Nuclear Disarmament Party
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Nuclear Disarmament Party
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| Founded | June 1984 |
| Ideology | Nuclear disarmament |
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| www.nucleardisarmament.org (archive) | |
The Nuclear Disarmament Party (NDP) was a political party in Australia. The party was formed in 1984.
The NDP was founded by Canberra doctor and peace activist Michael Denborough in response to the world political situation in the early 1980s, particularly the arms race between the United States under Ronald Reagan and the Soviet Union. Such activists were disappointed that the Australian Labor Party government of Bob Hawke, elected in 1983, had not taken a stronger stance against the policies of the U.S., and also that Hawke had overturned a long-standing ALP policy not to mine uranium, and had allowed mining in South Australia at Roxby Downs, which has since become one of the largest uranium mines in the world.
At the December 1984 federal election the NDP received 643,061 votes (7.23% of the total), and exceeded 4% in every state except Tasmania, where it received 3.9%. Amongst the NDP candidates were Peter Garrett, a rock singer, and Jean Melzer, a former Victorian ALP senator. Garrett polled 9.6% of the vote in NSW, and Melzer polled 7.3% in Victoria. Because of an adverse distribution of preferences (see Australian electoral system), neither Garrett nor Melzer was elected. However, Western Australian peace activist Jo Vallentine was elected to the Senate.
In April 1985, Vallentine, Garrett and Melzer, along with 30 other members, walked out of the national conference in Melbourne and resigned from the NDP, claiming that the party had been taken over by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a Trotskyist group. In the wake of the split, Vallentine became an independent 'senator for nuclear disarmament' and went on to be re-elected as a "Vallentine Peace Group" candidate in the double dissolution election of 1987.
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