The Great Australian Party is a

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology ...

in Australia. The party was formally registered by the

Australian Electoral Commission The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is the independent federal agency in charge of organising, conducting and supervising federal Australian elections, by-elections and referendums. Responsibilities The AEC's main responsibility is to ...

(AEC) on 7 April 2019
and is associated with former senator

Rod Culleton Rodney Norman Culleton (born 5 June 1964) is an Australian politician who was sworn in and sat as a Senator for Western Australia following the 2016 federal election. At that time he was a member of the Pauline Hanson's One Nation party, but o ...

who had been elected in the

2016 Australian federal election The 2016 Australian federal election was a double dissolution election held on Saturday 2 July to elect all 226 members of the 45th Parliament of Australia, 45th Parliament of Australia, after an extended eight-week official campaign period. It ...

as a senator for Western Australia, but subsequently found to have been ineligible and was disqualified.

Policies and philosophy

Policies of the party include the abolition of

personal income tax An income tax is a tax imposed on individuals or entities (taxpayers) in respect of the income or profits earned by them (commonly called taxable income). Income tax generally is computed as the product of a tax rate times the taxable income. Ta ...

, nationalisation of the

Commonwealth Bank The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), or CommBank, is an Australian multinational bank with businesses across New Zealand, Asia, the United States and the United Kingdom. It provides a variety of financial services including retail, busines ...

and abolition of the

Family Court of Australia The Family Court of Australia was a superior Australian federal court of record which deals with family law matters, such as divorce applications, parenting disputes, and the division of property when a couple separate. Together with the Fede ...

. The party also proposes to implement trials by jury only in criminal matters, naming of young criminals who are serial offenders and the restoration of the "true" Constitution of Australia. This is despite numerous court decisions confirming the validity of the Australian Constitution.
Culleton has on numerous occasions declared the Australian Constitution is invalid and thus so are Australian courts. However in 2018 in complete contradiction whilst representing himself in recent bankruptcy proceedings being heard in the Federal Court of Australia, Culleton commenced his opening address by confirming the authority of the Federal Court of Australia by stating: "This Honourable Court has the power delegated to it by the Parliament of the Commonwealth under S 39B(1A) (b) and (c) Judiciary Act 1903 and by S 34AB (c) Acts Interpretation Act 1901..." The party further proposes a policy that criminal offenders would have sale of their property used as a possible deterrent. This policy contradicts the actions of Wayne Glew, the lead candidate for the Senate in Western Australia in 2019, who had previously made attempts to prevent the seizure and sale of his own residential property due to outstanding rates and levies owed by him to the City of Greater Geraldton. Glew had refused to pay council rates and levies since as early as 2005. This led Glew to mount repeated failed applications in the Magistrates' Court and Suprem Court in Western Australia. Glew's residential property was subsequently seized and transferred to the City of Greater Geraldton.

History

Culleton continued to refer to himself as a "senator-in-exile" and sought to appeal his disqualification to the

Judicial Committee of the Privy Council The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) is the highest court of appeal for the Crown Dependencies, the British Overseas Territories, some Commonwealth countries and a few institutions in the United Kingdom. Established on 14 Augus ...

in the United Kingdom; appeals to it from Australian courts had (for all practical purposes) been abolished by the

Australia Act Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by a ...

of 1986.

2019 election

In 2018, Culleton initiated the process to establish a new political party, The Great Australian Party, to stand candidates for the Senate at the

2019 Australian federal election The 2019 Australian federal election was held on Saturday 18 May 2019 to elect members of the 46th Parliament of Australia. The election had been called following the dissolution of the 45th Parliament as elected at the 2016 double dissolut ...

