4Change, formerly known as the Climate Change Coalition (CCC), was an Australian political party, which was formed in 2007 with a view to accelerate action by politicians from all parties on global warming and climate change. Its position on working towards addressing climate change, stresses cooperation with big business in order to achieve significant progress on the issue. The party therefore advocates a close working relationship between environmentalists and the business community. The CCC was registered as a political party with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) on 4 September 2007 and deregistered on 25 March 2010.
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2007 New South Wales state election
When it was first conceived and established in 2006, the Climate Change Coalition was not initially a political party, but rather a grouping of independents. The first election that it contested was the New South Wales March 2007 state election. The CCC ran a group of 21 candidates (dubbed by detractors the "Gang of 21", an allusion to the Gang of Four) standing for the Legislative Council, the NSW Upper House of Parliament . Heading this group was Patrice Newell, an author and biodynamic beef farmer. The CCC received criticism from some groups, for refusing to advocate preferences, under the Australian preferential voting system, to other political parties with strong environmental credentials.
The group was not registered as a political party in NSW and so under NSW electoral law could not display a party name on the ballot paper at the top of the group column. The 21 "Group F" candidates polled 18,999 votes in total, or 0.50% of the total formal vote, and were therefore well short of the quota of 173,239 (4.55%) required for election of any candidate.
2007 Australian federal election
The Climate Change Coalition was registered as a political party by the AEC on 4 September 2007. The party announced it intended to run candidates for the Australian Senate in the 2007 federal election.
The party's NSW Senate candidates were Patrice Newell and Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, a well-known scientist and media personality. The party fielded candidates for the senate in each of the other states with the exception of Tasmania, and also fielded a candidate in the ACT. The candidates were; in Western Australia Gary Warden, and Sarah Bishop; in South Australia, Dr Colin Edean and Vidas Kublilus; in Queensland, Phil Johnson and Steven Posselt; and in Victoria, Ainslie Howard. The ACT senate candidate was Michael Fullam-Stone.
With a favourable ballot paper placement (column E) and with the party's name shown on the ballot paper the party scored 0.83% of the vote in NSW (a 0.33% increase on its NSW state election result) but failed to secure the election of any of its candidates. Results in other states were in the range 0.27% (in Western Australia) to 0.78% (in Victoria). Nationwide the party received 78,710 votes (0.62%).
Name change and Deregistration
On 24 December 2009, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) approved the Climate Change Coalition's application to change its name to "4Change". The party was deregistered by the AEC in March, 2010, on the grounds of irregularities in its declarations on membership.