Formal proposal to rename the Pirate Party by 2018

While I do agree that it is time for a rebrand of the party name, I believe choosing Libertarian Left would be a mistake.

Most of us here are educated around the political process, naming conventions, left / right split, etc. However I suspect the vast majority of voters are not. Libertarian is too close to Liberal (especially when shortened to Lib), and like it or not, is tainted by American politics. Left, while descriptive, may not make sense to many voters.

We need something that is both descriptive and easy to understand, I just don’t think that LibLeft is it.

1 Like

Critically important discussion to get right, not a task i’d envy (that’s a big thank you for all involved taking this on)
Personal opinion from someone sitting very much on the fringe.
‘Libertarian Left’ - strongly support the last few posters, whilst accurately descriptive from the definition, this name doesn’t convey any sense of hope/change/progressiveness,
Both words (prior to engaging the brain to actually think about their definition) provide an instant and familiar association to ‘traditional’ political parties, status quo and even pro establishment.
A name association closer with global people driven protest movements isn’t such a bad idea but tricky as times change, a more generic approach might serve better over time with something along the lines of “People’s Progressive” (PPAU)

hahhahaha that’s awesome :wink:

Progressive wouldve been my choice, alas it’s now been tainted in the Australian space by the shenanigans of the two competing Progressive parties and we’d be unable to register it anyway since it’d get knocked back due to the already registered variation.

BTW, for everyone, if you havent already. Start throwing name ideas into this thread: Alternative names for the Party

Hi all

First of all, some great ideas listed above. I’m new to the party so obviously most of you will take my ideas with a grain of salt, but for what its worth, here’s my two cents worth.

I think changing the party’s name is a good idea. I was attracted to this party because it seems to have an evidence-based policy platform and in many ways common sense approach to issues, rather than pure ideological policies, which i think would have a broad appeal among the Australian community when your proposals a fully explained. Having a name like the pirate party just instantly turns most people off taking us seriously.

While i think libertarian left is a very accurate name in terms of the philosophical stand point of the party, I don’t think it’s going to improve the situation in terms of appealing to a broader base as much as we would like. I like the idea of having “progressive” in the name as I think its a word a lot of people could get behind and one that isn’t currently associated with any other major party name. \

To be honest (and I know from reading the above comments a lot of you won’t agree with this), I think having the word centre or centrist in the name would be a good thing. It makes us sound like moderates who just want to improve the situation using evidence based policies and aren’t beholden to any particular ideology like the liberals, labor or greens.

I also think using the word libertarian may confuse less informed people with the liberal party and could confuse the more informed people with right wing groups in the US.

My suggestion would be something along the lines of “Progressive Center Party of Australia” - or PCA for short. I think that sounds moderate enough that it won’t turn people who identify as slightly right or left off from considering voting for us but also makes it clear we are more progressive than conservative.

My second option, if people feel the word centre isn’t such a good idea, would be “Progressive Libertarian Party of Australia” - or PLPA

Summary:

  1. Progressive Center Party of Australia - PCA
  2. Progressive Libertarian Party of Australia - PLPA

Interested to see what people think.

We’ve been ‘reclaiming’ the name ‘Pirate’ for about eight years. We still get poor election results, low media coverage, and are often mistaken for a joke party.

If we spend two years reclaiming the name ‘Libertarian’, we might actually manage it.

A post was merged into an existing topic: Alternative names for the Party

I must insist that if you wish to make your own suggestions for a name, either do it in the alternative names thread, or better yet, write a full proposal.

I’m going to start deleting posts that offer nothing but a name as they are unnecessarily cluttering up the thread and there’s no excuse given the plethora of reply options the software gives you.

There’s a lot of content in this thread, so if this particular topic has been covered I might have missed it.

