Template talk:Political parties in Australia

What should be included?

@Ianblair23:: I agree notable defunct parties should be included, but there needs to be a set criteria – I can think of several more influential parties than the No-Self Government Party. It might even be worth separating them into two templates, as with Template:New Zealand political parties and Template:Historic New Zealand political parties. Also, there are way more federally-registered parties than the ones you've included – I think it really needs to be all or none. My preference at this stage is to copy the New Zealand templates, possibly separating the historical parties by state or time period. IgnorantArmies 15:13, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

I think all current parties, federal or state, need to be here. I have no strong opinions about splitting former parties into their own template and am okay with either choice. If they are split, I would prefer federal and individual state sections for the historic parties than by time period. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:29, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

I'd be OK with a separate historical template, although I don't know that one is needed with the template at its current size. If we were to split it, I would suggest a third option for the division: representation, i.e. whether parties ever won seats. Alternatively it could be a "former major parties" (i.e. UAP), "former minor parties" (i.e. NSG) and "former micro-parties" (i.e. the Engineered Australia Plan Party) split (with better names for those categories, of course), although I can foresee some difficulties with defining those categories. I'm just worried that doing it by era will give the UAP and the Australian Defence Movement equal prominence, while doing it by state will give the same to the Queensland Labor Party and Daylight Saving for South East Queensland. Frickeg (talk) 13:02, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

I feel like mixing federal and state parties on the basis of having won seats might get a bit messy, and at least splitting minor and micro parties might be the same. I wouldn't be averse to a "major parties" section, but I feel like separating that out from any other category would result in very small groups. I'm also not sure I like grouping the Queensland Labor Party and United Australia Party together due to the federal/state issue. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:22, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

But wouldn't the QLP end up in the federal section anyway, since they ran for federal elections and had federal representation? To be honest I wouldn't list it as a major party anyway, but as a minor one. Frickeg (talk) 20:39, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Silly me. Point taken. The Drover's Wife (talk) 21:27, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

I think it might be worth distinguishing between the parties that actually won seats (there's some legitimacy to their presence) to those that didn't (some of which are quite literally intended as a joke). We could have major parties, minor parties and unelected parties. I think there is a difference between a minor party like Queensland Labor Party which had 25 elected reps or even the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party (given that Ricky Muir was elected) and something like the "The Party to Expose the Petrov Conspiracy" (or whatever precisely it was called -- there's no Wikipedia article) which contested the Senate a number of times but never got anyone elected. I suspect there are a lot of these unelected parties over the past century and many of them don't have wikipedia articles making them not a great bunch to include in a navbox. I would be tempted to have the template include a link to a List article for these unelected parties, but not include the unelected parties individually in any template. Kerry (talk) 00:16, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I think the list idea kind of defeats the purpose of the template. I don't mind having the various micro-parties in the template as long as they're separated from the significant ones. Luckily I can't think of any unelected parties that had any serious significance so using election as a criterion seems like a good idea. (Thank god the Communist Party won that one Queensland seat, because otherwise it would be the only real example.) Frickeg (talk) 01:12, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Good old Fred Paterson, saviour of the Communist Party in Wikipedia templates :-) (Aside: does anyone have a better photo of him than this one that I plucked from a newspaper article?) If people feel strongly about including the unelected parties in the template, I am OK with this, just so long as they have their own section as I fear a lot of them will be redlinks. Aside, I never realised either that the Queensland Labor Party had a Senate seat; I thought they were purely a state party. Kerry (talk) 02:20, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

The Queensland Parliament has a decent one, but doesn't seem to have any licensing information on it that I could find. Frickeg (talk) 02:24, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I have emailed them previously to ask if they would CC-license their info and photos and they said they'd ask their manager and I have not heard back. However, as I am up to my ears in the recently CC-licensed heritage register, I am not in the mood to chase them until I've dealt with the heritage register (1692 articles in preparation!). Kerry (talk) 03:23, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I am starting a historical template now to see how it looks. Once the defunct parties have their own template, perhaps we could use the available space to include unregistered parties that are still extant? I'm not sure how many there would be. Or alternatively, state-registered parties. Frickeg (talk) 02:40, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I guess just start but adding the ones you know and let the template grow organically as folk turn up additional ones. Can't do everything right from day one. Kerry (talk) 03:23, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I think state-registered parties really should be in the current template, that unregistered parties probably shouldn't because their continued existence is a verifiability minefield, and otherwise everything that's been said since last night makes sense. The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:32, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

What do people think? A few notes:

• I included state-based major parties like the LCL in "major". Possibly they need state disambiguators after them.
• I excluded parties we don't have an article on. There were just too many of them. They can always be added when/if the articles are created.
• I included parties that still exist but are unregistered, for now, just to keep track of them (e.g. Progressive Labour). They can be switched over to the current parties template if we want.
• I included parties that were only represented because someone defected in the "represented" group. I realise that this leads to some pretty minor parties getting a look-in (Illawarra Workers, for instance), but otherwise actually important groups like the City Country Alliance or Billy Hughes's Australian Party were getting buried.
• I don't think this is complete for state-level, although it is for federal. Please add any more that I missed.

Frickeg (talk) 03:43, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Now you've done it up I think it looks fantastic. I was iffy about mixing states but I think it works. The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:52, 24 July 2014 (UTC)