The Victorian DLP’s John Madigan was elected to the Senate in 2010, which gives these parties hope that they can get members up for the State Legislative Council.

Like the Senate, the Legislative Council has multiple member electorates, with eight electoral regions returning five members.

To get a seat requires 17.5 per cent of the votes, compared to 14 per cent in a Senate race.

Vickie Jansen, the Victorian State Director of Australian Christians and the candidate for Eastern Metro (including some of Melbourne’s Bible belt), told Eternity that the parties could gain Upper House members “if people understand the importance of having Christian values represented in Parliament.”

“Often, the fifth seat is up for grabs,” she added, “after the major parties have each got two of the five seats in each region. We are hoping our combined efforts will be able to do that.”

Family First has declined to join the agreement according to Jansen.

“We have been trying to talk to Family First for some time” she says. “They have declined to join us, on two occasions.”

Family First possibly believes that they can negotiate a better preference flow on their own. At the 2013 Senate election Family First polled 1.53 per cent of the vote. Australian Christians, DLP and Rise Up scored a total of 2.12 per cent.

It’s likely, though, that some electoral regions, such as the Eastern Metro region Jansen is standing in would have a much higher “Christian vote”.

The key issues for these Christian parties include:

• Third trimester abortion and the issue of doctors opposed to abortion being forced to refer patients to clinics that will perform terminations. According to Real Choices Australia several hundred third trimester abortions occur annually in Victoria. Eternity recently reported that both major parties will allow a conscience vote on the referral issue.
• Labor’s plan to remove the religious exemption from the Equal Opportunity Act regarding employment. “This will mean faith-based organisations of any faith would not have the ability to employ who they wanted,” Jansen says.

“They would not be able to discriminate on the grounds of faith or sexual orientation. So schools who wanted to have a Christian culture or an Islamic culture and have everyone sharing those common core values would be restricted.”

Labor’s policy would mean only jobs which had a “bona fide occupational requirement”, like teachers of religion, could be selected on faith grounds.

• Special Religious Instruction (SRI). Despite the Victorian Government rolling back a directive which appeared to threaten SRI, Jansen says “We need to still be vigilant: there are a lot of people opposing Christian education in schools and we are opposed to the removal of the freedom of belief.”

Feature image via Flickr