Firstly let me say there are no differences in disclosure obligations on Climate 200 as there are for the major parties. I don’t see any advantage in us registering.
But, basically, in no way are we a party. As I said before, we don’t start campaigns, we don’t select candidates, we wait for these campaigns to come up through the grassroots and demonstrate strong community support, demonstrate capable campaign teams and demonstrate the ability to fundraise within the community.
We don’t have a policy platform, we have values and we will only fund those who also have those values. We don’t specify in any degree of specificity how those are to be achieved, just we have the confidence that member will enter parliament and deliver on the things they have told their communities they would deliver on.
… We no longer need parties to run viable campaigns – as Cathie McGowan has shown and Zali Steggall has shown and many others … but you do need providers and compliance is a very tough thing in Australia, with laws regularly changing, and it makes complete sense that campaigns will go to service providers to help them with their compliance, and frankly there aren’t that many of them.
Just as people might use the same accountant, you wouldn’t be surprised that most of these campaigns are swapping notes on where do you buy your T-shirts, your corflute signs.
I, we would be pretending to be something we are not to register as a party. We don’t have any candidates. We don’t have any candidates, so what kind of party can operate without a single candidate?