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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Friday, 14 May 2004) . . Page.. 2067 ..

a seriously intentioned party. For a new party, it can be more difficult to establish. In a democracy we want to have a balance between allowing new forms of organised political expression and a confidence that when someone puts themselves forward as a party there is a democratic organisation of citizens behind the name.

This is a long-standing arrangement, not to be given up lightly. In other jurisdictions, for example New South Wales, the requirements of party registration were changed in recent years to increase the number of members needed. This, however, was to deal with front parties where a misleading name such as the national parks—speaking hypothetically; I can’t remember the exact party—was used for a group which actually had a strong link to a party which wanted to remove lots of protections to national parks.

In their electoral system, the preference flows are determined by the parties involved. When someone votes for a party above the line, the preference flows are hidden. We do not have the same risks here because our electoral system allocates preferences entirely according to voter preference. Apart from the problem of misleading names, it is the party-directed preferences that create the potential for this situation. We do not have that here.

However, there are still questions about what is an adequate size. I was personally quite sympathetic to reducing it to 50. The 30 of the original amendment certainly seemed too low, but 50 seemed more reasonable. The problem in assessing this is that there is no formula for an adequate size of party per electorate size, or per quota size, or per population size. It is all decided pretty much at a guess and a kind of informed gut feeling.

We will be now retaining non-party groups, which still gives like-minded people the opportunity to draw attention to their association. So we have lost one of the motivations for this change. We are still left with a value in a democracy of facilitating new groupings to articulate with policy positions and take on the issues that matter, new issues. In the last election the Nurses Party and the Liberal Democrats were able to form a party, so it is not an impossible barrier.

In discussion within the Greens party we came up with a range of views. The majority feeling, however, was that 50 was still too low. There is some sympathy, though, I think for revisiting this question. Maybe 75 would be okay. I understand this is an academic question because the major parties will not be supporting this change. At this stage I cannot support the amendment, but I think it is worthy of debate.

Amendments negatived.

Clauses 5 to 9 agreed to.

Clause 10.

MRS CROSS (11.14): I move amendment No 4 circulated in my name [see schedule 3 at page 2121].

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