Nuclear Disarmament Party
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The Nuclear Disarmament Party (NDP) was an Australian political party formed in June 1984. It was founded by medical researcher
Michael Denborough Michael Antony Denborough (11 July 19298 February 2014) was an Australian academic and medical researcher who founded the Nuclear Disarmament Party. Denborough was born in Salisbury, Zimbabwe, Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) to Paul P ...
as the political arm of the Australian anti-nuclear movement, which had been active since the early 1970s. The NDP primarily attracted left-wing Labor Party voters who were disillusioned with Bob Hawke's pro-nuclear stance. At the 1984 federal election, the NDP polled 7.23 percent of the total
Senate A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
vote, electing
Jo Vallentine Josephine Vallentine (born 30 May 1946) is an Australian peace activist and politician, a former senator for Western Australia. She entered the Senate on 1 July 1985 after election as a member of the Nuclear Disarmament Party but sat as an ind ...
as a senator for
Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...
. However, Vallentine resigned from the party before taking her seat, due to allegations of a takeover by
Trotskyists Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a re ...
affiliated with the Socialist Workers Party. The NDP's vote collapsed to 1.1 percent at the 1987 election – a double dissolution.
Robert Wood Robert Wood may refer to: Art * Robert E. Wood (painter, born 1971), Canadian landscape artist * Robert William Wood (1889–1979), American landscape artist * Robert Wood (artist), accused and acquitted of the Camden Town murder Military * R ...
was elected as a senator for
New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...
, but after less than a year in office was disqualified by the
Court of Disputed Returns The Court of Disputed Returns is a court, tribunal, or some other body that determines disputes about elections in some common law countries. The court may be known by another name such as the Court of Disputed Elections. In countries that derive ...
and replaced by Irina Dunn. However, Dunn was expelled from the party after less than a month in office, and like Vallentine served out the rest of her term as an independent. The NDP had no electoral success after 1987, and the 1990 election was the last at which the party ran a serious campaign. After several years of inactivity, the party was revived for the 1998 election. It attracted little support in its second manifestation, and was eventually formally disbanded in December 2009, when it voluntarily relinquished its registration with 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). In the meantime, many of its initial members had either returned to the Labor Party or become involved with the Australian Greens.


Foundation, the 1984 election, and the split

The NDP was founded by
Canberra Canberra ( ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The ci ...
doctor and peace activist
Michael Denborough Michael Antony Denborough (11 July 19298 February 2014) was an Australian academic and medical researcher who founded the Nuclear Disarmament Party. Denborough was born in Salisbury, Zimbabwe, Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) to Paul P ...
in response to the world political situation in the early 1980s, particularly the arms race between the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
under
Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
and the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
. Such activists were disappointed that the
Australian Labor Party The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also simply known as Labor, is the major centre-left political party in Australia, one of two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia. The party forms the f ...
government of Bob Hawke, elected in 1983, had not taken a stronger stance against the policies of the U.S., and also that Hawke had overturned a long-standing ALP policy not to mine uranium, and had allowed mining in South Australia at Olympic Dam near
Roxby Downs Roxby Downs may refer to. * Roxby Downs, South Australia, a town and a locality * Roxby Council, formerly Municipal Council of Roxby Downs, a local government area See also *Roxby Downs Station Roxby Downs Station was a pastoral lease in centra ...
, which has since become one of the largest uranium mines in the world. At the December 1984 federal election the NDP received 643,061 votes (7.23% of the total), and exceeded 4% in every state except Tasmania, where it received 3.9%. Amongst the NDP candidates were
Peter Garrett Peter Robert Garrett (born 16 April 1953) is an Australian musician, environmentalist, activist and former politician. In 1973, Garrett became the lead singer of the Australian rock band Midnight Oil. As a performer he is known for his signa ...
, a rock singer, and Jean Melzer, a former Victorian ALP senator. Garrett polled 9.6% of the vote in NSW, and Melzer polled 7.3% in Victoria. Because of an adverse distribution of preferences (see
Australian electoral system The Australian electoral system comprises the laws and processes used for the election of members of the Australian Parliament and is governed primarily by the ''Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918''. The system presently has a number of distincti ...
), neither Garrett nor Melzer was elected. However,
Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...
n peace activist
Jo Vallentine Josephine Vallentine (born 30 May 1946) is an Australian peace activist and politician, a former senator for Western Australia. She entered the Senate on 1 July 1985 after election as a member of the Nuclear Disarmament Party but sat as an ind ...
was elected to the Senate. In April 1985, Vallentine, Garrett and Melzer, along with 30 other members, walked out of the national conference in Melbourne and resigned from the NDP, claiming that the party had been taken over by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a
Trotskyist Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a rev ...
group. In the wake of the split, Vallentine became an independent 'senator for nuclear disarmament' and went on to be re-elected as a ‘Vallentine Peace Group’ candidate in the double dissolution election of 1987.


