Queensland Legislative Assembly
Encyclopedia
The Queensland Legislative Assembly is the unicameral chamber of the Parliament of Queensland
. Elections are held approximately once every three years. Voting is by the Optional Preferential Voting
form of the Alternative Vote
system. The Assembly has 89 members, who have used the letters MP
after their names since 2000 (previously they were styled MLAs
).
There is approximately the same population in each electorate, however that has not always been the case (see Queensland's gerrymander). The Assembly first sat in May 1860 and produced Australia's first Hansard in April 1864.
, the Legislative Council, with members appointed by the government of the day for life. The first sitting in May 1860 was held in the old converted convict barracks in Queen Street
. It consisted of 26 members from 16 electorates, nearly half of whom were pastoralists or squatters. Early sessions dealt with issues of land, labour, railways, public works, immigration, education and gold discoveries.
In April 1864, Australia's first Hansard
was produced. It was the second Hansard to be made in the Commonwealth
, after Nova Scotia
in 1855. That year also saw member numbers increased to 32 and by 1868 as more redistributions occurred the number grew to 42. Members were not paid until 1886, effectively excluding the working class man from state politics.
The Assembly was elected under the 'first past the post
' (plurality) system 1860 to 1892. From then until 1942 an unusual form of preferential voting called the 'contingent vote
' was used. This was done by a conservative government to prevent the Labor Party from gaining seats. In 1942 the plurality system was reintroduced until it was replaced in 1962 by the 'full preferential' form of the Alternative Vote. This was done by the Labor Party, which saw a decline in votes in the 1940s, to divide the opposition. In 1992, this was changed to the optional preferential system currently used.
After 1912, electorates elected only a single member to the Assembly. In 1922, the Legislative Council was abolished, with the help of members known as the "suicide squad", who were specially appointed to vote the chamber out of existence. This left Queensland with a unicameral parliament—currently the only Australian state with this arrangement.
The youngest person ever elected to Queensland's Legislative Assembly was Laurence Springborg former Minister for Natural Resources and former Leader of the Opposition
. In 1989, he entered parliament aged 21.
era, had a system of electoral zoning that could be used by the government of the day to maximise its own voter support at the expense of the opposition. It has been called a form of gerrymander, however it is more accurately referred to as an electoral malapportionment. In a classic gerrymander, electoral boundaries are drawn to take advantage of known pockets of supporters and to isolate areas of opposition voters so as to maximise the number of seats for the government for a given number of votes and to cause opposition support to be "wasted" by concentrating their supporters in relatively fewer electorates.
The Queensland "gerrymander", first introduced by the Australian Labor Party
(ALP) government of Ned Hanlon in 1949 used a series of electoral zones. While the number of electors in each seat in a zone was roughly equal, there was considerable variation in the number of electors between zones. Thus an electorate in the remote zone might have as few as 5,000 electors, while a seat in the metropolitan zone might have as many as 25,000.
Initially Queensland was divided into three zones—the metropolitan zone, the provincial cities zone (which also included rural areas around provincial cities) and the rural zone. Using this system the Labor government was able to maximise its vote, particularly in the provincial city zone. With the split in the party in the late 1950s the ALP lost office and a conservative coalition
government led by the Country Party (later National Party of Australia
), came to power, which, as discussed above, initially modified the voting system to introduce preferential voting, to take advantage of Labor's split. Subsequently as the divisions in the ALP abated in the early 1970s, and tensions in the conservative coalition grew, (thus reducing the advantage to be gained by the use of preferential voting), the conservative government modified the zoning system to create four zones—to the existing three zones was added a fourth zone—a remote zone, with electorates with even fewer electors. The provincial cities zone was reduced in size, with provincial cities' hinterlands added to the rural zone. Thus the conservative government was able to isolate Labor support in provincial cities and maximise its own rural power base.
The entrenchment of a conservative government was also caused by socio-economic and demographic changes associated with mechanisation of farms and urbanisation which led to a drift of working class population from rural and remote electorates to the cities.
