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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-03-14 Daily Xml
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POLITICAL PARTY REGISTRATION

The Hon. S.G. WADE (16:18): I move:

That the regulations made under the Electoral Act 1985 concerning registration of political parties, made on 29 September 2011 and laid on the table of this council on 18 October 2011, be disallowed.

In October 2009, the Electoral Act 1985 was amended, amongst other things, to allow the Electoral Commission to prescribe the manner in which political parties maintain their registration under the act.

The bill was assented to on 22 October 2009, but the changes to party registration were not proclaimed. On 22 October 2011, the party registration provisions of the act were automatically proclaimed two years after their enactment, in accordance with section 7(5) of the Acts Interpretation Act 1915. Regulations were promulgated and tabled on 18 October 2011. Under the changes, every political party registered in South Australia must provide an annual return to the Electoral Commissioner by 30 September each year, proving their eligibility to remain as a registered party.

There are two ways for a political party to qualify for registration: first, a political party can be sponsored by a current member of the parliament of South Australia or a member of the House of Representatives or Senate, provided they were elected by South Australian electors. The second way a political party can qualify for registration is to prove that the political party has a membership which includes at least 200 South Australian electors.

Electoral Act Regulation 5B would require a parliamentary party to provide a document that sets out the name and address of the member on whom the party relies for the purpose of qualifying as an eligible political party and 'a declaration of membership of the party completed and signed within the period for which the annual return relates by the member on whom the party relies for the purpose of qualifying as an eligible political party'.

However, the regulations provide that, to be registered, relying on the membership of at least 200 South Australian electors the declaration must be signed within the declaration period by the members on whom the party relies for the purpose of qualifying as an eligible political party; that is, the declaration must be signed by at least 200 electors each year per return.

The reality of modern political parties is that few political parties require their members to sign a fresh membership application each year. Many offer two-year memberships and many offer online memberships and other forms of electronic renewal. A person may well never sign a hard copy membership form. In any event, the regulations are written such that standard membership forms and renewals could not be used to establish eligibility. Each year parties without parliamentary representation would need to get at least 200 signatures on a form.

While the provisions are easily complied with for registration of parties which have a parliamentary representative, the Liberal opposition's view is that the regulation would place an onerous administrative burden on parties which do not have a sponsoring member of parliament. In my party's view a declaration from the registered office of the political party listing the names and addresses of members should be sufficient to assess registration rather than requiring a document to be specifically signed for the purpose of the declaration by each member.

Where the Electoral Commissioner questions the integrity of the declaration, they may request in writing at any time that a registered political party provide information for the purpose of determining eligibility for registration under section 43A(4) of the act. Small parties are an important part of a pluralist democracy in raising community concerns, particularly around specific causes.

At the 2010 election such groups included Save the RAH, the National Party, the Democratic Labor Party and Dignity for Disability. I notice that in that sense Dignity for Disability is a cross-over parliamentary group. Before the last election it would have been subject to the parts of the regulation that referred to parties without parliamentary representation and now it is able to avail itself of the status of, if you like, a type 1 political party because of the presence in this chamber of the Hon. Kelly Vincent.

There were a number of groups involved in the 2010 election that did not have a parliamentary representative at that time. For want of a better word, I will call them micro-parties and, for the sake of the Hon. Ann Bressington I might stress that micro-parties include Independents, as I have certainly included them in the count. Micro-parties and Independents received 7.3 per cent of the vote in the House of Assembly and 16.7 per cent of the vote in the Legislative Council.

Of course, by definition none of the members of this place are members of micro-parties. The fact that they are here means that, if they wanted to register as a political party they could do so without seeking the signature of 200 people. By their presence here they absolve the party of what we believe are onerous requirements.

The Labor Party has shown an ongoing resistance to pluralism, and in our view this regulation is another example of Attorney-General Rau continuing in the traditions of attorney-general Atkinson. Like his predecessor, he is not interested in a political system that is fair to the small as well as the big. It is politically expedient to make life hard for other parties: damn the health of the body politic.

For its part, the Liberal Party is moving to disallow this regulation. We expect a fair electoral system and we respect the rights of other political players to be treated fairly. In moving this disallowance of the Electoral Regulations Parliamentary Party Registrations we would urge the government to back down and promulgate a new regulation which is not unnecessarily onerous for parties without a parliamentary representative.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.M. Gazzola.

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