It's not often that a minor party gains national attention so quickly. With no presence in the federal parliament, and one MP in a state chamber, the Family First Party (FFP) occupies print and media space far beyond what is normally associated with a party still in its infancy. But the focus is warranted. Clever preference deals negotiated with Labor in Tasmania and Victoria give FFP some hope in those states, and it even has a chance in NSW, where a plethora of minor and micro parties could deliver to the party that elusive sixth Senate position. Among minor parties, their expenditure on television advertising has no precedent and featured, during the campaign’s penultimate weekend, high profile Brisbane Lions footballer, Shaun Hart, urging a vote for FFP.

Despite all that, as the campaign draws to a close, it’s my view that voters keen to register a protest vote against the major parties - and that’s the main source of support for most minor parties - may well shy away from a party that appears to have a close association with the Assemblies of God and some rather shadowy financial backers. Where the money’s coming from, how they’re structured and select candidates, and what they would do in parliament, is the subject of this article.

Understandably, much of the media focus is on how Pentecostal adherents could form such a well-organised and, in light of the clever Senate preference deals, pragmatic party. But as the campaign enters its last week FFP officials and candidates are caught in a self-inflicted dilemma: they continue to reject any suggestion that FFP is based on the evangelical Assemblies of God churches, yet it’s likely those churches will provide many of the footsoldiers essential to the party’s campaign. Candidates have struggled over the last week to convince journalists and radio talk back hosts that church and party are totally separate entities. In some respects this shouldn’t matter because it’s not uncommon for parties to have links to societal groups. But we are an avowedly secular society and I’d argue voters are very wary of electing, to the national parliament, representatives of a party which, rightly or wrongly, is perceived to be based on Christian fundamentalist doctrine. Recognising this problem FFP has become very defensive and attacks journalists for making ‘shameful’ references to the party’s links with Assemblies of God.

Christian crusaders, such as Fred Nile, are occasionally elected to state parliaments, and during the 1950s and 1960s the Democratic Labor Party, a party constituted by Catholics, won Senate seats and advantaged the Liberals via its delivery of healthy preference allocations. But a party so demonstrably based on Assemblies of God congregations is beginning to flounder due to the intensity of media scrutiny one expects during a national election campaign. Keen to promote an image that they are simply a party for families, and nothing more, the message went awry when FFP leader, Andrea Mason, appeared less than forthright during an interview on 28 September with Sydney icon radio talkback host, John Laws. He asked about the background of FFP’s NSW candidates and found Mason unaware, or possibly, unwilling to elaborate. The influential host concluded with the observation, ‘The religious right have every right to get into politics - but not by deception’. There is every reason to expect that the majority of candidates and party officials are members of Assemblies of God congregations.

FFP is a conservative party with a rather nuanced view of the role of government. Its polices opposing same sex marriage, abortion, stem cell research and decriminalisation of marijuana are well known. Less understood is its view of government and economic policy, a problem stemming from the generality of its twenty-page policy document. In my correspondence with Andrea Mason it was interesting to discover the location of FFP’s view of government within the voguish European Union idea of ‘subsidiarity’. While subsidiarity has its genesis in Catholic social thought it is also part of the ‘third way’ lexicon which, of course, is favoured in many respects by the Labor leader, Mark Latham. In brief, subsidiarity argues for smaller government, as David Bosnich explains in relation to its advocacy within Catholic social thought:

“This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organisation. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralised entity should be It conflicts with the passion for centralisation and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.” (‘The Principle of Subsidiarity’, Religion and Society, Vol. 6. No. 4, 1996)

Family First states that ‘like most economists’ they’d ‘support a careful analytical watch on the size of government’. They desire greater devolution of power to local communities, particularly as this relates to protecting family welfare, and supporting networks of counselling for families faced with the stress of poverty, parental breakup and drug addiction. FFP supports a major review of the tax system, calls for raising the tax-free threshold to a level more able to reflect basic family living expenses and wants all policy before Cabinet assessed under the rubric of a ‘Family Impact Statement’.

Andrea Mason is the first Aborigine to lead a political party, and she told me FFP should seek an apology from the Commonwealth for the injustices and dispossession of indigenous peoples. She locates herself close to Noel Pearson’s position and, while this is not necessarily hostile to aspects of the Howard government’s approach, the impression is one of dissatisfaction with the Coalition parties on indigenous matters. While FFP’s policy package lacks specifics, I believe it is too simple to conclude they are merely a political clone of the Coalition parties. At least in the case of Mason, with her a background working in community housing and obvious concern for indigenous welfare issues, a different outlook from that of the Coalition parties is evident.

