Companions and Pets Party
https://companionsandpetsparty.com.au/

* Another new party.

* They sound like another animal rights party, but actually they're more of
  an anti-animal-rights party in that they seem simply to oppose the policies
  of the Animal Justice Party and simialar. To a lare extent their policy is
  to keep treatment of animals the same as it is, and I'm entirely fine with
  that. Only I feel like that's already represented just as well by my not
  voting for the Animal Justice Party, without much need for an alternative
  animal party.

* Besides domestic pets, they're quite vocal about protecting horse and
  greyhound racing, which probably is under more threat than most of their
  other concerns.

* Their other policies start off with lots of health-related stuff, clearly
  taking cues from the major parties. There isn't much in the way of real
  ideas there though, they basically just talk about pumping in more money.

* Their energy policy puts a lot of weight on home batteries as part of the
  transition to renewables. They want to "ensure that every household in
  Australia has access to solar power, backed up with battery storage". My
  problem with this is the waste of needing to replace those batteries every
  5-10 years, but it might be a practical option for lack of alternatives,

* They're big on supporting farmers. Their ideas about bringing water down
  from the north of the country for more widespread agricultural use is harly
  a new idea though, and one that's hardly gone smoothly so far. Pipe dreams,
  probably quite litterally.

* They want to speed up court cases with "instant sentences" for some cases
  where offenders plead guilty. Sounds a little vague, but I don't know enough
  about the legal system to comment intelligently on that.



They're a bit of a nothing party. They could be described as animal rights
conservatives, but beyond other minor parties I don't feel like many of the
conventions that they want to preserve are under threat. It's possible that
I'm unaware of animal rights groups gaining power though because I tend to
completely ignore anything to to with them. Anyway there's nothing I object to
significantly about their policies, so they'll certainly go a lot higher than
the Animal Justice Party in my preferences.

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