Posted on Wednesday, 12 November
The June conference of the Victorian Socialists, held in Melbourne, endorsed the proposal to expand the party nation-wide. As part of that decision, the conference directed the Secretary to apply to the Australian Electoral Commission to change the party name to “Socialist Party”, so as to allow us to contest federal electoral contests outside Victoria.
We recently learnt that this application, which was made on July 10, has been preliminarily rejected by the AEC.
Joanne Reid, the Assistant Commissioner of the AEC, wrote that:
“I, as a delegate of the Electoral Commission, am of the opinion that the Party’s proposed name
- so nearly resembles the name of the recognised political party, ‘Socialist Alliance’ that it is likely to be confused or mistaken for that name; and
- is one that a reasonable person would think suggests that a connection exists between the Party and ‘Socialist Alliance’, a registered party, when that connection does not in fact exist.
I therefore am of the opinion that I would be required to refuse the Party’s proposed name under s 129(1)(d) and s 129(1)(da) of the Electoral Act.”
We consider this to be a wrong and damaging decision. The party is already registered as “Victorian Socialists” federally. The AEC does not consider the name “Victorian Socialists” confusing, as it allowed Victorian Socialists to register in 2019 even though the Socialist Alliance was registered then and the same test applied (the recent changes to the law regarding party names is not the section in question in the Commission’s preliminary decision).
The only difference between our currently registered name and the new one we proposed was to de-link it to a particular state to make it electorally possible to endorse candidates outside of Victoria. This decision is deeply disenfranchising for the more than 3,600 members who have signed up to branches of the party around Australia in recent months.
After seeking legal advice and considering our options, the interim National Executive of the Socialist Party has resolved to submit a variation to our application, and apply to change the name of the party to “Australian Socialist Party”. This is not our preferred name, but it is the one we consider most likely to be approved.
We hope this will be accepted by the AEC. If it is not, there is provision for us to appeal that decision and attempt to have it overturned via the Administrative Review Tribunal.
State based registration
As well as changing the name of the federally registered party, we are pursuing registration at a state and territory level. The South Australian branch, SA Socialists, has recently been accepted as a registered party in South Australia.
We hope we will soon be able to submit registration applications in Western Australia, Tasmania, the ACT, and Queensland.
In NSW we submitted a registration application on September 8.
We have now received a letter from Rachel McCallum, the Electoral Commissioner for NSW, which said:
“Having assessed your application, I am satisfied that the proposed party name New South Wales Socialist Party and abbreviated name NSW Socialist Party are likely to be confused with or mistaken for the Socialist Alliance, a party currently registered in New South Wales for State and local government elections.
Accordingly, in accordance withs 64(4)(d) of the Electoral Act 2017 (the Electoral Act), I must refuse to register the party with the name and abbreviation you have proposed.”
As with the federal decision, we believe this to be deeply flawed. Victorian Socialists and Socialist Alliance have both operated in Victoria without any issues about the party names being confused coming up.
While we could lodge a legal appeal to this decision, there is insufficient time to go through that process before the deadline for being eligible to stand in the March 2027 election. In another bizarre bureaucratic hurdle, parties who want to contest elections in NSW must be registered at least 12 months prior to the election date!
Therefore we are going to submit a variation to our application with a name - such as NSW SP - which we are confident will be approved by the commission in order to be registered by the March 2026 deadline for us to be able to contest the election in the following year. If our revised federal name change is approved, we believe we will be able to also change the NSW name prior to the election taking place.
The problems with our registration in NSW and federally do not at the moment apply in other states, as the Socialist Alliance is currently only registered federally and in NSW.
Pursuing unity with the Socialist Alliance
While we are confident we have a good chance of eventually getting registered with a version of the party names we want, this process is undoubtedly extremely frustrating.
The reason for the rejection of our applications at an AEC and NSW level is the undemocratic laws that can prevent the registration of political parties with similar ideologies reflected in their names.
The Socialist Alliance has not acted to prevent our registration. There is a provision in the Electoral Act that parties wishing to use a word like “Socialist” that another party already has in its name must get permission to do so. The Socialist Alliance provided us with that permission, and we expect they will again for our federal application to use the name “Australian Socialist Party”, which we have requested. The problem was not gaining permission from the Alliance, but the electoral commissions ruling that they considered our name could be confused with that of the Alliance.
Nonetheless, given the existing legal situation, the reality is that the main barrier to the registration of a party that has over 5,400 financial members nationally is the existence of the Socialist Alliance as a registered political party in NSW and federally.
While rejecting the arguments of the state and federal electoral commissions that we cannot register under our chosen names because of the existence of the Socialist Alliance, it is nonetheless the case that the current situation highlights the folly of having two socialist parties registered in Australia.
In the lead up to the June Victorian Socialist conference, we repeatedly made it clear to the Socialist Alliance leadership, both verbally and in writing, that, as one letter put it, “in the electoral sphere, we think it is ridiculous to have separate parties, and we would like to form a single united party on a democratic basis.”
The June conference of the Victorian Socialists, which was attended by invited delegates from the Socialist Alliance leadership, adopted a motion that stated:
“We are in favour of there being a single, united socialist party in the Australian electoral sphere, and we appeal to the Socialist Alliance to unite into a single party on a democratic basis.”
We also adopted a range of constitutional changes aimed at establishing a fully functional democratic structure for our party that gives wide-ranging rights for internal groupings and factions to organise, use party resources, promote their views, and so on.
All of this has been made available to the Socialist Alliance.
Unfortunately, so far the Socialist Alliance has rejected our calls for unity. After our June conference, the Socialist Alliance wrote to us saying:
“It is still firmly our position that Socialist Alliance does not want to fold our election work under the banner of Victorian Socialists/Socialist Party, even if we do remain committed to future collaboration.”
Since then, as recently as last week in a meeting in Melbourne between leading representatives of our parties, we urged the Socialist Alliance to reconsider uniting our organisations, and were told that the Alliance was not interested in doing so at this time.
Over the weekend at the founding conference of NSW Socialists, a motion was overwhelmingly adopted which stated:
“We call on the Socialist Alliance, both in NSW and federally, to reconsider its opposition to unity between our organisations. We believe that our programs are extremely similar, and there is no credible argument against unity. We want to unite on a democratic basis, with full freedom for internal groups to pursue their own arguments and strategies.”
The sentiment of this motion is widely held in branches of our party across the country.
We will be contacting the Socialist Alliance leadership again to try and work out a way unity can be achieved. We will keep members up to date with developments on this front, as well as with our broader attempts to secure electoral registration and a party name change.
Corey Oakley
On behalf of the Socialist Party Interim National Executive