Queensland state election 2024: Libertarian Party selects Cathy Osbourne as candidate in Burleigh
A political party that wants to remove prohibitions on semiautomatic firearms but is opposed to so-called ‘smart cities’ is running its only Queensland state election candidate here.
Opinion
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So we’re not quite at “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats”, but there are some interesting new flavours being added to our political menu.
Watching last week’s debate between US Democratic Vice President and presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican nominee Donald Trump, it certainly made this dual-citizen happy that Australia is her country of residence.
Sure, Harris absolutely wiped the floor with Trump, leaving nothing but an orange smear behind, but, somehow, the race is still close … even after he lied and said immigrants were eating pets.
As one meme so aptly summarised it: 50.1 per cent of Americans are in favour of everyone getting a puppy, while 49.9 per cent prefer to have diarrhoea forever. Orange diarrhoea.
That really is just how stark the situation is.
People keep talking about ‘policies’ and the ‘economy’ and yes, sure, these are important matters in any democracy … but the question here is really about whether voters actually still support a democracy.
Because that sure isn’t what Mr Trump, who has promised to govern as a dictator on ‘day one’ and has refused to abide by the norm of a peaceful transition of power, is offering. But anyway, back to Australia.
While our democracy is safe from threat, God bless compulsory voting, there are some strange movements along our fringes.
To be completely honest, whether Labor or the LNP wins the state election in October, I have absolute faith that Queensland will continue powering under either party.
And while we have a multitude of minor parties already in the mix – from the Greens to One Nation, the Katter Australian Party, Legalise Cannabis Australia and the Family First Party – we now have a new entry.
And the only candidate they’re running in the state election is for a Gold Coast electorate.
After multiple runs for the Gold Coast City Council, Cathy Osborne is now taking a tilt at the seat of Burleigh, running as a member of the Libertarian Party of Queensland, which is also running two Senate candidates.
The veteran political candidate, although, she stresses, not a politician, decided to contest the seat after she said she received a call from former Queensland Premier Campbell Newman, who ditched the Libs for the Libertarians.
Mrs Osborne said she decided against running as an independent both to gain the help of a team, and because she said she agreed with the majority of the Libertarians’ policies and views.
As for Burleigh itself, she said she was concerned with four issues: crime, the light rail, housing and cost of living pressures.
Now, Mrs Osborne certainly has the credentials as a community activist – she helped fight against flight diversions caused by use of the instrument landing system at the airport – and in her campaigns for local government she’s garnered sizeable support.
But when it comes to the Libertarian Party in general, well, it gives me pause.
And maybe that’s just the American in me. Because there has existed a party by the same name in the US for decades, and over the years it has veered further and further into the far right of politics.
While the Australian version claims to be neither left nor right but all about minimising government intervention in people’s lives, that is the same playbook from which American right-Libertarianism reads.
And hey, that may be exactly what you’re looking for. In which case, great. It is a free country.
But for me, personally, I’m not a huge fan of the party’s support for gun ownership – again, the American experience soured me.
The Libertarian website states it wants ‘no prohibitions or special limits on semiautomatic firearms’.
“Ownership of firearms is also the only practical means by which the people can retain any semblance of ensuring that governments remain their servants and not vice versa.”
Meanwhile, Australian National University politics lecturer Associate Prof Mark Chou told the Guardian that the Libertarian party – formerly known as the Liberal Democrats – were the “most significant fringe group”, with policies looking to legalise all drugs, as well as waging war against digital IDs and Smart Cities.
Libertarians claim Smart Cities, a broad planning concept linked to technological advancements, is about surveilling people and monitoring how much carbon they emit. Even John Ruddick, NSW’s sole Libertarian MP, conceded this “sounds crazy”.
However, just this weekend the Libertarian Party of NSW surged at the local elections, so it will be interesting to see just how this all plays out in Queensland come October.
No matter the result, I’m still confident Queensland will be just fine.
Which is more than I can say about the US election in November.
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