Sex Party launches national campaign

[HIGHERBEAM]

The 2010 election campaign just got sexier.

The Australian Sex Party has thrown its hat into the ring, selling itself as an alternative to what it describes as an increasing conservatism among the three major parties.

At a launch in a Melbourne pub, glamorous president and Victorian Senate candidate Fiona Patten told a media conference it was time an Australian political party pushed the boundaries.

Results from the Higgins and Bradfield by-elections have shown the party as "the major of the minor parties" rather than a single-issue lobby group, she says.

"We hope to see ourselves elected as at least one candidate in the Senate to provide another voice to what we see is this growing conservatism in politics and parliament," Ms Patten told reporters on Tuesday.

"Now I think we're seeing the Greens move into the centre, so there needs to be a party... that can talk about a lot of those issues that are still very important to people's lives."

In Victoria, the party is running four candidates in the Senate, while in NSW there are three contenders, and two Senate candidates will stand in each of WA, South Australia, Northern Territory and Queensland.

It is also putting up candidates for the lower house seats of La Trobe, Melbourne, Melbourne Ports, Warringah, Bennelong and Swan.

Personal freedom and moral issues - gender, sex abuse, gay marriage, drug law reform and censorship - drive the party's identity.

"I want an Abbott-proof fence built around Australia so that the nanny state that the coalition and the ALP have jointly-built over successive decades can be turned back," Ms Patten said.

If elected, her first mission would be to call for a royal commission into child sex abuse in religious institutions.

"It was successful in Ireland and I think it's absolutely necessary here," she said.

National sex education with a focus on health and relationships is also high on the party's list.

A full policy rollout in coming weeks "will probably put Tony Abbott's hair on end and may even turn Ms Gillard's hair grey."

"We've always been forward and we actually enjoy real action," Ms Patten said.

With a membership of just over 3000, the Sex Party will look to direct preferences to other minor parties.

And Ms Patten has a cheeky message for voters on August 21: "In the privacy of the polling booth, anything could happen."

Pornstar are you running

[Ned Kelly]

Nah, that would be J.W. Frogen's role.

[J.W. Frogen]

I have a raging erection for this party.

Australia is long over due for a Libertarian party!!!!

Do they need candidates in WA?

[J.W. Frogen]

My pole will poll for this party!

[boxy]

Are there that many sexuality issues that need dealing with on a national level?

Gays need to have a formal union that is equal to marriage, even if it's not named as a "marriage".

But things like prostitution and pornography seem to be dealt with on a local/state level, depending on the local situations. More of a zoning concern... not near schools and churches

[J.W. Frogen]

I think their name does them a disservice to some degree, I went to their web-site and they have an entire range of libertarian solutions to problems, from free speech advocacy to equality under the law. Still, how a nation treats sexual issues is often a barometer on how intrusive the state will be.

For instance, the Labor proposed Internet filter, now simply to block currently illegal web-sites, putting aside how difficult this will be to achieve without possibly blocking legal web-sites, the Sex Party warns the government will expand the power to censor the Internet, and history would be on their side as governments tend to expand power once granted.

Australia is in need for a real libertarian point of view.

And look how hot their leader is!



I may vote for her three times in one night!

After all Viagra on the PBS is one of their goals.

[J.W. Frogen]

I went on the Australian Sex Party's Facebook page and suggested if they really wanted to be edgy they should call themselves 'The Australian Fucking Party'.

One of the organizers responded with a serious explanation about how that would not have been allowed by the Electoral Commission. How hard it was just to get sex on the title.

But I bet they considered it!

I love this party.

If they ever in some post apocalyptic future take government I hope they propose to pay a bondage bonus.