Democracy and Integrity Policy

All of our state policy principles and aims should be read alongside our relevant federal policy principles and aims, as well as our state campaigns and federal campaigns.

Principles

1. Democracy is how we come together to make decisions about our common future. Democracy works because the more people are genuinely involved in making those decisions, the better the decisions are likely to be.
2. Democracy is about more than just elections; it's about elevating everyone’s voice and building the power of the many.
3. The best form of democracy is one in which all people can participate equally in public decision-making, with fair access to the processes and institutions of government.
4. Democratic control over decision-making is the basis for governments’ legitimacy.
5. A robust, fair and liberal parliamentary democracy is important, but democracy in the workplace, economy and community are all critical to shifting power from a handful of unelected owners and managers to everyone more equitably.
6. Participation in democracy cannot be limited to voting in elections; people must be afforded the time, resources and support necessary to meaningfully participate in decisions which affect them, including in their workplaces and local communities.
7. People’s capacity for democratic engagement is built upon economic emancipation, where freedom from poverty and exploitation open opportunities for greater democracy.
8. Representative democracy has important strengths but clear limits. Improvements to social and economic conditions are often won through grassroots action – through inclusive movements in workplaces, communities and across society more broadly.
9. The freedom for people to seek, receive and impart information – so long as they are not consciously spreading disinformation – is vital to a functioning democracy.
10. The right to protest and dissent is inherent to the functioning of a democracy.
11. Community organisations and individuals, including public servants, should be free to participate in public debate without fear of retribution.
12. Government can only serve everyone in society when it is secular and distinct from religion.
13. Democracy should operate on the principle of one person, one vote, with all votes carrying equal value regardless of wealth, property ownership, business interests or corporate status.
14. Everyone should have an equal right to participate in the electoral process, regardless of physical, geographic, or health-related barriers.
15. Parliament should reflect the diversity of Victoria's society.
16. Candidate selection within political parties should be conducted transparently and democratically by party members.
17. The disproportionate influence of wealth and capital on our democracy can in part be countered through regulation of political finance and lobbying, as well as providing adequate resources and robust freedoms for civil society.
18. A robust democracy depends on accountability mechanisms for all those in power. Parliamentarians should never investigate themselves.

Aims

Democracy and community participation

1. Build democracy outside formal elections, including in workplaces, in communities and within member-based organisations.
2. Expand participatory and deliberative decision-making at state and local government levels, including in areas such as budgeting and planning.
3. Expand democratic participation in executive decision-making through deliberative mechanisms including citizens assemblies, participatory budgeting and ballots on policy issues.
4. Encourage the use of randomly selected (‘by lot’) members of the community – chosen in a manner similar to jury selection – to advise public decision-making processes, to better incorporate the perspectives of ordinary people in decisions that affect them.
5. Introduce petition-based mechanisms to enable voters to initiate binding and direct statewide ballots on certain proposals, with reasonable thresholds and safeguards to ensure that proposals are well-developed and properly explained.
6. Ensure all public consultation processes are open, widely advertised, well facilitated and accessible – including by allowing ample time for participation.
7. Incentivise the development of workplace democracy and, for major publicly funded projects, include workplace democracy mechanisms as conditions of contract.
8. Enshrine the rights to protest, strike and take political and industrial action in law.
9. Limit the police's role at protests and strikes, recognising that their presence creates undue tension and marginalised communities are disproportionately targeted.
10. Ensure the democratic and civic rights of individuals, collectives and communities are protected in states of emergency.

