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| seats2_title = Senate | seats2 = | website = http://www.australian-democrats.org.au/ }} The Australian Democrats was a centrist political party in Australia with a social-liberal ideology. The party was formed in 1977, a merger of the Australia Party and the New Liberal Movement, with former Liberal minister Don Chipp as its high-profile leader. Though never achieving a seat in the House of Representatives, the party had considerable influence in the Senate for the following thirty years. Its representation in the Parliament of Australia ended on 30 June 2008, after loss of its four remaining Senate seats at the 2007 general election. , the organisation had disintegrated and control was contested by two factions associated with two former parliamentarians.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Bell tolls for the Democrats: bastards got the better of them? )〕 The party was deregistered by the Australian Electoral Commission on 16 April 2015 due to the party's failure to demonstrate requisite 500 members to maintain registration. Even before its deregistration and since it became extinct as a parliamentary party anywhere in Australia, the party saw many of its prominent members including former federal party leader Andrew Bartlett and former NSW MLC Arthur Chesterfield-Evans defect to the Greens. ==Overview== The party was founded on principles of honesty, tolerance, compassion and direct democracy through postal ballots of all members, so that "there should be no hierarchical structure ... by which a carefully engineered elite could make decisions for the members."〔Chipp D and Larkin J ''The Third Man'' Rigby, Melbourne (1978) ISBN 0-7270-0827-7〕 From the outset, members' participation was fiercely protected in national and divisional constitutions prescribing internal elections, regular meeting protocols, annual conferences—and monthly journals for open discussion and balloting. Dispute resolution procedures were established, with final recourse to a party ombudsman and membership ballot. Policies determined by the unique participatory method promoted environmental awareness and sustainability, opposition to the primacy of economic rationalism (Australian neoliberalism), preventative approaches to human health and welfare, animal rights, rejection of nuclear technology and weapons. The Australian Democrats were the first representatives of green politics at the federal level in Australia. They played a key role in the ''cause célèbre'' of the Franklin River Dam. The party's centrist role made it subject to criticism from both the right and left of the political spectrum. In particular, Chipp's former conservative affiliation was frequently recalled by opponents on the left.〔Such as the then Socialist Workers' Party and early green-left parties such as the United Tasmania Group.〕 This problem was to torment later leaders and strategists who, by 1991, were proclaiming "the electoral objective" as a higher priority than the rigorous participatory democracy espoused by the party's founders.〔The first substantive reason given by rebellious senators for deposing leader Janet Powell in 1991 was her alleged failure to develop a media profile which would attract more electoral support. The first conclusive constitutional abandonment of founding principles was probably the July 1993 decision of the party's national executive to terminate monthly publication of the members' ''National Journal'' and to replace it with less frequent publication of glossy promotional material.〕 Over three decades, the Australian Democrats achieved representation in the legislatures of the ACT, South Australia, New South Wales, Western Australia and Tasmania as well as Senate seats in all six states. However, at the 2004 and 2007 federal elections, all seven of its Senate seats were lost. The last remaining State parliamentarian, David Winderlich, left the party and was defeated as an independent in 2010. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Australian Democrats」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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