Greens pill-testing

From the Crikey grapevine, it’s the latest tips and rumours…

And it was all yellow (vests). The harder-right fringes in Australia often import their talking points wholesale from the US — from freedom of speech on campus to white genocide in South Africa — so you have to give the Australian Liberty Alliance some credit for at least looking elsewhere for inspiration. The Australian Electoral Commission has received a request from the party — a hard-right micro-party organised around anti-Islam rhetoric and closely associated with Dutch hard-right politician Geert Wilders —  to rename themselves “Yellow Vests Australia”.

The French protest movement (now entering its 16th week) began as a reaction to a fuel tax and — as it has no formal structure, recognised leader or political party affiliation — has grown into a magnet for broader disaffection and resentments. The name has spread overseas, and attached itself to elements of anti-Semitism and Islamaphobia in the process. 

We’re sure the allusion to a French protest movement will really cut through with the battlers and defenders of Western civilisation the ALA are trying to appeal to.

Sniff test. While the Berejiklian government is copping flak for its stubborn refusal to budge on pill-testing, the NSW Greens have gone to the other extreme, pushing for MDMA to be legalised and sold over the counter. Unsurprisingly, it’s this policy which the party is using to target young voters disgruntled at the government’s war on festivals, live music and fun.

This Saturday, the NSW Young Greens will host a start of semester party along with Sniff Off, an anti-sniffer dog group run by MLC David Shoebridge. The Facebook event proudly displays a banner which reads “legalise MDMA now”, and the first 20 people through the door at the Annandale Hotel in Sydney’s Inner West will be lucky enough to receive free pill-testing kit. Who said Sydney’s nightlife was dead?

Stringer up! At times, a tip requires no commentary at all. And so it is with Australian Conservatives Senate candidate for Tasmania, Justin Leigh Stringer. His Twitter feed is mostly what you’d expect — sharing his colleagues preoccupation with five-year-olds being indoctrinated into gender fluidity or whatever, but it’s the pictures he chooses to accompany this hard-right agitprop that really catch the eye.

Rocking a look we can only describe as “James Bond if James Bond were a real estate agent”, he walks us through various poses —  thoughtfully pondering the unfair taxes on cars from his awesome convertible, or pointing to bathroom signs with a look of victory. 

The whole thing reaches a surreal peak when he comments on stats showing that young people have come to the misapprehension that socialism works. This is, for reasons we can only guess at, accompanied by a picture of Stringer, fully suited and aviator-ed, on a scooter, riding past a playground. 

It’s going to be a good election year.

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