The Rise Of Australasia - Chapter 167

Chapter 167: Chapter 162: Electoral Law, Party Law

On April 3rd, 1903, a piece of news from the Australian Government completely detonated the entire Australian political scene.

Since the establishment of Australia, political parties have never been discussed much in Australia, and the legality of political parties has never been determined.

This led to most Australian elections being held with individuals participating, and the influence of political parties has basically disappeared.

However, with the Australian government’s announcement on elections and political parties, the word party has once again entered everyone’s field of vision.

According to the new regulations of the Australian Government, political parties will be officially incorporated into the legal Australian election scope, that is, Australia will formally recognize the legality of political parties.

However, there’s one point to note: political parties must be reviewed and approved by the Upper House before they can be established and must accept the supervision of the Upper House.

If a political party is found to have engaged in favoritism and fraud during an election or violated the law, the Upper House has the right to punish the party, report it to Arthur, declare the party illegal, and forcibly dissolve the party.

The reason for the agreement that political parties are legal is because political parties are already very common and widely recognized in Europe. Furthermore, Australia, with its large number of European immigrants, naturally cannot avoid this trend, as political parties are also one of the demands of many Australians.

However, while granting citizens the right to participate in political parties and government activities, Arthur also retained his final trump card, that is, political parties are subject to the supervision of the Upper House and must be reviewed by the Upper House before they can be officially established and become a legal Australian political party.

The election of the Upper House is basically in Arthur’s hands, besides the current cabinet members, other members of the Upper House are appointed by Arthur.

Moreover, cabinet members ultimately need to be reviewed by Arthur and the Upper House, and they can only take office after being appointed.

By controlling the Upper House, Arthur actually controls the lifeline of political parties and is not worried about political parties having a subversive impact on Australia’s political situation.

The legality of political parties has brought about significant changes in the current situation in Australian politics, and it also delighted one faction, the Australian Labor Party, which was established over a decade ago.

The founding of the Australian Labor Party dates back to the Australian colonial period. It is a party formed by workers to unite for the promotion of Australian unity, and now it has evolved into organizing labor unions and protecting workers’ interests.

The Australian Labor Party was founded in the colonial period, but due to the successful establishment of the Australian Principality, the Labor Party disappeared for a while, fading away from the Australian political arena.

People even dared not claim that they were from the Australian Labor Party, as before Arthur declared the legality of political parties, all parties were hostile to the enthusiastic Australian people.

Now, due to the influx of a large number of immigrants into Australia, political parties have to be legal and given the right to participate in elections.

This has led to the previously established Australian Labor Party seeing the hope of entering Australian politics, as the advantages of political parties in elections far outweigh those of individuals.

Arthur is not surprised by this, nor is he opposed to Australians joining various political parties.

However, it is also necessary to impose restrictions on political parties. In addition to the review and supervision by the Upper House, political donations such as corruption and bribery are not allowed in any election and no fraud can occur.

In order to avoid the collusion between political parties and capitalists that has become common in European countries, Australia has even introduced electoral and party laws, and no political party is allowed to accept political donations privately, which would be equivalent to fraud in the election.

Such legislation actually protects the interests of small parties and impoverished people. In the elections of a certain world police in later generations, those who could hold large-scale rallies and speeches nationwide were often politicians supported by many capitalists.

Politicians without the support of capitalists don’t even have the funds to sustain a speech, and without speeches to campaign for themselves, who would know these aspiring but poor politicians?

Such elections directly put the rich and the poor in two situations: the rich have innate advantages and can speak freely.

For the poor, even holding a speech requires spending a fortune, and not many people can persist until the end of the election.

In a so-called free and democratic country, most of those who can participate in the elections are small-capital capitalists or puppets promoted by capitalists.

Whether it is the House of Commons or cabinet officials, Arthur absolutely does not allow capitalists to interfere.

The royal family can indeed give up some power to the people, but the term people refers to all common people in Australia, not capitalists.

There is only one way for Australian political parties to obtain funds, which is to appeal to their supporters to donate to the Election Federation, which is established and supervised by the Houses of Parliament. The Election Federation will allocate 70% of these funds according to the proportion of seats held by political parties in the House of Commons.

The remaining 30% will be evenly distributed to all registered legal political parties in Australia, allowing both large and small parties to taste the sweetness, and not be left without any development funds at all.

The amount of funds the parties can get depends on the proportion of seats in the House of Commons, which relies on the real abilities of the party members to campaign and compete for seats.

As the members of the Election Federation are composed of the royal family, the Cabinet Government, the Upper House, and the Lower House, and are ultimately responsible to the royal family and supervised by both Houses of Parliament, this is the most reassuring method at present.

After all, it is jointly supervised by the three largest Australian power institutions and the royal family, and has largely eliminated corruption and injustice.

In order to demonstrate the royal family’s support for political parties and fair elections, the royal family has specifically declared that it will donate ten thousand pounds to the Election Federation every year to support all political parties and those who participate in political parties.

This move also gained the enthusiastic support of the only political party in Australia at the moment, the Australian Labor Party, and indirectly promoted the development of Australian political parties.

According to the statistics of the Upper House, since the announcement of the legality of political parties and the enactment of the Election Law and Party Law in April, in just over two months, nearly twenty political party establishment applications were reviewed by the Upper House.

Although more than half of the political party applications were not approved, the reason was that their founding programs and goals were not beneficial to the livelihood and development of Australia, and even some mere whims made some people impulsively want to establish a political party.