. The AEC registered the party on 7 April 2019. The party fielded two Senate candidates in each of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia but did not gain a seat in parliament. The Party's national first preference vote in the Senate was 0.23% (34,199 votes), ranging from 1.16% (12,698 votes) in South Australia to 0.14% (5,194 votes) in Victoria, while in Culleton's home state of Western Australia it received 0.22% (3,196 votes), less than two hundredths of the votes required for election. On 24 April 2019, the AEC referred Culleton's Senate nomination form to the

Australian Federal Police The Australian Federal Police (AFP) is the national and principal federal law enforcement agency of the Australian Government with the unique role of investigating crime and protecting the national security of the Commonwealth of Australia. Th ...

"to examine if a false declaration has been made under provisions of the Criminal Code Act 1995, relating to his status as an undischarged bankrupt and the prima facie disqualification of such persons to be chosen or to sit as a Senator or Member of the House of Representatives under section 44(iii) of the Constitution". The AEC stated that, while it did not have power to reject a fully completed nomination form or to make its own assessment of a candidate's eligibility, it had been aware from a High Court judgment that Culleton had been a declared bankrupt and, upon checking the National Personal Insolvency Index, had found that he was currently listed as an undischarged bankrupt. In May 2019, the AEC determined that Culleton's Party was eligible for public funding, despite a bankrupt being "incapable of being chosen" as a member of Parliament. The AEC also stated they did not have the power to decide if a candidate is ineligible. On 8 May 2019 a group of intoxicated Great Australian Party supporters campaigning outside a polling booth in Cockburn, WA verbally abused a 70 year old woman and her husband. One of the group of approximately eight Great Australian Party supporters, wearing a high-visibility vest displaying a Great Australian Party logo, was observed being drunk and aggressive and taunting voters to fight him. Police were required to attend to intervene. In a later statement Culleton denied the supporters were registered with the Party. This contradicts the reported statements of bystanders, voters and members of other parties who had observed Great Australian Party supporters spruiking AEC approved materials and wearing high-visibility vests displaying Great Australian Party logos.

Wayne Glew

The Party's other Senate candidate in Western Australia was Wayne Glew, a former police officer who is a "self-proclaimed expert of the constitution". Glew has been a claimant, defendant or appellant in at least 16 Court proceedings in which he has argued against the validity of the Australian Constitution. Glew has not been successful in a single proceeding to date. This resulted in Glew being declared a vexatious litigant by the

Supreme Court of Western Australia The Supreme Court of Western Australia is the highest state court in the Australian State of Western Australia. It has unlimited jurisdiction within the state in civil matters (although it usually only hears matters involving sums of A$750,00 ...

and being prevented from initiating any further Court proceedings in Western Australia. On 23 December 2011 Glew was convicted in the Geraldton Magistrates' Court of one offence of assaulting a public officer and one offence of obstructing an officer in the execution of his duty. Glew provided legal advice to Heather Glendinning, who killed herself and her two daughters in a murder–suicide in 2011. He subsequently told ''

The West Australian ''The West Australian'' is the only locally edited daily newspaper published in Perth, Western Australia. It is owned by Seven West Media (SWM), as is the state's other major newspaper, ''The Sunday Times''. It is the second-oldest continuousl ...

'' that she had been murdered, and that "I spent 17 years in the police and you can make anything look like anything". In 2012, Glew was ordered to pay $2 million in damages to an investor in his fuel vaporiser system. The Supreme Court found that his invention "offered no benefit over existing fuel systems" and that he had engaged in "deceptive and misleading conduct".

2022 election

On 12 February 2021, Culleton announced that controversial former celebrity chef

Pete Evans Peter Daryl Evans (born 29 August 1973) is an Australian chef, and former television presenter, who was a former judge of the competitive cooking show ''My Kitchen Rules''. Evans has been heavily criticised for spreading misinformation about ...

had joined the party and would be the candidate for the Senate in New South Wales at the next federal election. By October, however, Evans had pulled out. In the 2022 federal election, the party received 0.55% of Senate first preference votes across Australia.

References

{{Australian political parties 2018 establishments in Australia Political parties established in 2018

Great Australian Party The Great Australian Party is a political party in Australia. The party was formally registered by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) on 7 April 2019 and is associated with former senator Rod Culleton who had been elected in the 2016 Aus ...