By the late 1980s the decline in the political fortunes of the National Party, together with rapid growth in south east Queensland meant that the zonal system was no longer able to guarantee a conservative victory.
In addition, in 1988 the Federal Labor Government held four constitutional referendums
—one of these
was for the adoption of fair electoral systems around Australia. Although the referendum did not succeed, it heightened public awareness of the issue. A large public interest non-partisan organisation, the Citizens for Democracy, lobbied extensively the Liberal and Labor parties to abolish the gerrymander and to make it a major issue in the lead up to the landmark 1989 Queensland election.
In 1989 Labor won government, promising to implement the recommendations of the Fitzgerald Inquiry
into police corruption, including the establishment of an Electoral and Administrative Reform Commission (EARC). EARC recommended the abolition of the zonal system, and its replacement of a "modified one vote, one value" system. Under this proposal, subsequently adopted, most electorates consisted of approximately the same number of electors, but with a greater tolerance for fewer electors allowed in a limited number of remote electorates.
The Queensland Legislative Assembly sits in Parliament House
in the Brisbane central business district
. The building was completed in 1891. The lower house chamber is decorated dark green in the traditional Westminster
style. The chamber once featured central tables which divided two rows of elevated benches on each side. It is now based around a U—shape away from the speakers chair with three rows of benches and their own desk and microphone.
Parliament of Queensland
The Parliament of Queensland is the legislature of Queensland, Australia. According to the state's constitution, the Parliament consists of the Queen and the Legislative Assembly. It is the only unicameral state parliament in the country, the upper chamber, the Legislative Council, having been...
. Elections are held approximately once every three years. Voting is by the Optional Preferential Voting
Optional Preferential Voting
Optional Preferential Voting is a system of vote-casting used in the states of Queensland and New South Wales in the Commonwealth of Australia. Most Australian elections are run under full-preference preferential voting, where all candidates must be numbered in order of the preference of the...
form of the Alternative Vote
Instant-runoff voting
Instant-runoff voting , also known as preferential voting, the alternative vote and ranked choice voting, is a voting system used to elect one winner. Voters rank candidates in order of preference, and their ballots are counted as one vote for their first choice candidate. If a candidate secures a...
system. The Assembly has 89 members, who have used the letters MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
after their names since 2000 (previously they were styled MLAs
Member of the Legislative Assembly
A Member of the Legislative Assembly or a Member of the Legislature , is a representative elected by the voters of a constituency to the legislature or legislative assembly of a sub-national jurisdiction....
).
There is approximately the same population in each electorate, however that has not always been the case (see Queensland's gerrymander). The Assembly first sat in May 1860 and produced Australia's first Hansard in April 1864.
Before 1922
The Legislative Assembly was the lower house of a normal Westminster style bicameral parliament. The upper houseUpper house
An upper house, often called a senate, is one of two chambers of a bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the lower house; a legislature composed of only one house is described as unicameral.- Possible specific characteristics :...
, the Legislative Council, with members appointed by the government of the day for life. The first sitting in May 1860 was held in the old converted convict barracks in Queen Street
Queen Street, Brisbane
Queen Street in Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, Australia, is one of the city's major streets. It is the city's central road, partly covered by a pedestrian mall called the Queen Street Mall. Queen Street ends at the Victoria Bridge and is bounded by two of the Brisbane River's central reaches...
. It consisted of 26 members from 16 electorates, nearly half of whom were pastoralists or squatters. Early sessions dealt with issues of land, labour, railways, public works, immigration, education and gold discoveries.
In April 1864, Australia's first Hansard
Hansard
Hansard is the name of the printed transcripts of parliamentary debates in the Westminster system of government. It is named after Thomas Curson Hansard, an early printer and publisher of these transcripts.-Origins:...
was produced. It was the second Hansard to be made in the Commonwealth
Commonwealth
Commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. Historically, it has sometimes been synonymous with "republic."More recently it has been used for fraternal associations of some sovereign nations...
, after Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...
in 1855. That year also saw member numbers increased to 32 and by 1868 as more redistributions occurred the number grew to 42. Members were not paid until 1886, effectively excluding the working class man from state politics.
