# AU political parties vs. the accountability framework's governance-mechanism test

**Status:** research + assessment only. Nothing added to the Democracy Landscape as a result of this entry — see "Open editorial question" at the end.

## What was asked

Pirate Party Australia is already in the Democracy Landscape, included because
its platform *is* democracy/transparency reform. The human founder asked,
in the interest of fairness: did other Australian parties — starting with
Victorian Socialists, Greens, Labor, Liberals, One Nation, then widened
deliberately to avoid skewing toward centrist minors — do anything notable
enough in the democracy-reform space to warrant the same consideration?

## Method

The test applied is the one in `docs/projects/accountability-framework/index.md`,
specifically the "what this means in practice" section: an org belongs if it
is *working on how people participate in governance — mechanisms,
structures, reforms, accountability systems* — not general policy positions,
and not "is this party good," which would be exactly the kind of partisan
judgment DOD's non-partisanship commits it not to make.

Three general-purpose research agents ran in parallel (web search, current
sources, not relying on model training data for anything time-sensitive):

- Batch 1: Victorian Socialists, Australian Greens, One Nation, Katter's
  Australian Party
- Batch 2: Labor (ALP), Liberal Party/Coalition, Jacqui Lambie Network,
  Centre Alliance
- Batch 3 (added specifically to widen ideological range after the human
  flagged that batches 1–2 skewed toward centrist minors): Reason Party,
  Animal Justice Party, Legalise Cannabis Australia, Socialist Alliance,
  Shooters Fishers and Farmers Party

Each was asked for specific, sourced, *sustained* actions — not platform
rhetoric — and explicitly asked to report negative/counter-evidence with
equal weight, not just build a case for inclusion.

## Findings

| Party | Verdict | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Australian Greens | Strongest case | 10-year campaign for a federal anti-corruption body, won amendments (inspector oversight powers) when the NACC bill passed the Senate Nov 2022 ([Greens release](https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/nacc-bill-passes-senate-historic-vote-critical-greens-amends-integrity)); truth-in-political-advertising bill modeled on SA law ([Greens](https://greens.org.au/act/news/greens-push-truth-electoral-advertising)); sustained donations-cap / contractor-donor-ban campaign ("Clean Up Politics" — [greens.org.au](https://greens.org.au/campaigns/clean-politics)) |
| Labor (ALP) | Real but mixed | Legislated the National Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2022 ([legislation.gov.au](https://www.legislation.gov.au/Series/C2022A00088)) and donation-disclosure reform — but Transparency International Australia, the Centre for Public Integrity and others jointly criticised the "exceptional circumstances" public-hearings threshold as too restrictive ([joint statement](https://transparency.org.au/joint-statement-on-the-national-anti-corruption-commission-bill-2022/)); 25+ private hearings, zero public, as of Dec 2025 ([The New Daily](https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics/2025/12/18/helen-haines-nacc)). Counterweight: factional control of preselections persists despite internal reform pushes (Andrew Leigh's public criticism of the "duopoly" — [The Conversation](https://theconversation.com/andrew-leigh-calls-out-how-labors-factional-duopoly-is-undermining-the-party-209972); John Faulkner's stalled one-member-one-vote push) |
| Jacqui Lambie Network | Borderline | Sustained, specific criticism of integrity-body design since 2018, across both the Coalition's CIC proposal ("lap dog with dentures" — [Canberra Times](https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6998300/lambie-lashes-proposed-corruption-watchdog/)) and Labor's NACC. Claims a donations-disclosure bill on its own site; parliamentary progress not independently verified |
| Liberal Party / Coalition | Cuts against | No positive record found. Sourced opposition to real-time donation disclosure (federal director called it "too onerous" in 2019 — [Canberra Times](https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6512005/liberal-party-pushes-back-against-real-time-donations-disclosure/)); opposed Labor's truth-in-advertising bill; own federal integrity-commission proposal (2018/19, never passed) widely criticised as designed to hold only private hearings with no public tip-off pathway ([Crikey](https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/05/17/scott-morrison-promise-federal-icac-with-teeth-haunts-coalition/)) |
| One Nation | Cuts against | No positive governance-reform record found. AEC compliance action forced withdrawal of $800k+ in contested election-spending claims after ~140 unjustified items ([The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jun/29/one-nation-pauline-hanson-election-funding-withdrawals-aec-ntwnfb)) |
| Victorian Socialists | Genuine internal democracy, no external reform advocacy | Constitutional commitment to "party democracy, freedom of debate and the principle of 'one member one vote'" ([VS Our Aims](https://www.victoriansocialists.org.au/about/our-aims), adopted Jan 2024 as part of the party constitution). June 2025 members' conference (360 attendees) voted to expand local democratic structures into electorate-based branches; the Communist Caucus, a minority faction, ran an alternative leadership slate and structural proposals, was given platform time, and lost at vote — competitive democratic practice, not just paper commitment ([Red Flag](https://redflag.org.au/article/victorian-socialists-conference-resolves-to-expand-party-organisation/)). No sustained external advocacy for governance reform found — consistent with VS's position that parliament cannot be meaningfully reformed under capitalism. This is not a gap in their record so much as a different theory of democratic change: internal practice as prefiguration of the society they want, rather than reform of existing institutions. See [Analysis note](#vs-analysis) below. |
| Katter's Australian Party | Too thin | Repeated calls for decentralising federal departments out of Canberra ([bobkatter.com.au](https://www.bobkatter.com.au/katter-calls-for-decentralisation-of-govt-departments-following-self-absorbing-budget)) and one referendum push (North Queensland partition, Dec 2020) — policy positions, not a sustained reform program |
| Centre Alliance | Mostly legacy | Down to one MP (Rebekha Sharkie, "a party of one" — [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_Alliance)); current focus is gambling-harm, not governance mechanisms; the Xenophon-era donations-reform reputation is not confirmed as a current, live activity |
| Reason Party | N/A — defunct | Genuinely qualifying record: Fiona Patten actively negotiated Victoria's 2018 donations-reform bill (capped donations, banned foreign donations, lowered disclosure threshold from $13,500 to $1,000, near-real-time publication — [SBS](https://www.sbs.com.au/news/vic-political-donations-reform-falters)), and specifically flagged the reform's asymmetric effect on minor parties as a competition-integrity issue. But the party **voluntarily deregistered with the VEC in March 2024** and cannot re-register under a similar name before the 2026 Victorian election ([Canberra Times](https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8547843/prominent-ex-victorian-mp-rules-out-political-comeback/)). Nothing left to add. |
| Animal Justice Party | No | Platform states general "transparency" and "participatory democracy" commitments only as applied to animal-welfare decision-making, not as an independent governance-reform campaign |
| Legalise Cannabis Australia | No | Confirmed single-issue party; no sourced record on electoral reform, donations transparency, or internal democracy |
| Socialist Alliance | No | Very marginal (~0.08% of the 2022 House vote); self-describes commitment to "radical democracy" but no sourced specifics found |
| Shooters, Fishers and Farmers | Cuts against | Documented as a paying participant (2013 federal election) in Glenn Druery's "Minor Party Alliance" preference-harvesting operation — reported by the Daily Telegraph ("Alliance of micro parties boosts odds for likes of One Nation or Shooters and Fishers," Sep 2013) as cited in [Wikipedia: Glenn Druery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Druery). Group-voting-ticket arrangements that election-integrity advocates like Antony Green have campaigned to abolish. The opposite of transparency reform, not neutral. |

