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The Australia First Party (AFP) was a minor political party in Australia. The party's policies were nationalist and anti-immigration/multiculturalism. [1] The AFP is not a registered political party with the Australian Electoral Commission, has never had parliamentary representation and has not contested a federal election since 1998.
HistoryThe 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.[citation needed] Many of the AFP's members came from the disbanded Australian Conservative Party[citation needed]. 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, a mildly successful far-right political party 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] In August 2006 Peter Watson (Chairman of the Warwick branch) was expelled from the Party. In April 2007 Darrin Hodges, chairman of the Sutherland Shire branch, was expelled from Australia First. Hodges went on to co-found the Australian Protectionist Party. In August 2007 Jim Saleam (and several other prominent organisers) was expelled from Australia First. Jim Saleam then took control of the NSW membership and incorporated "Australia First Party (NSW)" and claims to have taken control of the former AFP Newcastle and Toowoomba branches, thus splitting the party into two separate groups. One controlled by Jim Saleam and the other by Diane Teasdale. [1] PoliciesAccording to their Murray Branch/National Office website, the Australia First Party had eight core policies:
Electoral performanceAt 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 Preece was elected as Councillor for the St John's Wood Ward of the City of Prospect.[5][6] Preece is the first AFP representative since Campbell to be elected into any level of Government. Most recently, AFP representative John Moffat contested the Electorate of Cronulla in Sydney during the 2007 New South Wales elections as an independent and received 968 votes, representing 2.8% of valid votes cast.[2] In September 2008, the Party ran a couple of candidates in councils around New South Wales [3]. In the Sutherland Shire, the Party candidates got a total of 867 votes. In Blacktown, it got 1,229 [4]. Activities
Racism allegationsIn 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. Box alleged an Australia First member told him that "we leaned out of the window and shouted 'Sieg heil! Sieg heil!" at a rabbi.[12] Australia First also endorsed candidate John Moffat, who was criticised by B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Michael Lipshutz, Cronulla Liberal MP Malcolm Kerr and Lebanese Muslim Association spokesman Jihad Dib for "inciting racial hatred", risking undermining the local area's reputation with “ridiculous” claims about the Lebanese community, and unhelpful "divisive ideologies" respectively.[13] See alsoReferences
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