The question of how FFP determined its candidates and negotiated preferences is revealing. I’m informed that prospective candidates were vetted via scrutiny of their CVs and referees by the National Executive (more on this body in a moment). To determine preference allocations in the lower house all Coalition and Labor candidates were, apparently, sent a questionnaire aimed at soliciting their views on social and ethical questions - oddly, my request for a copy of the survey was declined, and no reason given. Labor candidates, it appears, refused to cooperate, possibly knowing the odds were stacked against them ‘passing’. The Coalition is favoured in all seats 109 seats in which FFP is fielding candidates. The reason for not supporting Labor candidates, even those with impeccable Christian credentials, is the Labor Party’s tradition of refusing its MPs the right to vote with their conscience - which fails to recognise that, in practice, the Coalition parties rarely offer this to their MPs. Nevertheless, their decision to preference the Coalition parties was as most pundits expected and the whole matter of the surveying of candidates appears to be a cover for decisions that had already been made. In many respects FFP would warm the soul of any Machiavellian. They shied away from preferencing the Liberal candidate for Brisbane due, one may reasonably assume, to her being a lesbian. But this did not deter FFP preferencing the Democrats’ homosexual Western Australian senator ahead of the Liberals. When it really matters, calculations of electoral advantage seem to hold sway over fundamentalist Biblical interpretation.

THE EMERGENCE of FFP in South Australia during the 2002 campaign and the election of Andrew Evans to the upper house caught all parties and observers by surprise. With plenty of money, Evans ran a well-organised campaign that included television advertisements and, most significantly, plenty of foot soldiers at the polling booths. He won some 35,000 primary votes (4 per cent) and, with preference allocations, took the final Legislative Council seat just ahead of the Greens. A retired Assemblies of God pastor, Evans explained to me he wanted to do more for the poor and for social justice. Unsure of the best course to take, he sought involvement with prominent local independent MP, Nick Xenophon, and his “No Pokies” upper house ticket. Xenophon staunchly defends his status as an independent and saw no reason to share his platform with Evans.

South Australia is FFP’s organisational base and, at this stage, the only branch with a ‘Board of Reference’. The board is multi-denominational, a point Evans and party chairman, Peter Harris, are keen to stress. But they are less willing to advertise the makeup of the National Executive, the body charged with determining candidates. Six of its seven members are current, or former pastors, or officials of the Assemblies of God. In a secular society this is, arguably, FFP’s Achilles heel, and journalists have honed in on the question of separation between church and party. As ABC religious affairs announcer, Toni Hassan, observed in an interview with Andrew Evans ‘You walk like a duck, you talk like a duck, but are you a duck?’ Scrutiny of FFP’s bona fides has elicited increasingly shrill responses, with Queensland Senate candidate, John Lewis, claiming it was slanderous to suggest the party was a ‘Christian Party’. Ironically, the Greens claim they’ve been defamed by FFP television advertisements that seek to paint them as untrustworthy ‘extremists’.

Where’s the money coming from? How does an emerging small party afford such unprecedented expenditure on television advertisements, much of it during prime time rating events such as the AFL Grand Final? I’m informed FFP has some 2000 members who pay $20 per membership, engage in fundraising and make small donations. But the real interest is in the large donations of ‘business people’ who bankroll the advertising campaign. Alas, we’ll probably never know who they are because the money is channelled through ‘foundations’, which raises the obvious question - do these foundations disguise donations from Pentecostal churches, or linked benefactors, in Australia, or even the United States? We’ll probably never know, but questions will persist, especially should FFP succeed in winning some Senate seats.

A WEEK out from polling day, what are FFP’s chances? Five weeks ago, and recalling their presence during the last South Australian poll, I suspected that should they direct preferences to the Liberal Party in the northern suburban Adelaide seat of Makin, located adjacent a large Assemblies of God congregation, then Labor’s hopes of winning this key marginal would diminish. Early in the campaign it appeared that FFP would follow the principle of assessing preference decisions on whether or not candidates met certain moral/ethical criteria. It transpired that in Makin they chose to support the Liberal sitting member, Trish Draper, who earlier in the year was exposed for travelling abroad with a male friend at taxpayers’ expense, rather than the Labor candidate who is a devout Christian. In the Senate, it is clear that as well as hoping to win places they are just as keen to block the Greens. Notwithstanding their relatively lavish campaign expenditure and, in all likelihood, strong presence at polling booths, they now appear shadowy, a little harried and intolerant of diversity of opinion. Ultimately, FFP’s claim to be somehow a ‘single issue party’, solely concerned with auditing policy as it relates to family welfare, seems less than the whole story. For those wishing to register a protest vote FFP offers an option, but given our secular society, and its antennae for the fanatic and the dogmatist, I fancy it’s fast becoming a non-option for many voters.

It is perhaps sobering to be reminded just how unlike America we are when it comes to church going. The Australian Election Study 2001 found that only 14 per cent of respondents attend church once a week - and the bulk of these are mainstream Protestants and Catholics. While some 70 per percent of Australians responding to this study say they are Christians, we are not a particularly religious society, and I’d reckon FFP’s ‘true believers’ - voters who’ve read FFP policy and/or know personally a candidate or friend thereof - make up not much more than 2 or 3 per cent of the electorate, if that. Like all minor parties FFP depends on attracting the ‘protest vote’ but now that there is a whiff of smoke and mirrors surrounding FFP’s religious connection then, for mine, their chances diminish with each day of campaigning.