Is it necessary walk away from the Pirate brand entirely if choosing to rename the party?
This fits in with my contribution in the alternative names thread, but I wanted to introduce this as a principle to be considered for the formal proposal.
I am amongst those who do not concur with the “Libertarian Left” name, but for whatever name we end up with selecting could we not also append “Pirate” in brackets? For example “Libertarian Left (Pirate) Party” or “Social Libertarian (Pirate) Party”, etc.

I will for simplicity quote the statement I used in the other thread:
"It can still capture the people who are interested in why we have the name “Pirate”, but does not lead to immediate dismissal as a ‘joke’ party.
[…] It does not abandon our identity as Pirates, and retains the bold and unique brand with which we were established."

Would this not effectively give us the best of both worlds? I think maintaining continuity, showing that we are an evolution of the same Party rather than an entirely new entity, is important. This would seem to be immensely helpful in retaining existing members who identify with the Pirate movement and working with the remainder of the momentum we had built up instead of then having to promote a completely new brand.

Thoughts?

1 Like

Because I’ve not seen anything but people’s personal opinions here I asked around a bit.

For the purposes of this discussion the only people within the electorate who actually matter are those who will not take the time to actually look at your political platform, and will just make a snap judgement based on your party’s name, sadly, I feel this is probably the VAST majority of the electorate.

As such, the question I posed was ‘What would your immediate reaction to a political party called the “Libertarian Left Party” be?’

I got about three dozen replies, from people of different background, political alignment and a few of different nationalities;

  • One person was able to make a concise statement which was pretty reflective of the policy platform (oddly enough an American).
  • One person went and googled “Libertarian Left Party” and apparently (though I’ve not looked myself) “some of their policies are pretty hardcore communist”.
  • The rest all replied with a variation on the theme “It’s a contradiction in terms”.

After asking the question and getting the reply I articulated my analysis of the name:-

Both terms are poisonous;

  • Left - because anybody remotely conservative will immediately write you off as a “bunch of Socialists or Communists”.
  • Libertarian - because of the dogma out of the US political sphere (like it or not, US politics DOES influence the Australian electorate), and the copious amounts of people claiming to be libertarian who are, in fact, not.

In all cases they agreed with this analysis.

It’s a small sample I’ll grant, but it’s bigger than a sample of one i.e. a personal opinion.

I have no objection to renaming the party, but IMO “Libertarian Left Party” would be a mistake.

4 Likes

A further thought - given various discussion of alternate names, would you consider splitting the rename vote proposal into two stages:

  1. A referendum of name change (without specifying a particular new name) to ensure the whole party is on-side with a rebrand, for the reasons you have outlined.
  2. A subsequent vote on what the new name should actually be.

That should help to isolate support for the underlying issue you’re trying to address, from any reservations about whatever name(s) are proposed.

1 Like

Yeah, already been thinking of having the National Council use the online voting system to put out a strawpoll on support for a rename in general so that that debate doesn’t need to happen at Congress and waste time.

2 Likes

I’ve put the motion text to the National Council. :smile:

1 Like

I don’t understand the trend in this party towards a libertarian aspect. Given the US experience of Libertarian politics, I find it a toxic move and it will cost us support. I say again, not only if the name includes libertarian but if our policies head down that road, I will leave. I’ve already had someone tell me on Twitter that they cannot support us because we are travelling that road.

Freedom of speech, privacy, control over your body, opposition to censorship and whatnot are all libertarian (in the original sense of the word) policies, which we have.

I’m pretty sure we don’t have any of the “it’s OK to screw your neighbour over” brand of libertarian policies though :wink: and I assume it’s this type of thing you object to (as do I, and I assume most or all of the rest of our membership).

I’ve been meaning to comment on this too. Not sure if it belongs here or in the alternate names thread, as my comment isn’t really a critique of the proposal, but here goes…

I’m continually baffled by this. I mean, I get that people think it’s a silly name, but if you know the policies are good, and like what we’re about, why not vote for us regardless of the name? It is, after all, a secret ballot. Nobody’s watching…

That’s Antony Green’s problem, not ours. Assuming our goal is to get elected, then we need to be elected by the people. We do not need to to appeal to the existing political establishment’s ideas of what a sensible name is.

