The Liberals should show respect to potential allies

A political party that advocates "lower taxes, more efficient government and more productive businesses", as the Liberal Party does, should be fairly comfortable with a party promoting lower taxes, reduced regulation and individual liberty.

But not, it seems, if that party is the Liberal Democrats.

The Liberal Democratic Party was first registered in the ACT in 2001. It achieved federal registration in 2007 and state registration in SA and local government registration in NSW in 2011. The Liberal Party objected to most of these approvals.

While the Labor Party long ago learned to live with other parties using the word 'labour' in their names, currently including the Democratic Labour Party, and the Australian Democrats and Christian Democrats manage to share the word 'democrats', the Liberal Party thinks it owns the word 'liberal'.

According to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal it is wrong. In a 2001 decision involving the party 'liberals for forests', it concluded that the word liberal is a generic term and cannot be owned by any single party.

It said the provisions of the Electoral Act regarding names should not be seen as intended to protect the interests of political parties which have already secured registration, and pointed out that it is common practice for political parties to use generic words in their name, including the words "liberal" and "democrat", and that the use of such words should not be prohibited.

It also thought the words "Australian", "labour", "national", "Christian", "progressive" and "socialist" were generic.

The name Liberal Democratic Party was chosen because it represents our values of liberal democracy. Indeed, we think the Liberal Party ought to be re-named the "Tax-and-Spend Populist Party" so that voters are not misled into believing they are voting for a genuinely liberal party.

The Liberal Party has misled its supporters with its antagonism towards us. Two days prior to the election it was behind a major article in a Sydney newspaper warning voters against voting for us by mistake, claiming this would lead to the election of Pauline Hanson at the expense of their third candidate, Arthur Sinodinos.

A senior Liberal Party official emailed members, "We won't be able to repeal the carbon tax and repay the debt if the Liberal democrats (sic) win a Senate seat that should be ours."

There was never much chance Hanson would be elected. Moreover, our party has consistently opposed the carbon tax. Indeed, reducing taxes is one of our key policies.

After the election we received abusive phone calls and emails telling us we were cheats who had stolen a seat from the Liberal Party. They only stopped when it became apparent that Sinodinos would win as well.

In the Spectator magazine, Liberal Party National Director Brian Loughnane wrote, "It appears the Liberal Democrats have received 9 per cent of the vote in the Senate in New South Wales. In 20 years of professionally examining polling, I have never seen the LDP register a heartbeat of community support. Their vote has come almost entirely at the expense of the Liberal party. We strongly opposed their name change to include the word 'Liberal', arguing that it would create voter confusion. The Electoral Commission disagreed. But so it has proved."

This is unmitigated twaddle. While we have never felt the need to kiss babies or perform stunts for the TV news, our policies have been steadily attracting libertarian-oriented voters since 2001. And I seriously doubt Liberal polling even attempted to measure our support.

Some of our votes may have come from people who mistook us for the Liberals/Nationals. Perhaps some thought we were related to the Democrats or Christian Democrats. But it is equally likely some who voted for the Democratic Labour Party thought they were voting Labor.

Yet our vote in NSW rose 7.2% while the Liberals dropped 4.7%, almost as much as Labor. In SA, where we were fifth on the ballot, our vote rose 3% while the Liberals fell 9.8%.

There is little doubt a sizeable number of our votes in NSW were because we were the first party on the ballot. This usually amounts to 1-2% of the vote, but with the NSW ballot paper offering 42 parties it was probably higher.

The solution to this is to make voting optional rather than compulsory, another of our policies.

In any case, we believe we would have won a Senate seat irrespective of our first place. Using Antony Green's calculator, anything over 3.5% would probably have been enough given our flow of preferences. Indeed, we came within a whisker of winning in 2010 with 2.3%.

On the subject of preferences, prior to the election we contacted each division of the Liberal Party offering to give them our preferences in exchange for theirs ahead of most of the other minor parties.

Despite positive noises from several State Directors, only the Liberals' SA division preferenced the Liberal Democrats favourably. In all the other states, their preferences first went to a host of other parties including the Christian Democrats, Democratic Labour Party, Family First, Shooters and Fishers, Fishing and Lifestyle, Motoring Enthusiasts, No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics, Katter's Australia Party and Palmer United Party.

The Queensland division even preferenced the Australian Protectionist Party and Australia First ahead of the Liberal Democrats.

After July the government will be able to pass its legislation, notwithstanding opposition from Labor and the Greens, if it has the support of six of the eight minor party senators. For this it will require considerable goodwill.

Attacking our party because of its name, amending the rules so we cannot keep our name, or changing the system of voting so that minor parties cannot win seats in future, does not strike me as a formula for goodwill.

We would prefer the Liberal Party accepts that it does not own the word 'liberal', that minor parties are good for democracy, and that parties that promote less taxation and regulation should be preferred over the other kind.