A letter from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) on March 21 rejected a Freedom of Information (FOI) application from the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) for evidence to justify the AEC’s refusal to grant the party official registration.
This FOI decision further exposes the anti-democratic character of Australia’s electoral laws and the AEC’s totally obscure use of them, which has prevented the SEP’s candidates in the May 3 federal election from appearing on the ballot papers alongside our party name.
This not only deprives voters of the right to be able to identify the SEP candidates. It also tramples over the democratic rights of all our more than 1,500 members, whose names, addresses, birth dates and contact details we supplied to the AEC last September so that the party could be on the ballot.
Despite this political censorship, the SEP will stand candidates in this election. We will advance as widely as possible the only genuine socialist alternative to the international turn to fascistic forms of rule being spearheaded by the Trump administration in the US.
We will expose and oppose the program of military buildup, war, genocide, ever-greater social inequality, gutting of working-class conditions and suppression of dissent and democratic rights being pursued by Labor, the Liberal-National Coalition, the Greens and the entire political establishment.
The AEC’s actions show that Australia is no exception to the historic global attack on democratic rights.
In fact, Labor’s Anthony Albanese and the Coalition’s Peter Dutton are vying to prove who can best work with Trump, whose regime is seizing and moving to deport students for opposing the genocide in Gaza, and seeking to block the voting rights of millions of people. At the same time, it is ramping up war plans against China, sacking tens of thousands of public sector workers and demolishing public health and education.
There is fear in ruling circles that our socialist perspective will win growing support in the working class under these conditions, which are intensifying the disaffection with the existing political order.
That is why the AEC, acting on behalf of the ruling capitalist parties, has not only blocked the basic democratic right of the SEP to contest the election under our name, but has now refused to disclose vital information that we need to challenge its ban.
An anti-democratic regime
The SEP was originally deregistered, along with about half the other registered parties, after Labor and the Coalition joined hands to pass legislation in August 2021 that suddenly tripled the already reactionary membership list requirement from 500 to 1,500. That was just before the May 2022 election, amid COVID-19 lockdowns that necessarily restricted public campaigning.
The very requirement for membership lists is profoundly anti-democratic. It forces parties to hand over to the AEC, an agency of the capitalist state, the names of party members, effectively overturning their right to secret voting that is meant to protect one’s political privacy.
Moreover, it systemically favours the parties with existing parliamentary representation, such as Labor, the Liberal-Nationals and the Greens, which are exempt from this time-consuming and politically invasive registration process.
This bipartisan legislation, administered by the AEC, is a blatant bid to prop up the increasingly despised two-party system that has governed the country since World War II. In the 2022 federal election, the combined support for Labor and the Coalition fell below 68 percent, down from more than a 90 percent share in the 1950s.
Since then, the level of disillusionment has grown. All the polls indicate that the most likely outcome of the May 3 election is a hung parliament and an unstable minority government, with neither Labor or the Coalition able to take office without pledges of support from the Greens and/or various “independents.”
That is because of the most severe cost-of-living crisis since the 1950s, combined with the bipartisan support for the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza and unconditional alignment behind US militarism, which includes the war against Russia over Ukraine and the AUKUS pact to prepare for war against China.
The FOI rejection
After a powerful campaign last year, the SEP submitted a membership list of 1,546, well in excess of the arbitrary requirement of 1,500. Before doing so, we contacted members to re-confirm their willingness to have their names and details submitted to the AEC.
After an opaque process that dragged on for almost five months, the AEC claimed that, from a tiny sample of just 33 from the list submitted by the SEP, four had said they were not members when the AEC contacted them.
Citing bogus privacy concerns, the AEC has again refused, via the FOI process, to disclose to the SEP the names of the members who allegedly denied membership so that we can verify and challenge the AEC’s claims and, if necessary, submit a modified list.
That “privacy” pretext flies in the face of the fact that all the members gave their details to the SEP in the first place.
In rejecting the FOI application, the AEC went further, declaring that to give the names to the SEP would substantially harm the operations of the AEC and damage the “public interest.”
In the SEP’s FOI application to the AEC, submitted on February 21, National Secretary Cheryl Crisp sought the names of the SEP members whom the AEC asserted denied SEP membership.
One month later, in reply, the AEC cited two exemptions under the FOI Act. The first was section 47E, which exempts a document from disclosure if it would, or could reasonably be expected to, “have a substantial adverse effect on the proper and efficient conduct of the operations of an agency.”
The AEC insisted that to give the names to the SEP would “deter” people from indicating their party membership or non-membership, and this would “pose a real and substantial risk to the AEC’s ability to obtain this information and efficiently perform its legislative functions.”
But the greatest deterrence for workers and youth is having to provide their names to the AEC in the first place.
The second exemption cited by the AEC, section 47F of the FOI Act, refers to “the unreasonable disclosure of personal information about any person.” The AEC said the names were given to it “on the understanding that this personal information would not be made publicly available.”
Yet the SEP is not asking for the public disclosure of names! On the contrary, it is seeking the names of its own members, which it submitted to the AEC, in order to check the AEC’s untested claims of “denials.”
The AEC also dismissed the FOI Act’s requirement that documents exempted by these two sections must still be disclosed unless the agency proves that it would damage the “public interest.” Without any explanation, the AEC flatly asserted that the public interest in releasing the names to the SEP was “especially low.”
Also, without any providing any justification, the AEC declared that providing the names would not “aid the public in scrutinising, commenting or reviewing the activities of the AEC, nor would it further inform any public debate on a matter of importance.”
That shows clear contempt for the rights of the public, including de-registered parties, to scrutinise its decisions, which affect the fundamental democratic rights of parties, their members and voters.
This is in line with the AEC’s insistence on keeping its party registration decisions shrouded in secrecy. That includes refusing to give the public any information about the statistical methodology it uses to test party membership lists. This methodology, the SEP has proven, is deliberately opaque and inherently biased against parties applying for registration.
The AEC’s rejection of the SEP’s FOI application confirms that the ruling class is desperate to stifle the only progressive alternative to capitalism’s plunge into war, genocide and dictatorial oligarchic rule—that is a socialist program for the total overturn of this brutal social order.
To answer this attack and prepare for the convulsive struggles ahead after the election, we appeal to all workers and young people to become involved in our election campaign. Above all, we urge you to join the SEP and build it as the new mass party of the working class.
Authorised by Cheryl Crisp for the Socialist Equality Party, Level 1/457-459 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills, NSW, 2010, Australia.