Claims political parties are illegal deemed “obvious nonsense”
The leader of the unregistered AustraliaOne Party has claimed that political parties are actually illegal under the Australian constitution - but experts have hit back, declaring his claims as false and “obvious nonsense”.
In a video interview shared on Facebook and YouTube, Riccardo Bosi makes the claim that “parties are actually illegal under the constitution”.
“Just because we have it doesn’t mean it’s legal… The constitution actually says you must direct the elector - that’s you, don’t call yourself a voter, call yourself an elector - the elector must directly elect their representative,” he says at around the four-minute mark of the nearly two-hour-long video.
“Now, when you put a party in there, it has interposed itself between the elector and the representative, which is unconstitutional.”
Riccardo Bosi (right) says that political parties are unconstitutional in Australia. Image: YouTube
Experts have since weighed in, with Professor Graeme Orr, an expert in electoral law at the University of Queensland, telling AAP FactCheck that Mr Bosi’s claims were “obvious nonsense at many levels”.
“The claim that political parties are illegal under the Australian Constitution is false,” Dr Ben Saunders, an associate professor at Deakin Law School, said, adding that “the constitution does not attempt to prohibit the existence of political parties in any way”.
Professor Orr explained that Mr Bosi’s argument that “the elector must directly elect their representative” also has no bearing on whether political parties exist and that it refers to having elections.
“‘Directly’ chosen simply means there must be an election with the names of possible MPs on the ballot,” he said.
Mr Bosi’s claims come after he unsuccessfully stood for the seat of Greenway in western Sydney during May’s federal election, receiving just 3.25 percent of votes.
Under Section 15 of the constitution, which is the only part to explicitly mention political parties, it notes that if a senator leaves a vacancy and “he was publicly recognised by a particular political party as being an endorsed candidate of that party”, the person who fills that vacancy “shall… be a member of that party”.
Citing this section, Professor Anne Twomey, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Sydney, told AAP it is “implausible to argue that political parties are illegal under the constitution”.
Even Australia’s first Prime Minister, Edmund Barton, was a member of a political party called the Protectionist Party.
Dr Saunders added: “Far from being illegal, the existence of parties was in fact a key assumption upon which our constitution was built.”
Image: Getty Images