Tap tap... is this thing on?

Yes hello. We're still here 😏

So, a reminder if you’re old enough to remember us, and an introduction if you’re too young to have heard of us.

We’re the oldest minor political party that’s still active; we burst onto the Australian political arena in 1977 and secured the balance of power in 1980. Since then, we’ve made our mark on Australian history and improved life for all Australians. We fearlessly represented the Australian people in the federal Senate for 30 years.

We lost our parliamentary representation in the 2007 Ruddslide, with our last Senators finishing their terms in 2008. And with that, we disappeared from the notice of the media, and from the Australian public in general. BUT. While we weren’t in parliament, and we weren’t in the news, the party persisted.

We have a new generation of Democrats coming through, sights firmly set on returning us to the Senate (and after that, who knows?), and a surprising number of Young Democrats (16 - 28 years old) who are discovering us as their disillusion with politics as usual grows.

In a post truth, anti science, disinformation deluged world, integrity, accountability and trust still matter. And arguing for compassionate, evidence informed policy and sensible politics is now a radical act.

Lyn Allison, our current national president and former Senator, remarked recently that these days feel similar in some ways to the late 70s when the party was formed. More and more of the electorate no longer feels represented by either of the legacy parties that make up the current ruling duopoly, and they’re in search of a viable third option to vote for. Well, we're still here 😏

So why a Substack? We have our own website blog, and accounts on all the socials (you can find us on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Spoutible, TikTok, Redbubble and the platform formerly known as Twitter), but if your first reaction when you saw this was “wait, The Democrats? They still exist?” well… that’s why.

The biggest hurdle we’re trying to overcome is to get the word out to everyone over the age of 40 that we’re still here, and introduce ourselves to everyone under 40. We have good writers, and a lot of good long form content on our website (from opinion pieces to policy to our own podcast!), so we figured we’d go where the audience is, and well, say hello.

We’d love it if you subscribed for free (and if you wanted to sign up for a paid subscription to support our fundraising efforts to return to parliament you’d be our new favourite).

We’ll be cross posting the content that we put on our website here, in the hope we can meet our audience where they’re enjoying long form journalism, opinion and analysis, and hopefully get the word out that if you’re feeling radical, you could give sensible politics a try.

Until next time, don’t forget to keep the bastards honest 😉

The Democrats Team.