Artist News

Gotye and his band have formed a political party

By | Published on Friday 5 September 2014

Gotye

Some-popstar-that-you-used-to-know Gotye, real name Wally De Backer, has made (not really) like Bez and gone into the ‘realm’ of politics, starting a political party with his backing band, The Basics.

The plan is that De Backer and peers Kris Schroeder and Tim Heath, aka the Basics Rock N Roll Party, will run in the upcoming state elections in Victoria, Australia, on 29 Nov.

Representing a kind of flipside option to ‘elitism’ in politics, the BRRP will promote ‘innovation’, ‘education’ and ‘rock n roll’ as its main cornerstones, in particular encouraging indigenous local learning in Victorian schools, making first-aid training compulsory for high school-age kids, and also improving access to music in rural areas.

Doing a bit of light canvassing via the AAP earlier this week, Schroeder said: “Politics in this country is treated like it belongs to the elite. We have these career politicians who often come from well-to-do families… and they are groomed in to becoming these life-long politicians that have no other life experience.

He added: “We’ve all got higher education degrees, so we’re not just musicians, but we haven’t come up through any political ideology we just care about certain things like indigenous affairs and education. We’re interested in giving an equal opportunity to all as far as access to music is concerned, and I guess that’s across the board what we’re really interested in”.

If you think you can dig that (and are registered to the Victorian Electoral Commission), go and sign up to join the party via its official FB page, which also has lots of info on the BRRP’s various policies. Gotye and co need 500 members in order to compete in the election, BTW.



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