OPINION by ROSS FITZGERALD

As this federal election campaign grinds boringly to an end, more and more citizens are becoming alienated from the major parties. Is it any wonder that ordinary punters regard both the federal coalition and the ALP as being both a double disillusion and doubly dissolute?

So don’t be surprised if, after July 2, one or two minor parties are elected to the Senate in a number of states. And this despite the hypocrisy of the Greens (once a minor party themselves) having teamed up with the Turnbull government and Nick Xenophon to make it harder for minor parties to be elected to the Upper House.

More and more voters are dismayed that the major parties have left it to minor parties, including the Australian Sex Party, to take up the running on important social issues, including same sex marriage and dying with dignity (i.e. voluntary assisted dying).

More and more voters are also supporting my stand on taxing all religious institutions that operate as businesses – such as Hillsong, the Church of Scientology and Sanitarium.

Keeping religious institutions accountable for their actions and ensuring that they pay tax like other companies is a key policy of the Australian Sex Party.
This is why the Sex Party has released as a campaign ad the powerfully satirical video – THE VATICAN CAN – which is particularly targeted at voters under 40.

The growing alienation, especially of the youth, from the major political party’s is also in part due to their gridlock, not just on same sex marriage and voluntary assisted dying but also on the important issue of homelessness.

The latter especially resonates with citizens living in Canberra and the ACT. This is especially so in a year when punters will have to decide how to vote in two elections , this current federal election and the ACT elections in October.

Remarkably, a few years ago the Australian Sex Party’s lead candidate for the Senate in the ACT, Steven Bailey, was himself a homeless person who knows what it feels like to sleep in a park and to be utterly anchorless in the nation’s capital.

According to ‘Homelessness Australia’, the ACT continues to boast the dubious honour of having the second highest rate of homelessness in the country , second only to the Northern Territory.

It’s certainly a national disgrace that a city as affluent as Canberra could have such a problem.

Because the Australian Sex Party achieved the fourth highest vote in the last federal Senate election, many citizens assume that the ACT is one of the most progressive jurisdictions in Australia.

But as the ACT is only entitled to two Senators (while the states are entitled to twelve) the current situation is that the two major parties have a stranglehold on the ACT. This will remain the case until and unless the progressive vote begins to outweigh the vote for Labor and the conservative coalition.

The issues of homelessness, voluntary euthanasia and same sex marriage are clearly matters of very serious concern for the ACT. Surely it’s time for citizens to be able to make their own judgment on all of the above?

While the major parties continue to obscufcate and stall on many important social, cultural and political issues, some minor parties, including the Australian Sex Party, are determined to give a voice to the progressive people of the nation’s capital.

In spite of there only being two ACT Senate seats up for grabs, it is my view that, in Saturday’s federal election, and then in the forthcoming Territory election later this year, it is likely that a significant number of voters might take the opportunity of abandoning the Old Party’s and vote instead for a truly progressive political force.

Professor Ross Fitzgerald AM is the Australian Sex Party’s lead Senate candidate in New South Wales. He is the author of 39 books, most recently GOING OUT BACKWARDS a sexual/political satire in which Ross’s alter ego Senator Professor Dr Grafton Everest holds the balance of power in Australia’s Upper House. Will parliamentary reality ape political satire on July 2?