### VS analysis

*(Added after counter-feedback from a VS member, who argued the original "too thin" finding missed the depth of the party's democratic practice and its deliberate choice not to produce reformist advocacy.)*

VS's internal democratic mechanisms are constitutionally enshrined and practiced — OMOV, competitive leadership elections, minority-faction platform rights. This is not just stronger on paper than Labor (which weights MP votes over member votes in preselections, and where factional control persists despite reform pushes) or the Greens (whose leadership selection does not involve the wider membership). It is stronger in practice too — the June 2025 conference gave a minority faction real time and a real vote, which is more than most parties claiming internal democracy actually do.

The real tension with the framework is the "what this means in practice" test: *is this org working on how people participate in governance?* VS works on this internally — they prefigure a democratic structure inside their own organisation. They do not work on it externally in the reformist sense (campaigns for electoral reform, anti-corruption bodies, donations transparency), and they wouldn't — their theory of change holds that parliament cannot be meaningfully reformed under capitalism, so external advocacy takes the form of building a democratic workers' movement, not patching existing institutions.

The framework's internal vs. external distinction isn't explicitly drawn. Your Party (UK) — the closest international comparator, also explicitly socialist and member-based — got into the Landscape on one structural innovation (sortition-selected conference delegates). VS has more democratic mechanisms, but they're traditional electoral-democracy tools applied internally rather than a novel mechanism. The framework doesn't privilege novelty, but the audit's method (searching for external reform advocacy) effectively did.

Whether prefigurative internal democracy qualifies under "working on how people participate in governance" is a framework question the current text doesn't answer — it's an instance of the same gap flagged in the editorial question below, just from the inside-out direction rather than the general-purpose-party direction.

## The open editorial question

This is the part the research can't resolve, and it's the reason nothing
was added to the Landscape from this entry.

Pirate Party Australia fits the Landscape because democracy/transparency
reform *is* its platform — the whole reason the party exists. The Greens
(clearly the strongest case above), and to a lesser extent Labor and the
Jacqui Lambie Network, have a *real, sourced, sustained* record on
governance mechanisms specifically — but for all three, that record is one
plank in a much broader multi-issue platform aimed at winning general
elections and governing across every policy area, not an organisation whose
purpose is democracy reform.

Adding a general-purpose party on the strength of a genuine partial record
sets a different kind of precedent than adding a specialist reform org: it
raises the question of where the line sits for every other major party with
*any* governance-adjacent policy, in a way that a single-purpose
organisation's inclusion doesn't. That's a decision about what the
Landscape is *for*, not a factual question the sourcing above can settle.

Options, not yet decided:

1. Don't add any general-purpose party, on the theory that Pirate Party's
   inclusion rests on a categorical difference (reform-as-platform) that no
   other party here shares, however strong their partial record.
2. Add the Greens only, as the one case where the record is genuinely
   sustained and multi-front, accepting the precedent question as a cost
   worth paying for accuracy/fairness toward a real record.
3. Treat this as a topic for a heartbeat "Framework notes" entry instead —
   the friction here (does a strong partial record in a general-purpose
   party qualify an org built around many other things too) is itself a
   gap in how the framework's "what this means in practice" section is
   worded, worth flagging to the framework rather than resolving ad hoc
   per-party.

No recommendation made here on which of these to take — flagged for the
human founder to decide, given the political sensitivity of adding any
electoral party (across the spectrum) to a nonpartisan site's curated
directory.
