the first AFP representative since Campbell to be elected into any level of Government.

Activities

• On October 8, 2005, up to fifteen AFP members (including Sydney AFP Secretary Jim Saleam) rallied outside Kirribilli House to protest against the suspension of Professor Andrew Fraser of Macquarie University.
• December 11 2005 the Sydney AFP branch, along with the PYL, distributed pamphlets, stickers and allegedly alcohol [6] at the Sydney beachside suburb of Cronulla where an estimated 5000 people had gathered to protest against [7]harassment by Lebanese gangs. SBS World News on December 13 2005 reported that Jim Saleam had organised around 150 members and sympathisers to attend the rally.
• Several AFP members returned to Cronulla the following month during the Australia Day festivities to further their campaign. [8]

• Australia First supporters handed out leafets at the rally in Melbourne on 28 June 2006 protesting against the Howard Government's industrial relations laws. The leaflets focussed almost entirely on the issue of "foreign workers" being brought into Australia and "undermining the wages of Australian workers." The leaflet gave post office box addresses in Croydon and Shepparton as contact points, and also gave two party websites, [9] and [10].

• 8th October, 2006 - Over a dozen members of the Sutherland Shire branch of the AFP rallied outside the office of Cook MP Bruce Baird to highlight their opposition to his liberal views on refugee and asylum seeker policy. The AFP described the rally as the start of a campaign to "reclaim Australia and defend people's rights". [11]

Allegations of Neo-Nazism

In 2006, The Australian newspaper carried a story on the group by Dan Box, who spent some time in the party without revealing that he was a reporter. The story claims that an Australia First member told him that "we leaned out of the window and shouted 'Sieg heil! Sieg heil!" at a rabbi [12]. Members of the associated Patriotic Youth League have claimed to be the Australian branch of the openly neo-Nazi American-based group Volksfront.[13]

See also

• Australia First Movement

External links

• Murray Branch/National Office AFP Homepage
• AFP Melbourne branch
• Patriotic Youth League - Queensland branch
• FightDemBack! - Critics of Australia First
• Aardvark - History of Australian nationalist organisations