Sherryn Groch

So that's the motivation behind the High Court Challenge.

They're claiming you can't disband us, we're a political party.

And there is precedent for this.

But interestingly, it comes from one of their ideological enemies, the Communist Party of Australia, who the Menzies government tried to ban in the 50s during the Cold War panic.

And the High Court overturned that and reinstated them.

So they're sort of relying...

on that kind of defence at the High Court.

And Sewell's raised a bit of a war chest for this, $150,000 in a few days for the legal fight.

He's actually reopened that fundraiser just over the weekend so he can hire even more lawyers.

Well, they don't have a terrible case, to be honest, because there's kind of two fronts they can fight this on.

The first thing they can do is say that the laws were rushed through, they're overstepping, they give the minister too much power, they're draconian, and they'll have unintended consequences.

And look...

A lot of experts do agree with them.

I mean, the other big front they're going to fight this on is they're going to claim that they're already a political party.

And so because of that Communist Party precedent, they can't be banned.

So the AEC told me they can still register as a political party, even though they're now outlawed as a hate group, which is an interesting little loophole that they mentioned that the government might want to fix.

But

they can still actually be recognised as a political party without AEC registration.

The court can easily find they're still a party.

And they're claiming that because they incorporated as an association, they are already a party.