One Nation Resurgence: Candidate Rollout and Media Bans

Here is what the record holds on the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Reform) Bill 2024 and minor party registration.

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What the record shows on minor party registration

The bill's procedural status. The bill passed the Senate on 12 February 2025 (second reading, committee stage, and third reading all on that day) and was the subject of a Consideration of Senate Message in the House on 13 February 2025 [TA-250212-senate-854ac52684fb:s194]. No royal assent is recorded in the corpus — the bill's status as enacted law cannot be confirmed from the record we hold.

The specific minor-party registration provisions are not directly quoted in the records we have fetched. The bill's own-debate records (129 in total) were not fully retrievable at the text level within this session. However, the debate record surfaces the following substantive points that bear directly on registration and the competitive position of minor parties:

Spending caps structured against non-major parties. Ms Chaney (Curtin) in a House Members' Statement on 5 February 2025 gave the clearest summary of the registration-adjacent provisions: "ads about a party, not an individual, are not included in the electoral spending cap, so a party can massively outspend an Independent. And taxpayers will pay much more to the parties, so they'll have a war chest from the last election and new challengers will have nothing." She characterised the bill as making "voters pay more for less choice" and as locking in the two-party system through "complicated spending caps" [TA-250205-house-898808d1575d:s038].

Donation cap amendment. During the Senate committee of the whole on 12 February 2025, the Special Minister of State, Senator Farrell, confirmed one amendment made in response to crossbench negotiation: the donation cap was lifted to $50,000 at the request of Dr Scamps (an independent). He also confirmed that for independents, administration funding is paid directly — a structural distinction from party-based compliance funding [TA-250212-senate-854ac52684fb:s232].

AEC compliance and complexity. Senator Pocock asked the minister directly on 12 February 2025 whether the AEC had provided advice on how easy the law would be to understand and comply with [TA-250212-senate-854ac52684fb:s215] — a question that signals crossbench concern about compliance burden falling disproportionately on smaller parties and independents without dedicated administrative infrastructure.

Greens' position: a "stitch-up." Senator Hodgins-May, moving a Greens amendment on 6 February 2025, argued the funding reforms "look to be simply a stitch-up for the two big parties to hamper everyone else whilst they allow unfettered access to their own war chests using nominated entities" and called for Senate committee referral [TA-250206-senate-0d8b81d304fa:s020]. Senator Gallagher moved to block that referral [TA-250206-senate-0d8b81d304fa:s019].

Senator Thorpe's amendment on 12 February 2025 proposed renaming the bill the "Electoral Legislation Amendment (Sham Democracy) Bill 2024" — a procedural protest vote that encapsulates the crossbench view of the bill's effect on minor parties.

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What is genuinely absent from the record we hold: The bill's full text and explanatory memorandum are not in the corpus, so the precise membership threshold, financial deposit, or signature requirements for party registration under the bill cannot be quoted directly. The 129 own-debate records were not all retrievable in this session. For the specific registration-threshold clauses, the Senate committee of the whole records from 12 February 2025 (the TA-250212 source) are the right place to dig — opening that Note would surface the full committee-stage exchange where amendments were moved and voted on.

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Perspectives worth exploring:

The government's framing (Senator Farrell) is that the bill delivers long-overdue electoral reform with genuine crossbench accommodation. The crossbench framing (Ms Chaney, Senator Hodgins-May, Senator Pocock) is that the spending and funding architecture systematically advantages the two major parties over minor parties and independents. The Senate 12 February 2025 Note holds the full committee-stage debate where these provisions were contested clause by clause.

What amendments did the Senate actually pass to the bill on 12 February 2025, and which were rejected? How did the bill's public funding formula treat minor parties differently from major parties? What did the AEC say about compliance complexity for smaller parties and independents?