AUSTRALIA—The Australian Sex Party has been excluded from running as a registered party in the Queensland state elections, which take place March 24. Party President Fiona Patten said that under the laws set by the Queensland Parliament to determine whether a party had the required number of registered members, it had failed to get 500 of its 1,700 members in Queensland to write a confirmation letter back to the Queensland Electoral Commission. The party had sent a list of 750 statutory declarations with member’s names and addresses but only 250 were willing to right back.
“We have 1,700 bona fide members in Queensland who have all signed a statutory declaration to say that they are members of the Australian Sex Party,” she said. “If the Queensland government needs more proof than that, they should have a number of different tests on board to determine that—not just a demand for a personal reply. It is completely unfair that someone like Bob Katter can register a party in Queensland just because he is a sitting member of another parliament and doesn’t have to prove any members at all.”
The federal parliament requires that the Australian Electoral Commission make 20 phone calls on a list of 500 submitted names. “The Queensland Electoral Commission should have been able to use other means, like the federal test, as an alternative to test the party’s bona fides,” she said. “The use of one personal letter to test party numbers in this day and age is completely undemocratic and is a clear breach of Sex Party member’s democratic rights under the Constitution.”
Patten said that she believed that many members of the party were reluctant to give a personal reply to the Queensland government because they may have had adult material in their homes that was illegal in Queensland, although not in other states.
“Queensland has the most draconian censorship laws in Australia and many people join the Sex Party because they are concerned about government intervention in their personal lives,” added Patten. “It’s no wonder that they didn’t want to personally communicate with the Queensland government—especially those who remember the Moonlight state—but that in no way indicates that we do not have a minimum of 500 signed up members and meet the eligibility criteria to register in Qld.”
Patten missed out on winning a Victorian Upper House seat by only 2,000 votes during the last state election. During the last federal election, the party polled over 5 percent of the vote in the NT and, averaged across the states where it contested the last Senate election, came in with the fourth-highest vote after the major parties.
“Our preferences in the Queensland election could well have decided the outcome,” she said. “Being denied our rightful opportunity to contest this election means we will look at our legal options both before and after the poll.”
Though not exactly the same situation, similar methods have been used in the United States for decades to disenfranchise voters in various states around the nation, mostly with the goal of targeting minorities, who tend statistically to vote Democratic.
Though the U.S. has many political parties, some national and some limited to state or regional affiliation, it does not currently have a sex party per se. Maybe it’s time to correct that omission.