1985 Nunawading by-election

Due to a tied vote in the
Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada * Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory * Victoria, Seychelle ...
n upper house province of Nunawading, and having the winning vote drawn from a hat, a Labor government for the first time in its history had control of the
Victorian Legislative Council The Victorian Legislative Council (VLC) is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Victoria, Australia, the lower house being the Legislative Assembly. Both houses sit at Parliament House in Spring Street, Melbourne. The Legislative C ...
. A fresh election was ordered by the Court of Disputed Returns. The Liberals won re-election and Labor lost its slim majority. Within a week of polling day Mr Martin Peake, Chairman of the Victorian Nuclear Disarmament Party, lodged an official complaint with the Chief Electoral Officer of Victoria, about a deceptive NDP how to vote card handed out at the booths. In essence, the Victorian ALP state secretary organised forged NDP how-to-vote cards and members of the Labor Party were recognised handing out this card and that the allocation of preferences to the ALP on the card damaged the NDP. The government entered a cover-up to protect its state secretary
Peter Batchelor Peter John Batchelor (born 21 September 1950) is a former Australian politician who served as an Australian Labor Party member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly seat of Thomastown from 1990 until 2010. Batchelor was born in western Sydney ...
and the Labor party. As police investigated the case, the culprits blamed the Socialist Workers Party.


1987 federal election and aftermath

After this the NDP consisted of a group of activists led by Denborough. At the July 1987 federal election, the party's Senate vote in New South Wales fell from 9.6% to 1.5%. However, after distribution of preferences from other minor parties, the NDP's
Robert Wood Robert Wood may refer to: Art * Robert E. Wood (painter, born 1971), Canadian landscape artist * Robert William Wood (1889–1979), American landscape artist * Robert Wood (artist), accused and acquitted of the Camden Town murder Military * R ...
received more than the 7.7% quota, and hence was duly elected. In May 1988, however, Wood, who was born in the United Kingdom, was disqualified from membership of the Senate on the grounds that he had not been an Australian citizen at the time of nomination. Wood's seat was won on a recount of the ballots by the second candidate on the NDP ticket in NSW, Irina Dunn. When Wood was subsequently granted Australian citizenship he became eligible to be a member of parliament. The New South Wales Branch of the NDP asked Dunn to resign so they could seek to have Wood appointed to fill the casual vacancy. This might have allowed Wood to re-enter the Senate, but Dunn refused, citing various difficulties and risks with this scenario. The NDP state branch passed a vote of no confidence in her, and she resigned from the party on 22 August 1988, the day she was sworn in to the senate. Like Wood and Vallentine, Dunn described herself as a ''Senator for Nuclear Disarmament'' having already distanced herself from the NDP. She lost her Senate place at the 1990 election.


Later years and demise

At the 1990 election, the NDP only ran candidates in New South Wales, the
Australian Capital Territory The Australian Capital Territory (commonly abbreviated as ACT), known as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) until 1938, is a landlocked federal territory of Australia containing the national capital Canberra and some surrounding townships. ...
, and the
Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory ...
. Robert Wood was the lead candidate in New South Wales, and polled 1.04% of the statewide senate vote – more than Irina Dunn's independent ticket, but not nearly enough to be elected. The NDP was voluntarily deregistered 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 23 April 1992. It was re-registered on 7 May 1998, and stood candidates at another four federal elections ( 1998, 2001, 2004, and 2007) before again being voluntarily deregistered in December 2009.Nuclear Disarmament Party of Australia
Australian Electoral Commission


See also

*
Anti-nuclear movement in Australia Nuclear weapons testing, uranium mining and export, and nuclear power have often been the subject of public debate in Australia, and the anti-nuclear movement in Australia has a long history. Its origins date back to the 1972–1973 debate ove ...
*
British nuclear tests at Maralinga Between 1956 and 1963, the United Kingdom conducted seven nuclear tests at the Maralinga site in South Australia, part of the Woomera Prohibited Area about north west of Adelaide. Two major test series were conducted: Operation Buffalo in 195 ...
*
Campaign Against Nuclear Energy The Campaign Against Nuclear Energy (CANE) was established in Perth, Western Australia on 14 February 1976 by Friends of the Earth (FOE). It included Peter Brotherton, John Carlin, Mike Thomas and Barrie Machin. CANE was a non-profit grass root ...
*
New Zealand's nuclear-free zone In 1984, Prime Minister David Lange banned nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed ships from using New Zealand ports or entering New Zealand waters. Under the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987, territorial sea, la ...
*
Nuclear disarmament Nuclear may refer to: Physics Relating to the Atomic nucleus, nucleus of the atom: *Nuclear engineering *Nuclear physics *Nuclear power *Nuclear reactor *Nuclear weapon *Nuclear medicine *Radiation therapy *Nuclear warfare Mathematics *Nuclear ...
*
Uranium mining controversy in Kakadu National Park Kakadu National Park, located in the Northern Territory of Australia, possesses within its boundaries a number of large uranium deposits. The uranium is legally owned by the Australian Government, and is sold internationally, having a large eff ...


References


External links


Nuclear Disarmament Party website as at 7 March 2008
before organisation's webpage ceased to operate.


Newsletter

* Newsletter (Nuclear Disarmament Party (Australia). A.C.T. Branch). . No. 1 (
984 Year 984 ( CMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * Spring – German boy-king Otto III (4-years old) is seized by the deposed Henry II ...
-no. 38 (Dec. 1991) {{Authority control Anti–nuclear weapons movement Nuclear weapons policy Political parties established in 1984 Green political parties in Australia Defunct political parties in Australia Political parties disestablished in 2009