Australia First Party
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The Australia First Party (AFP) is a minor political party in Australia. The party's policies are in general nationalist and protectionist. It is described some observers as a party of the extreme right, although the party itself denies this. The AFP is a registered political party with the Australian Electoral Commission, but it has no parliamentary representation and not contested a federal election since 1998. It is not clear if the party is still active.
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. But the AFP was overshadowed by the appearance in 1997 of Pauline Hanson's One Nation, a rival populist party led by a former Liberal MP, Pauline Hanson. Hanson monopolised media attention and prevented the AFP becoming a significant party.
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, 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.
Following Campbell's resignation, Diane Teasdale became the national president of the Australia First Party, but at the national level the party has been inactive since the 2001 election, which it did not contest.
In 2002, however, a new AFP branch was formed in Sydney. The party announced the formation of a new "nationalist youth oraganisation," the Patriotic Youth League. This body's website suggests that it is affliated 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 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, and it has not attracted media attention in recent years.
External links
- Sydney AFP Homepage (http://ausfirst.alphalink.com.au)
- National AFP Homepage (http://www.australiafirstparty.com)
- PYL Homepage (http://www.patrioticyouthleague.org/)