Jade McCallister
Market anarchist at heart, pragmatic libertine in practice. Find common ground where you can, disassociate when you cannot. We must not betray our principles or we will become our enemy.
The 2025 election was a resounding defeat for the freedom parties, most notably the Libertarian Party. In the Senate, their voter turnout ranged from 0.4 per cent in Tasmania to 1.9 per cent in NSW on a joint ticket with HEART and People First.
Compare this to 2022, where the Liberal Democrats (as they were known before the name change) received vote counts ranging from lows of 0.5 per cent in SA all the way up to an impressive 7.7 per cent in NT.
Clearly something went disastrously wrong for the party in 2025. Some believe it was the name change, but I believe a far more existential problem is the true cause.
In 2020–2022, authoritarianism was on the rise due to a pandemic of mass hysteria. Covid was a vessel of fear used by the state to justify draconian restrictions on civil liberties. Many people at the time were rightly angry at the government overreach, and the Liberal Democrats presented a principled alternative: freedom and bodily autonomy for everyone.
Fast forward to 2025, and what was the message the freedom parties (including the Libertarian Party) espoused? MAGA populism, climate change denial, trans panic, and daddy government meddling in the medical decisions of parents, doctors, and trans teenagers. A complete 180 from the bodily autonomy platform of 2022.
This is a Trojan horse, as the state cannot properly understand the consequences and individual needs of dysphoric teens.
Where did this originate? It seems the 2024 US election was the cause. Trump became president as a backlash to the status-quo of the dysfunctional, out of touch Democratic Party. His platform was a direct response to what he described as “Bidenflation” and “Wokeness”. However, upon victory both Republicans and Democrats placed far too much emphasis on “wokeness” being the cause of their victory, even though a 2024 poll ranked transgender issues least important to poll participants: a mere 38 per cent of participants believing such issues were “extremely or very important”. Compare this to the economy, which 90 per cent of participants believed was “extremely or very important”.
When compared to Australia’s 2025 election, I believe the results speak for themselves. Labor won in a landslide, while the Liberals, Greens, and freedom parties performed poorly. What do all these parties have in common? The only comparison I see is an over-emphasis on petty culture war issues. The Greens are too elitist, failing to appeal to everyday Australians, while most Australians are also turned off by MAGA culture war nonsense, which the freedom parties played too strongly. Trumpism is quite unpopular among Australian voters, with even the Liberal Party considered too closely affiliated with the Trump administration, despite only some of their members openly endorsing Trump. One Nation did gain traction, however I would argue this was primarily due to immigration.
In any case, there is a clear problem for the Libertarian Party, and it’s a problem that’s only become more prevalent since Covid. The party has shifted heavily toward culturally conservative rhetoric in an attempt to win over disaffected Liberal voters. On the surface this may seem like a viable strategy but many believe this approach is only alienating culturally progressive libertarians such as myself. Many former Libertarian voters have defected away from the party either toward other parties, or toward not voting at all. In my case I spoiled my ballot, as I regarded every party as hostile to my core principles of self-ownership and voluntary association.
So what turned me and others away from voting Libertarian? I can only speak for myself, but these policies were the red line for me:
Forcing trans people to be legally recognised by their birth sex, regardless of the extent of their medical transition. This alone would push the legal rights of trans people well behind many other countries in the world: even Serbia allows gender marker changes with a medical diagnosis, while Turkey and China allow gender marker changes with surgery. These positions allow for nuance where medically transitioned trans people could live their lives without being forced to disclose their birth sex everywhere they go, while also avoiding the risks of bad actors self-identifying into bathrooms where they may put others in positions of risk or discomfort. In any case, any fears around bathrooms could easily be alleviated by allowing private companies to make their own rules, instead of enforcing blanket bans on gender marker changes.
Australians are also turned off by MAGA culture war nonsense, which the freedom parties played too strongly.
A blanket ban on medical transition for trans youth. This is a Trojan horse as the State cannot properly understand the consequences and individual needs of dysphoric teens. It is true that de-transition is a legitimate risk, but there is an arguably greater risk of permanent dysphoria in forcing a trans teen to endure the permanent effects of developing the secondary sex characteristics of their birth sex. I may write another article discussing this in further detail, however the main issue is that allowing the state to implement blanket bans sets a standard that can be used to dictate other forms of medical treatment, such as mandatory vaccination.
Increasing the citizenship time from four years to 10 years. This annoys me on a personal level as I’ve spent years analysing every country in the world so I can leave Australia to find a more libertarian-aligned culture overseas, and one of the determining factors is citizenship time. Portugal recently doubled their citizenship time from five years to 10 years, essentially throwing their expats under the bus. I believe Australia following suit would increase bureaucracy and infringe on the freedom of association for expats who may otherwise have considered making Australia home.
For these reasons I could not ethically justify voting for the Libertarian Party, and I believe my perspective that the Libertarian Party is alienating libertarians like myself in favour of the MAGA vote is exactly what turned off most former Libertarian voters, as many of us, like the average Australian, want nothing to do with authoritarian Trumpism.
This article was originally published by Liberty Itch.
