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Australian Democrats

The Australian Democrats were originally founded in 1977 by Don Chipp with the stated aim to "keep the bastards honest" — a positioning as a principled centrist force holding the major parties accountable. The party held the balance of power in the Senate for many years before collapsing around 2008. It has since been re-established and is rebuilding a presence at state and federal levels.

Relevance to democracy reform

The Democrats are notable in the current landscape for making democratic reform a substantive part of their platform rather than a peripheral concern. Their Victorian branch in particular has published detailed policy positions on:

  • Citizens' assemblies — supporting the use of a randomly selected citizens' assembly to decide how Victoria's Upper House electoral system should be reformed before putting the outcome to a referendum
  • Proportional representation — advocating for statewide PR for the Victorian Legislative Council, which would lower the election quota from 16.7% to ~2.4% and enable more diverse representation
  • Evidence-based framing — their policy positions cite the 2025 Australian Election Study (48% support for citizens' assemblies, 32% trust in government) and the Victorian parliamentary inquiry findings

See the blog post on the Victorian Upper House inquiry for context on the specific proposal.

Position and caveats

The Democrats are a political party with a full platform across many issues. We track them here because their democracy reform positions are substantive and evidence-grounded — not because DOD endorses the party or its broader platform.