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Australian Electoral Commission
File reference: Reg5121, 13/397
The delegate of the Australian Electoral Commission determined that the application to register The Burger Urge Party under the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 should be refused.
Each application for party registration is assessed against a list of the tests that are based on the legal provisions of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 (Electoral Act) or Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) policy.
The AEC received an application from the Party on 13 May 2013. On 22 May 2013, the AEC issued a notice under s.131 of the Electoral Act advising the Party that after initial testing it could not find at least 500 members of the party that were on the Commonwealth Electoral Roll (the Electoral Roll), as required under section 123(1)(a)(ii) of the Electoral Act. The AEC also advised the Party of deficiencies in its constitution.
On 5 June 2013, the Party responded to the notice with a revised membership list and constitution. The amended constitution addressed the concerns raised by the notice under s.131.
Section 123 of the Electoral Act requires a non-Parliamentary party to have at least 500 members on the Electoral Roll before the party is eligible for registration.
To ascertain whether the submitted members are on the Electoral Roll, the membership list is first checked against a database of the Electoral Roll using automatic matching software. Manual matches are then conducted by AEC staff to account for typographical and data errors such as misspelt names or incorrectly entered dates of birth.
AEC staff then contact a random sample of members to ensure that those members will confirm that they are members of the party applying for registration. The random sample is drawn from the membership list in accordance with advice from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The membership testing table can be found at Appendix 3 of the AEC’s Party Registration Guide.
The AEC test of the revised membership list indicated that 500 members could be used to support the Party’s application. In accordance with advice provided by the ABS, a random sample of 18 members was contacted. Five of these people denied being members of the Party. The five denials were too many for the AEC to be satisfied that the Party had 500 eligible members to support its application for party registration.
The AEC tested a random sample from the membership list lodged by the Party on 5 June 2013, but too many people in the random sample denied being members of the Party.
On 18 June 2013, a delegate of the AEC refused an application from The Burger Urge Party (the Party) for registration as a political party under the provisions of Part XI of the Electoral Act.
18 June 2013
The AEC acknowledges the Traditional Owners of country throughout Australia and recognises their continuing connection to land, waters, culture and community. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.