News 2 February – My election guide for the WA election has now been published.
Updates
5 February – the proposal to re-name “Daylight Saving Party” as “Daylight Saving Party – the National Liberals” with ballot paper abbreviation “National Liberals” was rejected.
2 February – the first of the contentious name change applications has been approved. The Flux Party will now appear on ballot papers as ‘Liberals for Climate’.
29 January – registration of Great Australian Party and Legalise Cannabis Western Australia Party approved.
19 January – the Small Business Party name change to WAXit Party has been approved.
13 January – the No Mandatory Vaccination Party has now been registered.
In December 2020 I published posts on controversial applications to change the names of two Western Australian political parties. Both applications are attempts by minor parties to adopt ballot paper party names that could easily be confused with the Liberal Party.
The first post dealt with an application by Flux the System! to appear on ballot papers as Liberals for Climate. The second was an application by the Daylight Saving Party to appear on ballot papers as the National Liberals. There is also a good article on the applications on the ABC News site.
Both changes, plus applications to register new parties, indicate that WA voters are set to face large upper house ballot papers from a record number of registered parties. It’s all part of a typical preference harvesting strategy by minor and micro-parties, still possible in Western Australia as the state continues to use group ticket voting to elect the Legislative Council.
Such arranged preference deals were abolished federally with reform of the Senate’s electoral system in 2016.
To keep track of what’s going on as the WA election approaches, I’ll use this post to follow the late rush of applications to change and/or register parties.
Read More »Updating the Parties Registered to Contest the 2021 Western Australian Election