Former senator Derryn Hinch has announced the end of his political party after it was wiped out of the Victorian parliament at the November state election, which he called a disaster.
Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party first entered federal parliament in 2016 and launched another three MPs into the Victorian parliament at the 2018 election, though Catherine Cumming quickly quit to sit in the upper house as an independent.
Derryn Hinch outside the Victorian Parliament last year.Credit:Wayne Taylor
Hinch lost his Senate seat in 2019 and failed to win a spot at the 2022 state election, when Stuart Grimley and Tania Maxwell were not re-elected in a “disaster” for the party.
“We’ve got no members of parliament, you haven’t got much of a party,” Hinch told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday.
“We didn’t get enough votes, and that’s what it’s about. The tribe has spoken, and you have to accept that.”
Hinch said that announcing the decision was one of the saddest moments of his life.
Derryn Hinch in the Senate at Parliament House in Canberra in 2019.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
“It’s bitter-sweet. It hurts, but I’m pleased we did it, and we gave it a good shot. They certainly knew we were there,” he said.
Hinch said he would keep fighting against injustice and that he had unfinished business, but was proud of the party’s achievements after working behind the scenes for victims’ rights in Victoria.
In federal parliament, Hinch lobbied for laws introduced in 2017 that banned child sex offenders from travelling overseas without permission. He also pushed for the parliamentary inquiry into transvaginal mesh implants that caused women debilitating pain before being banned by the Therapeutic Goods Association.
Hinch said that “a little bit of Derryn Hinch died” when he was not re-elected to the Senate in 2019. “I thought I’d done enough to get re-elected”.
He considered whether the party could continue under another leader’s name but decided to dissolve the party after consulting others.
The party is still registered with the Victorian Electoral Commission and the Australian Electoral Commission, but Hinch said he would have it formally deregistered.
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