The Law Governing Australian Political Parties: Regulating the Golems

Abstract

This chapter is broken into four domains: party registration, political finance, electioneering rules and common or contract law (of party's internal affairs). The 1990s trend to 'juridification' has not come to pass, as this law, mostly statutory, is within the parliamentary parties' control. Parties retain considerable flexibility; the deeper 'grundnorm' that shapes parties, which are primarily constituted as electoral actors or 'brands', is the broader voting system. Which in Australia is compulsory and largely majoritarian. Parties are ultimately like the Golems of central European mythology: powerful beasts of somewhat indeterminate shape, which hover between being of service to human society and threatening it.

Keywords: Political Parties, Elections Law, Regulation of Parties