Elections and political parties

11. Reform electoral systems to ensure parliaments and councils better reflect the communities they represent, including by:
    1. converting all single-member electorates to multi-member districts of no fewer than three members each; and/or
    2. adopting mixed proportional systems (where members elected from smaller electorates are supplemented to ensure each party’s total number of seats reflects its overall share of votes).
12. Ensure electoral boundaries are drawn so that each vote carries equal weight regardless of electorates.
13. Ensure that ballots are not excluded from vote counting due to unintentional errors.
14. Abolish group voting tickets and any mechanism that compromises voters' ability to express their genuine preferences.
15. Adopt automatic and same-day enrolment.
16. Give 16 and 17-year-olds the optional right to vote in elections.
17. Fully enfranchise prisoners, Australian citizens overseas, and permanent residents and temporary visa holders who have resided in Australia for more than twelve months.
18. Ensure that voting is universally accessible, including through:
    1. extended early voting periods and locations;
    2. ensuring that all polling locations are physically accessible, except where practically impossible; and
    3. the provision of assisted, telephone or other accessible voting options for those who need them.
19. Ensure voters have access to in-person and accessible voting options in local government elections.
20. Have fixed terms at each level of government.
21. Remove any arbitrary cap on the number of local councillors in each local government area and for the number of councillors to be a standard ratio based on population.
22. Remove the criminal history disqualification from eligibility to run as a candidate in an election.
23. Ensure workers are able to run for public office without discrimination, retaliation or barriers imposed by employers, unless there is a clear and defined conflict of interest between those two roles.
24. Remove any restrictions on member-based organisations, including charities and unions, on their capacity to campaign and advocate during election periods, except for appropriate caps on donations and campaign expenditure.
25. Ban political donations, campaign expenditure and donations to any representative bodies, organisations or trusts for the purpose of supporting political campaigns from for-profit businesses and their directors.
26. Apply caps on political donations across state and local government elections to limit the ability of wealthy individuals to disproportionately influence outcomes.
27. Require real-time disclosure of all political donations made over a total of $1,000 for all levels of government.
28. Institute strict caps on campaign expenditure, per electorate and per candidate, and enforce timely disclosure of significant campaign expenditure by parties, candidates and third-party campaigns.
29. Publish all authorised political communications in a publicly searchable database soon after first publication, including online, broadcast and printed material.
30. Introduce truth in political advertising laws.
31. Strengthen privacy, telemarketing and spam regulations regarding political campaigning and review exemptions for political parties on the management of personal information.
32. Require political donations made by non-for-profit membership organisations including unions to be determined democratically and directly by its membership.
33. Electoral commissions to set and enforce minimum guidelines for transparent and democratic selection of candidates by political parties.
34. Electoral commissions implement more stringent transparency and annual reporting requirements for political parties as a condition of registration.
35. Require all candidates for public office to complete and submit interests declarations by the close of nominations, to be published by the relevant electoral commission.
36. Increase the per-vote reimbursable public funding level and provide access to public electoral, administrative and policy development funding for registered political parties on the basis of a sum per vote.

Parliament and cabinet

37. Expand Victorian Parliament to improve representation and connection to local communities.
38. Adequately resource and remunerate elected officials at all levels of government, and give remuneration tribunals the power to make determinations on all resourcing for elected officials, including staffing levels and accommodation.
39. Allow MPs to debate amendments, make statements and ask questions on the substance of all bills.
40. Require both houses of parliament to provide regular, guaranteed opportunities for non-government MPs to introduce bills and motions for debate and vote, rather than relying on government discretion.
41. Prevent the inclusion of prayer or other religious ceremonies from forming part of the official proceedings of any parliament or local government, excepting First Nations cultural ceremonies.
42. Ensure that the parliamentary committee system is capable of robust oversight by, where practical, appointing a non-government chair to each standing policy committee, appointing a crossbench chair to standing integrity and oversight committees, and ensuring every party in parliament is represented on standing administrative committees.
43. Require governments to produce documents requested by Parliament in a timely fashion.
44. Require timely publication of ministerial diaries in a searchable format, with minimal redaction and subject only to clearly defined public interest exemptions.
45. Better regulate and scrutinise the role, legal status, powers and appointment of political staffers and ministerial advisers.
46. Introduce a legislative and compulsory code of conduct for elected officials, including after the end of their term in office.
47. Ensure that parliamentary standards bodies investigate complaints about elected officials' unethical behaviour, publish findings where appropriate, and recommend proportionate sanctions or remedial action.
48. Introduce a five-year cooling off period to prevent ministers, parliamentary secretaries, and their senior staff from engaging in lobbying for, taking an executive or management position in or obtaining a material benefit from any for-profit business which raises a potential and significant conflict of interest arising from their term in office.
49. Allow public servants and government and major project contractors to provide information to MPs in the public interest, without fear of repercussions.
50. Make matters of governance, executive, ministerial and parliamentary reform subject to an independent commission.

Integrity and anti-corruption

51. Build in open government principles and the presumption of proactive release of information in every level of government.
52. Strengthen the public's right to information by removing commercial-in-confidence exemptions from freedom of information requests.
53. Clarify and extend the powers of integrity and oversight institutions to allow them to effectively investigate corruption, police misconduct and misconduct in public office.
54. Strengthen whistleblower protections across all sectors to ensure that whistleblowers are supported, protected and advocated for.
55. Ensure integrity and oversight institutions have the power to initiate investigations into alleged misconduct by any public sector official, executive, board member or appointee.
56. Increase funding to integrity bodies, such as IBAC, to ensure they are not forced to limit their inquiries due to resource constraints.
57. Ensure anti-corruption bodies are empowered to investigate all forms of corrupt conduct, including patterns of behaviour, misuse of public office, and corruption involving public funds delivered through private entities, even where conduct may not meet criminal thresholds but nonetheless undermines integrity and public trust.
58. Remove the limits on public hearings for integrity bodies.
59. Prohibit governments from misusing public funds in a targeted, discriminatory way to increase their re-election prospects.
60. Require governments to make public the results of all market and social research and polling conducted using public funds.

Further reading

• Constitutional reform and democracy and Community participation and civil society (federal Greens policy principles and aims)
• Integrity: holding the major parties to account (campaign)

Policy principles and aims as adopted by members on 15 May 2026.

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