Blatantly Partisan Party Review XII (federal 2025): Health Environment Accountability Rights Transparency (HEART)
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: âthe 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.â (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. Hereâs 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 diseasesâespecially by misleading parents into gambling with their childrenâs lives by not receiving a full course of childhood vaccinationsâis 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 partyâs secretary suggesting that their members âonly want their voice and concerns heardâ. Now, itâs 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 âjust asking questionsâ. Do not pretend you are promoting âinformed choicesâ. And definitely donât say you have âdone my own researchâ 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 âdonât call us antivaxxersâ 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 IMOPâs 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 donât doubt some ex-Health Australia people support this entity. Some of HEARTâs 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 âbig pharmaâ 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 Chinaâs âsocial credit systemâ to Australian cities. Their âtransparencyâ 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. Itâs striking how ready these people are to buy into unsubstantiated claims about âholisticâ and ânaturalâ 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 âAustralian First Allianceâ 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, HEARTâs 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 recsâwhich won't be many, as minor parties struggle to get their HTVs in the hands of potential votersâwill 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.
Website: https://heartparty.com.au/















