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The Democratic Labour Party (DLP), formerly the Democratic Labor Party, is an Australian political party. It broke off from the Australian Labor Party (ALP) as a result of the 1955 ALP split, originally under the name Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist), and was renamed the Democratic Labor Party in 1957. In 1962, the Queensland Labor Party, a breakaway party of the Queensland branch of the Australian Labor Party, became the Queensland branch of the DLP. The DLP was represented in the Senate from its formation through to 1974. The party held or shared the balance of power on several occasions, winning 11 percent of the vote at its peak in 1970, which resulted in it holding five out of the 60 Senate seats. It has never achieved representation in the House of Representatives but, due to Australia's instant-runoff voting system, it remained influential due to its recommendations for preference allocations. With anti-communism as a strong priority, the DLP almost always directed that its voters preference the Liberal Party and Country Party ahead of the ALP, contributing to the electoral dominance of the Coalition during the 1950s and 1960s. The DLP won seats in the state parliaments of Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales. In 1978, the DLP's Victorian branch was dissolved, but was soon revived and continued to contest elections. The DLP had no parliamentary representation for a period of 30 years from 1976 to 2006. DLP candidates were elected to the Victorian Legislative Council in 2006 and 2014, and a single senator was elected in 2010, with a platform focused more on social conservatism. In 2013, the party changed its name to reflect the standard Australian English spelling of "labour". In March 2022, the party was de-registered by the Australian Electoral Commission after it was unable to prove it had more than the legally required 1500 members. The party remains registered for state elections in Victoria and territorial elections in the Australian Capital Territory.
