VICTORIA’S two rural political parties are locked in a battle over the right to change their registered names to formally call themselves a ‘Country Party’.
Nationals leader Peter Walsh has announced the party lodged an application with the Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC) on Monday to change its registered name from ‘The National Party of Australia – Victoria’ to ‘The National Country Party – Victoria’.
On the same day as applying for the name change, the Nationals also lodged an objection against the Australian Country Alliance’s (ACA) application to change its name to “Australian Country Party”.
It was the last day the public was able to submit an objection to the ACA’s name change before the VEC was set to make a decision on it.
ACA party chairman Robert Danieli said the Nationals’ objection to his party’s name change on the last day of submissions was an attempt to stifle the popularity gains it had made among rural voters at the Nationals’ expense.
“We’re highly disappointed with the way the Nationals are representing rural Victoria and now that they can see that there’s a group that’s attracting attention they’re trying to take it away from us,” Mr Danieli said.
“We took votes away from them all along the river, plus we actively promote issues that are relevant all across regional Australia, while they haven’t done much to promote the interests of rural Victoria at all.”
Mr Walsh, who is also the member for Murray Plains, rubbished Mr Danieli’s claims, saying the idea for the name change came from the party’s administrative wing before the ACA lodged its application.
“We were actually talking about this before they put their application in, it was something that I actually spoke about when I did the Rural Press Club with Steph Ryan a number of months ago,” Mr Walsh said.
He said the reason behind the proposed name change was that the Nationals put themselves forward “to represent the 25 percent of people that live outside metropolitan Melbourne”.
According to Mr Danieli, the ACA will now lodge an objection to the Nationals’ name change application and make a formal response to their objection.
For more on this and other stories, grab a copy of Wednesday’s Guardian (August 4).
