FWIW you don’t “just need 500 signatures” either, as mentioned in the complaint above, you need to provide the exact legal name and full address that perfectly matches the electoral roll, no typos or misspellings, and the AEC will not tell you which records do not match, or allow you to do a bulk query electronically.

However, as Liam posted down below, this is now moot anyway as they are now registered with the AEC as per http://aec.gov.au/Parties_and_Representatives/Party_Registration/Registration_Decisions/2013/4857.htm :)

I have no hope.

Registering for federal elections is easy, you just need 500 signatures to show AEC. Registering for state elections is much more difficult as each state has its own laws and some of them put a much higher burden than 500 signatures, with arbitrary early deadlines. You really have to be organised to get registered in a place like NSW or QLD (VIC is slightly easier cause they accept signatures online).

If PPA can’t/hasn’t already gotten registered with the AEC, then it really is a shambolic organisation not worth spending any airtime on (as much as it pains me to say that). They need to have done that already, and select their candidates soon in order to be able to at least field a ticket (which needs to consist of at least 2 candidates) for the Senate for every state. That means they need to find two good candidates in every state who are willing to spend some of their money to register. And they need to do this soon, so that they are in a position to start horse trading on preferences from day 1 when the elections are called. Preference trading is a small party’s only hope of achieving anything in federal elections (and you need to be very strategic about that).

They may be feuding with their PPI “parent” – but it takes two to tango. If anything, PP globally is still in the juvenile phase and the fault PPAU should not be greater than 50%.

That aside, what PPAU does need is some kind of parent figure with guiding, yet firm hand. Whilst they maybe good watchdogs as far as monitoring the dirty tricks and toxic policy that brews in Canberra, with most other matters they at best score a C- on the report card. The immaturity really shows with the speed with which ideas get thrown around, the enthusiasm with which everyone runs in different directions – and the speed with which ideas lapse, get forgotten about and vaporise.

One would think that with a venture into politics the first and most important objective would be to create a presence on the public stage and to establish a brand that the public can begin to recognise. On both of these points, PPAU score a big red F.

It is a crying shame – a solid, functional and, above all else, professional Pirate Party is desperately needed to counter the abuses of the two party system that is exploiting the general public which is asleep to any issue that does not involve their wallet. We don’t have one and as is, they are going nowhere fast. They need to cultivate some discipline so that the party and its extremely limited resources can be managed and focussed on what is achievable; and not endlessly diverted by that which is not. They also need some serious marketing expertise to make themselves visible on the public stage.

The way things are going, I have very little hope of a functioning unit presenting itself as a real alternative in this year’s federal election. Trouble is, there is an overload of youthful zeal (face it, they are mostly kids – 25 is still a kid to anyone over 40) – but this zeal is constantly undermining itself with youthful hubris. No offense to Brendan Molloy and his crew – but they need hardened professional politicos at least in advisory roles, or they are just going to remain cats chasing their tails at a million miles an hour and going nowhere fast.

As the article is light on detail as to just what PPI actually is, here’s a tl;dr:

PPI was meant to be an international organisation for collaboration of Pirate Parties. In my opinion it has failed at this. We have always collaborated with other parties and we will continue to regardless of PPI, as a monolithic bureaucratic organisation isn’t necessarily the most appropriate organ for collaboration in the age of etherpad, Twitter and email.

It has been very Eurocentric over the past few years, and failed to provide effective mechanisms for engagement with other parties. As with any fledgling political movement, there can be teething problems, but the important thing is that we don’t give up and we continue to strive for excellence, even if it does require knocking down and rebuilding some structures early on.