Earthsave (political party)

Earthsave was an Australian political party that ran candidates for the 1999 New South Wales state election. The party had a broadly environmentalist focus,[1] and had a wide range of policies from a well rounded position.[2] The party almost got its major candidate elected. Out of approximately 266 candidates vying for 21 seats the lead candidate came in position 23. The party was very successful in promoting support for vegetarianism and veganism and forced the Green Party to adopt more pro animal rights policies. It also gave environmentally-minded but fiscally conservative voters an alternative party to vote for, Earthsave's policies generally sitting to the political right compared with those of the Greens. The party was very successful in promoting the idea that prevention is better than cure and in promoting the idea that the budget could be helped by keeping people healthy through natural means and education and reduce hospital costs.

Homophobic and AIDS-phobic

At the New South Wales (AU) state election of 1999, Brandon Raynor stood for election under his newly minted EarthSave party. Raynor stood for a ‘Sunlight soap’ moral hygienic vision of the world – ostensibly ‘holistic’ but embedded with moral hierarchies – fundamentally heterosexist, homophobic, and patriarchal. Their mission was to ‘clean’ the world using a blend of ecological, moral, and New Age philosophy.

In The Northern Star, a daily tabloid based at Lismore, NSW, a couple of local gay activists had called out Raynor’s ignorance and fear-mongering. Their letter to the editor was followed by an article, an editorial, and many dozens of other readers’ letters in a vigorous debate about homosexuality, spanning a period of several weeks. [3]

Raynor picked on the wrong electorate: that with the greatest concentration of LGBT residents in non-metropolitan Australia.

EarthSave received a mere 6,391 votes statewide – not many compared to the 34,590 received by the nearest contender, Australians Against Further Immigration, and an insignificant number compared to the 1,576,886 received by the winning Labor Party. [4]

McDonald's opposition

Earthsave was opposed to expansion of McDonald's in the Blue Mountains. Party leader Brandon Raynor led the successful campaign to stop McDonald's entering the upper Blue Mountains and worked with the Earth Repair Foundation to propose to McDonald's Australia to consider opening a restaurant serving healthy, local and environmentally friendly food under the title of McNatural's.

Earthsave also engaged in protests for the World Day of Action Against McDonald's, 16 October 1996.[5]

References
  1. Earthsave - What We Believe
  2. Earthsave - Policies
  3. Baden Offord’s chapter in Belonging in the Rainbow Region (Helen Wilson, ed.; Southern Cross University Press, 2003
  4. Green, Antony: NSW Parliamentary Library Research Service's New South Wales Elections 1999
  5. "Local Residents - Blue Mountains, Australia". www.mcspotlight.org. Retrieved 16 October 2015.


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