I keep an almost daily watch on the AEC's party registration page, but it's been a pretty boring vigil lately. So imagine my surprise when a newly minted Twitter account alerted me today to the news that the United Australia Party had up and jumped into the billabong of voluntary deregistration for the second time. As a result, the UAP is not now a registered party for the purpose of contesting federal elections.
This has a precedent. The original Palmer United Party was registered in the leadup to the 2013 election and voluntarily deregistered on 5 May 2017. The United Australia Party was then registered in December 2018. However, the PUP had flopped miserably in the 2016 Senate election (polling below 1% in every state in the absence of a big-spending campaign), unlike the 2022 election at which it polled much better and won a Senate seat.
The deregistration came as a surprise to the UAP's Senator Ralph Babet. When contacted by the SMH's Lisa Visentin today, he initially didn't remember what it was about, then said he had forgotten because of the death of the Queen, and produced such lines as:
