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A few weeks ago I wrote about the formation of a new party called The Australian Arts Party in an interview with one of its founders. So far it has 268 foundation members and needs to reach 500 to register.

I have since become one of the founding members.

I mention this because – every now and then – some troll will jump on the comments and tell us that we’re all a mob of Labor party stooges, and that the ALP are “complete morons” and total incompetents. After one such commentator had told me that the Labor Party were the biggest mob of idiots in the history of the world, I suggested to one that I may not – in fact – have voted ALP, he immediately assumed that I’d voted for The Greens and told me that they were even worse. For a moment I considered asking how The Greens could be worse than the biggest mob of idiots of all time. Then I considered telling him that I had – at one time – considered standing for the National Party. In the end, I decided that neither logic nor the truth would have any effect so I resorted to strategy of dealing with trolls by being more ridiculous than they are. I simply pointed out what a terrible job Joe Hockey was doing as Opposition Leader. For a person who argues by engaging in abuse and simply ignoring the facts, it frustrates them beyond belief when someone else does the same.

I am not, nor was I ever, a member of The Greens. If I were, I would have resigned in protest when they joined with the Coaltion to block the ETS in Labor’s first term.

I am not, nor was I ever, a member of the Labor Party. If I were, I would have resigned in protest at their race to the bottom on Asylum Seekers.

I am not, nor was I ever, a member of the Liberal Party. If I were, I would have never resigned in protest because I’m sure I could justify whatever they did, because hey, whatever if it takes to become Government. And so what if you torture the odd person, Sri Lanka, times are tough and when the going gets tough, we give you a couple of boats so that you can round up anyone attempting to leave. After all isn’t the country that a potential refugee is attempting to leave the best placed to decide if they’re really fleeing persecuction or not.

I am not, nor was I ever, a member of the National Party, because I can use coherent sentences and use words such as “spurious” and “lickspittle”.

But I am – potentially – a member of the Arts Party.

Yes, I’m sure that many of you will argue that there are more important things than the Arts, and that we should be more concerned about other things. That’s part of the reason I’ve paid my $20 to be a founding member. Politicians and others frequently decide that there are more important things than the Arts. We’ll cut the Arts but not Defence. Schools will run a Physics class for four people, but decide that the numbers are too low in Music with fourteen.

So I could have joined a party with more important causes on its mind. I could have joined that party supporting motorists that just elected a Senator. What’s it’s name. Motorists United Together Enthusiastically. Or MUTE, as their newly elected Senator seems to be.

But I didn’t. I decided that the Arts was more worthy of a voice than all the other small parties that seem to be influencing government decisions, like the Shooter Party in NSW.