Development of Legislation on the Registration of Political Parties in Australia

Abstract

Nowadays it is difficult to imagine a stable political environment without the functioning of political parties in modern democracies. In order to cover new or existing political views and stimulate the formation of new parties, the legislation regulating the activities of political parties is dynamically developing. The state also creates various restrictions on the way to continue the activities of existing parties or the formation of new ones, especially in multi-party democracies, where a multiplicity of parties creates confusion for voters, and can lead to instability in the activities of the government or parliament. For the stable functioning of a political party, there is a need for clearly defined legal requirements that it must follow, and for its registration it must comply with all formalities prescribed by law, including those related to the preparation of a set of documents. These reasons determine the relevance of the problems of legal regulation of registration of political parties. All these processes are observed in Australia, where over the past 30 years have been significant reforms that entailed the legal consolidation of political parties in the electoral process. The requirement for a relatively low membership for the party registration in Australia facilitates the formation of parties that seek to solve local or regional problems, and the possibility of creating representative offices and regional affiliates of political parties contributes to defending regional and local interests without violating the state’s national integrity and unity of the system of state power, as the basis of a federal system. To register the party at the federal level and the level of a number of states, it is also possible to use the rule of “parliamentary representation”. Achieving a balance between different regimes of party registration facilitates the organization of candidates in clearly structured groups, ensuring equal conditions for political competition.