Voter beware: how electoral commissions are powerless to stop deliberately misleading party names
- Written by: Weekend Times
A “Free Palestine” party is registered to contest the Victorian state election in November. The conflict in the Middle East is notoriously complex. But what could be simpler than a single-issue
political cause, with such a direct slogan as “Free Palestine”?
But here’s the catch. The party was founded by an Israeli-Australian and pro-Israeli YouTuber, Avraham “Avi” Yemini, who wants Palestine to stay under Israeli control. He says he hopes to dupe left-wing voters.
A movement that sincerely wants Palestinian liberation was affronted by Yemini’s provocation. It tried to register itself as the “Free Palestine Party”, but the Victorian Electoral Commission had to knock it back, because Yemini bagged the name first and the names are essentially the same.
Aren’t there laws to regulate party names? How can something as serious as a ballot paper be the site for such trolling?
How the laws about registering a political party work
Party registration has been around for a bit over four decades. Its main purpose is to aid voters. Voting is compulsory in Australia and people tend to vote for a party rather than a candidate. So having party names and corflutes at the point of casting your vote is important.
Party logos are now also part of that. Logos are used less to help voters with limited English literacy and more to help distinguish parties with similar names on big, upper house ballot papers.
To register a party you need to pay a fee, have a minimum number of members (more at national level than state level), and file an application with the relevant commission well ahead of election time. You also need to lodge a constitution. Your constitution sets your party’s name, but it doesn’t need to have any minimum content. It just needs to include, as one aim, a desire to run candidates.
Under electoral law, then, parties can be little more than electoral brands. To respect freedom of association, the law doesn’t say that you have to charge a minimum membership fee or let members rather than party leaders run the show. A party’s rules and positions are up to the party.
As for names, there are some formal restrictions. No more than six words, nothing too closely resembling an existing registered party, and nothing “obscene, frivolous or vexatious”. Obscene doesn’t mean politically objectionable – a White Australia Party, for example, could yet appear.
This means the law protects existing party names, to minimise voter confusion in the ballot box. But it also makes no attempt to guide voters on substance. A party can have a name that is sarcastic, or even completely topsy-turvy and deliberately misleading as in the “Free Palestine” case.
Voter beware
This all is, sadly, consistent with the absence of “truth in politics” rules in most of Australia. (Only South Australian and Australian Capital Territory elections have such rules, but then only to cover electoral advertising). This absence jars when contrasted to the rules against misleading consumers in commercial marketing.
Proponents of such soft-touch treatment of politics, however, warn that regulation could swallow a spider to catch a fly. In other words, they fear asking electoral commissions to judge truth or sincerity in electoral language will, at best, swamp those bodies. Or, at worst, expose them to accusations of becoming partisan overlords.
Those warnings may sound alarmist, in the face of blatant manipulation such as the “Free Palestine” registration. But drawing a line is not easy. Is the Labor Party a working person’s party anymore? Are there many liberals left in the Liberal Party? Political discourse is inevitably nuanced and unfixed.
There is also a risk that incumbent parties will use regulation as hooks to give prominence to their own hats. Indeed, in 2021, the major parties stretched the rules against misleadingly similar names, to try to protect the Liberal Party from the Liberal Democratic Party and the Labor Party from the Democratic Labour Party. (The High Court let them.)
Ultimately, the law runs on caveat elector – let the voter beware. This doesn’t mean there are no tweaks worth adopting. It is too easy to register a single-issue party purely to attract attention: and we live in an age of stunts and trolls.
Yemini was able to recruit 500 “members” via a social media call to his pro-Israel followers, without any of them needing to pay a fee or consent to any of the traditional obligations of party membership. A registered party should not be a hollow shell.
On the upside, Yemini cannot squat on the “Free Palestine” party name forever. Not unless he runs candidates at every general election. His candidates will, in any case, forfeit deposits of $350 each, too, unless they score 4% of the vote.
As for Victorians heading to the polls in November: caveat elector. You are choosing representatives to govern you, not shopping in Memeland.
Graeme Orr does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