Actually, IMO, as I mentioned earlier, any even slightly unconventional name is going to be better than a “normal” political party name, because (if you’ll forgive a sweeping generalisation), everybody is sick of the political class and its games. We are not those people yet, we haven’t been eaten by the machine. We should make that fact obvious.

Yes, and peopl do secretly vote for us. You’ll never know who they are, even though I do, because they fear it would ruin their career or other nonsensical fears. If people in high places won’t advocate for you, you’re already screwed.

It is entirely our problem because we do not have the media vehicle he does. In fact, our tax goes to him so that can he can tell us we suck. That’s the system we exist in, and this is why I’m asking what benefits keeping the name provides, because all I really see is negatives.

I suspect no matter what we choose, it’s going to be unconventional one way or another.

I dislike both Libertarian and Left being in the name, I feel like both words are poison, but I do not really have a better option.

I have a few friends/family that wont join or do anything with the party because its called “Pirate”, if it was called Libertarian Left it would not only be avoided but also laughed out of the room. I probably wouldn’t be as enthusiastic about my involvement with the party, and I admit that’s shallow, but its there none the less.

Pirate is exciting and explicitly stands out, immediately edgy and counter-establishment. We need to capture some of that spirit still if we do change the name.

Unfortunately Australia has a long history of shit parties that have poisoned a lot of terms, like democracy and progress, and The LPA have ruined the term Liberal in Australia.

I think we do need a name change, I think we have out grown Pirate, but I shudder at the thought of Libertarian Left and have no better name I can provide.

I think we are open and inclusive, a name that resonates that would be great “Left” puts a great big exclusion on us.

I did think jokingly about The Conservative Party of Australia in a countenance to our conservative Liberal party… but I think that is petty…

I’m excited about the opportunity to be Purple, and given the greens party is serving as a great name for them, could we not be “The Purple Party” We keep the P then :slight_smile:

I don’t think you will find anyone who is very resistant to change the name, or even agree that we must change it, but squabbling over the actual name is going to be long and tedious.

1 Like

Only if there’s no actual process put in place to actually decide a name.

A motion was carried by the National Council to put an online strawpoll to the members about changing the name in general, which should be done sometime in the next week, which should give us a fairly good idea of whether the Party has the appetite for a name change in principle.

Assuming that goes well, a proper process of proposing name changes will be devised. At this stage, I am thinking about doing a preferential ballot of various proposed names to see what the general consensus is based on what people have thrown in so far.

At that point, we know how the Party feels about the various options presented, without fear that it’s an actual binding vote. Saying “this is the best of the names proposed” in that case wouldn’t mean “this is the name we’re going to have to use”. It might result in several people riffing off it and finding the perfect name.

The idea is to iterate over this process until we see something that more than two-thirds of the Party would be proud to have, and I think we can manage it before July.

1 Like

I am pretty solidly opposed to such a short time-line. There is an extremely high chance of a Double Dissolution on July 2. I don’t think that having a fight over names, that will necessarily be going on through the election campaign, is a good use of energy.

It will suck oxygen from issues we want to campaign on, it will suck energy from the campaign itself. Our candidates will most likely be quizzed about it when they should be talking about the right to privacy, the TPP and the need for government transparency. People feel passionately about what we are called (myself included) and will divert energy that could be put into getting our ideas and policies out, into arguing for whatever the hell they want the party to be called. Some people may also be reluctant to campaign while we are going through a high paced identity crisis that directly coincides with the election.

I personally would rather leave the debate until after Congress because there is so much on our plates between now and then. That said, if people are eager to have this sorted before Congress, we can push the name voting (assuming people want to change names) to the week before, and the final name can be discussed and voted on in Hobart (or online for those of you not traveling down). It wouldn’t create anywhere near as much noise as if the debate was in full flight during the election.

2 Likes

2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Alternative names for the Party