China Watching in OZ: Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Party

Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Party

Party membership

Subsection 123(3) of the Act currently provides that a member of a political party is a person who is “entitled to enrolment” under the Act.

Subsection 126(2)(ca) requires an application for party registration to include a list of the names of the 500 members of the party to be relied on for the purposes of registration.

Subsection 126(2A) provides that two or more parties cannot rely on the same member for the purpose of qualifying or continuing to qualify as an eligible political party.

In comparison, to nominate as a candidate in an election ss.166(1)(b)(i) of the Act requires that a nomination form be signed by not less than 50 persons “entitled to vote” at the election. By data-matching the details of the nominators on a candidate’s nomination form against the electoral roll it is easy to determine whether a nominator is eligible to vote at the election by way of their being on the electoral roll or not. However, in the case of determining the eligibility of a member of a political party this process is made more complicated as it can be difficult to determine a person’s entitlement to enrolment from the details provided on party membership lists.

The AEC uses electoral roll data to check eligibility for enrolment to ensure parties meet the minimum party membership requirement. This process relies on parties providing sufficient details of their members in order to undertake a thorough data-matching exercise. However, there is no provision in the Act that requires a party to provide sufficient information for this purpose. This limits the AEC’s ability to identify those members who are not entitled to enrolment, or those members who are members of more than one party.

To facilitate this process the AEC proposes that party members should be on the electoral roll and that party membership lists include dates of birth and residential addresses of members. This will facilitate quicker and more accurate decision making when matching party membership lists against electoral roll data and assist to identify members who have supported another party’s registration.