The HEMP Party May Win A Senate Seat in Western Australia

On Tuesday Western Australia’s HEMP Party branch launched their senate campaign with a 16 meter inflatable joint in a park opposite parliament house in Perth. About twenty party members showed up and just as many journalists who, according to WA candidate Jim Moylan, “just wanted a soundbite on the election race.” As he explains it “they spend all their time going on about the very vague chance I might win a senate seat but totally ignore what we’re about, and that’s the re-legalisation of marijuana in Australia.”

It all started on Monday when the HEMP (Help End Marijuana Prohibition) Party were nominated by several political experts as the micro-party with the best chance of winning a seat. The Greens MP Scott Ludlam explained why, somewhat bitterly, after losing his own preference deal with them. "If you look at the way the preferences are being allocated,” he said, “the scene that emerges is that the Hemp Party get a lot of preferences from very small parties". This basically means that pooled together, all those freak party votes could get HEMP a seat that would have otherwise gone to the Greens. This could hypothetically result in a WA senate of two Labor seats, three Liberals and one 51 year-old Nimbin regular named Jim Moylan. And now to up the ante, mining magnate turned politician Clive Palmer has listed HEMP as preference number 14, while Labor got exiled to number 38.

So this is all great for the HEMP Party right? Well, maybe. Jim says that he doesn’t have any particular political ambitions but is instead “choosing his battles.” To him, marijuana prohibition is symptomatic of all sorts of things that are wrong “and while I can’t change many things in society, I can get together with my fellows and do good for the people who need medicine.” It sounds wise, but the fact is that this non-political father and daughter combo (Jim is running with his 19 year-old daughter, Tanya) don’t actually know the name of the current WA premier. “Barrett someone?” Jim tried yesterday when he was quizzed by the ABC. The correct answer was Colin Barnett.

But then again, they’ve stated that they’re an issue-party and not motivated by power, and this is pretty clearly reflected in their history. Founded in 1993 on the northern NSW Coast around Nimbin, The HEMP Party wasn’t actually registered with AEC until 2000 when it met the required five hundred members to become a party. It’s since then rode out sporadic national interest in marijuana, while missing registration for both the 2007 and 2010 federal elections. It currently claims six thousand members nationally and drums up support by taking the aforementioned big joint touring around the country. All the while, they try to get some traction to the marijuana debate, which has been pretty much abandoned by both major parties. “We just don’t mention it” Says Jim in frustration. “Politically, it’s just too dangerous and that’s why prohibition continues, despite all the research saying we need change.”

Jim’s notion of silent support for change is interesting, as even the WA conservative parties haven’t mentioned drugs. Instead Liberal Senator David Johnston has berated Jim and Tanya for not being locals, calling them “Johnny-come-latelies,” while the supremely right-wing Shooters Party has actually cut a preference deal with HEMP, as have the Fishers Party. Only Family First seems truly against pot, casting them as number 70 on their preference list, just behind the Secular Party of Australia at 72 and Sex Party at 76.

And there actually has been some occasional whispering about medicinal marijuana since Colorado and Washington legalised it, and some ultra-occasional mention of hemp as a useful fibre. It’s just that HEMP goes the whole way and says that all weed, whether useful or fun, should be legal. “Social use and commercial production and distribution of cannabis should be regulated and taxed in the same way as wine,” recommends their website, and then goes on to rubbish the recreational/medicinal division as a “recreational elephant in the medicinal cannabis room.” Clearly, while they lever the medical marijuana angle, they’re not pretending that’s what it’s for.

“If I get elected to the senate,” says Jim, “and there’s only a minor chance, but I’ll tell you what. I’ll approach the issue – cannabis – as my brief, and the Western Australian people my clients, and I’ll take instruction from them instead of a political party.” He goes on to say that people want weed and it’s just a matter of having the political balls to give it to them. “It will be legal someday, I just hope that it gets there with my help.”

Western Australia goes to the polls on April 5.

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