#imop

Running where: for the Senate in the ACT (lead candidate of Group F with running mate from the Libertarian Party), NSW (second and fifth candidates in Group I on joint ticket with People First and Libertarians), QLD (second candidate in Group K with the Great Australian Party), VIC (second candidate in Group O with People First), and in the House for the divisions of Bennelong, Eden-Monaro, and Lindsay (NSW), and Canberra (ACT)

Prior reviews: federal 2019, federal 2022. NSW 2023

Plus Health Australia, for reasons which will become clear: federal 2016, VIC 2018, federal 2019, VIC 2022

What I said before: “the pandemic only heated up their rhetoric, which seeks to undermine vaccines and other public health measures that are proven to be safe and effective … If you want your teeth to fall out and to die of preventable diseases, this is the party for you.” (NSW 2023)

What I think this year: This party began life in the mid-2010s as the Involuntary Medication Objectors (Vaccination/Fluoride) Party, which tells you everything you need to know in six stupid words. We are so close in time to when the world lacked vaccines for many once-widespread debilitating ailments that there is literally at least one childhood polio survivor still living in an iron lung, Martha Lillard in the US. Here’s a good long read from 2017 about Martha and two other American polio survivors (Mona Randolph, who died in 2019, and Paul Alexander, who attained popularity on Tik Tok before dying in March last year). They underscore their disappointment, even heartbreak, with the rise of the antivax movement and people who sow distrust about vaccines.

Many diseases that once stalked our society no longer threaten us thanks to the achievement of mass vaccination and herd immunity. This is not a miracle, as some would describe it, but the outcome of decades of hard work, investment, good policy, and genius alike. We witnessed one of the great achievements in medical history at the start of this decade: within two years of covid being identified, ordinary people could receive a safe and effective vaccine. Anybody who wishes to undermine the outstanding medical achievements of the past century or so and risk the spread of diseases—especially by misleading parents into gambling with their children’s lives by not receiving a full course of childhood vaccinations—is a horrific ghoul.

In December 2019, IMOP tried to soften their image as dangerous science denialists by renaming themselves the Informed Medical Options Party, a name about as inaccurate as it is possible to be. This change received approval in March 2020, days before the emerging threat of covid was declared a pandemic. At the time, IMOP got steaming mad about being called anti-vaxxers by senior medical professionals and politicians, with the party’s secretary suggesting that their members “only want their voice and concerns heard”. Now, it’s one thing to ask your GP questions to better understand a vaccination or any other medication. It's another thing to keep rejecting medical and scientific expertise, ignore the consensus of researchers, promote woo, and undermine public confidence in the transformative, lifesaving effect of vaccines. Do not say you are “just asking questions”. Do not pretend you are promoting “informed choices”. And definitely don’t say you have “done my own research” unless you happen to possess your own fucking world-class research laboratory staffed by a team of qualified researchers.

The most paranoid people amplified their fearmongering during the covid pandemic, but they were such malcontents that they struggled to work together. Cooker parties (some registered, some not) fielded rival candidates at state and federal elections. But in 2023 it emerged that IMOP were negotiating a merger with Health Australia, another “don’t call us antivaxxers” antivax party whose existence also predated the pandemic. In August, the two groups announced amalgamation under the name Health Environment Accountability Rights Transparency (HEART). Using IMOP’s registration with the AEC, they submitted an application to change the name, which received approval on 3 October. Astonishingly, later that month, IMOP-cum-HEART had to retract their own merger announcement. Health Australia chose to withdraw from the merger process, and collapsed a few months later.

So, HEART is just IMOP, rebadged, although I don’t doubt some ex-Health Australia people support this entity. Some of HEART’s rhetoric about affordable living, political transparency, and individual rights tries to appeal to politically disengaged voters in a cost-of-living crisis. But they cannot disguise how extreme their views are for more than sentence or two. Their website has predictable “big pharma” diatribes alongside promotion of completely unfounded alternative medicines and other woo popular in the backblocks of Byron Bay. And their fearmongering goes beyond healthcare: they are, for instance, concerned about the apparently imminent introduction of China’s “social credit system” to Australian cities. Their “transparency” policy is really a stubborn insistence that virtually all leading authorities on vaccines and healthcare are hiding conflicts of interest and that none of their studies or policies can be trusted. It’s striking how ready these people are to buy into unsubstantiated claims about “holistic” and “natural” medicines while insisting the most rigorous medical studies and expert bodies are compromised and sinister.

It also tells you a lot about HEART that they have entered into the “Australian First Alliance” with three far-right parties, Rennick First, Great Australian Party, and the Libertarians. This explains the convoluted Senate tickets listed at the start of the entry: multiple parties can register a joint ticket of candidates to share a single column on the ballot, which is something the Liberals and Nationals have done in some states for years. People who vote 1 above the line for this ticket will have their first preference go to the candidate listed first in the column below the line; for example, an above-the-line vote in the ACT goes first to HEART but in Victoria goes first to Rennick First. In addition, HEART’s how-to-vote cards recommend that their supporters distribute preferences to religious fundamentalists (Family First, Australian Christians), racists (One Nation), and LaRouchean fantasists (Citizens Party). Anyone who actually follows HEART's how-to-vote recs—which won't be many, as minor parties struggle to get their HTVs in the hands of potential voters—will have their ballot exhaust before reaching any party likely to be in contention for a Senate seat, with the exception of One Nation, who are going to be competitive in some states (especially Queensland).

Despite some HEART members being leftover hippies who were once in the Greens, exiting that party once their penchant for woo became too unwelcome, HEART does not associate with the left at all. The company the party keeps is firmly right-wing and exclusionary.

Recommendation: give Health Environment Accountability Rights Transparency (HEART) a weak or no preference in the Senate, and a very low preference in the House.

Running where: All six states and the ACT

Prior review: federal 2019

What I said before: “I do not believe that the opinions of anti-vaxxers, fluoride conspiracy theorists, and similar are worth the time of day. Such views, like those of climate change deniers, have no credibility and should be ignored.”

What I think this year: Formerly known as the Involuntary Medication Objectors (Vaccination/Fluoride) Party, this collection of very cooked individuals changed their party name to something a little less convoluted and a lot less accurate: the Informed Medical Options Party. If there is one thing this party is profoundly uninformed about, it is medical options.

I was truly delighted when the “we’re not anti-vaxxers” anti-vaxxers at Health Australia got deregistered, but IMOP is here to keep the flame alive for the stupidest medical opinions. The incredibly funny thing is that one of their policies is to “end censorship” of “freedom of choice and speech regarding vaccination”. Mate, you have literally registered a political party and are standing anti-vax candidates across the country. You are not being censored. You are just discovering that most people think you sit at the junction of quackery, nonsense, and paranoia.

As if sowing doubt about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines in the midst of a fucking pandemic is not enough, these gigantic branes are 5G conspiracists who are demanding more studies—you know they will then reject any study that does not conclude what they want it to conclude. They still want to remove fluoride from all water supplies and let all our teeth decay faster. And they want to encourage money laundering with anonymous transactions, but also demand government transparency and disclosure of conflicts of interest. What do you people want, me to be able to pay off an MP anonymously or that MP having to disclose the payment? Pick one.

It's lucky these people are so mindnumbingly daft, or else they might actually be dangerous. Or maybe it’s just the 5G microchips from the covid vaccine that are making me conclude this. I’m sure IMOP has a study proving this from the Institute of I dO mY oWn ReSeArCh at the University of YouTube.

My recommendation: Give the Informed Medical Options Party a weak or no preference.