The Assembly was elected under the 'first past the post
Plurality voting system
The plurality voting system is a single-winner voting system often used to elect executive officers or to elect members of a legislative assembly which is based on single-member constituencies...
' (plurality) system 1860 to 1892. From then until 1942 an unusual form of preferential voting called the 'contingent vote
Contingent vote
The contingent vote is an electoral system used to elect a single winner, in which the voter ranks the candidates in order of preference. In an election, if no candidate receives an absolute majority of first preference votes, then all but the two leading candidates are eliminated and there is a...
' was used. This was done by a conservative government to prevent the Labor Party from gaining seats. In 1942 the plurality system was reintroduced until it was replaced in 1962 by the 'full preferential' form of the Alternative Vote. This was done by the Labor Party, which saw a decline in votes in the 1940s, to divide the opposition. In 1992, this was changed to the optional preferential system currently used.
After 1912, electorates elected only a single member to the Assembly. In 1922, the Legislative Council was abolished, with the help of members known as the "suicide squad", who were specially appointed to vote the chamber out of existence. This left Queensland with a unicameral parliament—currently the only Australian state with this arrangement.
The youngest person ever elected to Queensland's Legislative Assembly was Laurence Springborg former Minister for Natural Resources and former Leader of the Opposition
Leader of the Opposition (Queensland)
This is a list of Leaders of the Opposition in Queensland. Prior to 1898, opposition to the government of the day was less organised. Thus the Queensland Parliamentary Record does not designate Leaders of the Opposition before then....
. In 1989, he entered parliament aged 21.
Queensland's "gerrymander"
Queensland, from 1948 until the reforms following the end of the Bjelke-PetersenJoh Bjelke-Petersen
Sir Johannes "Joh" Bjelke-Petersen, KCMG , was an Australian politician. He was the longest-serving and longest-lived Premier of Queensland, holding office from 1968 to 1987, a period that saw considerable economic development in the state...
era, had a system of electoral zoning that could be used by the government of the day to maximise its own voter support at the expense of the opposition. It has been called a form of gerrymander, however it is more accurately referred to as an electoral malapportionment. In a classic gerrymander, electoral boundaries are drawn to take advantage of known pockets of supporters and to isolate areas of opposition voters so as to maximise the number of seats for the government for a given number of votes and to cause opposition support to be "wasted" by concentrating their supporters in relatively fewer electorates.
The Queensland "gerrymander", first introduced by the Australian Labor Party
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...
(ALP) government of Ned Hanlon in 1949 used a series of electoral zones. While the number of electors in each seat in a zone was roughly equal, there was considerable variation in the number of electors between zones. Thus an electorate in the remote zone might have as few as 5,000 electors, while a seat in the metropolitan zone might have as many as 25,000.
Initially Queensland was divided into three zones—the metropolitan zone, the provincial cities zone (which also included rural areas around provincial cities) and the rural zone. Using this system the Labor government was able to maximise its vote, particularly in the provincial city zone. With the split in the party in the late 1950s the ALP lost office and a conservative coalition
Coalition
A coalition is a pact or treaty among individuals or groups, during which they cooperate in joint action, each in their own self-interest, joining forces together for a common cause. This alliance may be temporary or a matter of convenience. A coalition thus differs from a more formal covenant...
government led by the Country Party (later National Party of Australia
National Party of Australia
The National Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Traditionally representing graziers, farmers and rural voters generally, it began as the The Country Party, but adopted the name The National Country Party in 1975, changed to The National Party of Australia in 1982. The party is...
), came to power, which, as discussed above, initially modified the voting system to introduce preferential voting, to take advantage of Labor's split. Subsequently as the divisions in the ALP abated in the early 1970s, and tensions in the conservative coalition grew, (thus reducing the advantage to be gained by the use of preferential voting), the conservative government modified the zoning system to create four zones—to the existing three zones was added a fourth zone—a remote zone, with electorates with even fewer electors. The provincial cities zone was reduced in size, with provincial cities' hinterlands added to the rural zone. Thus the conservative government was able to isolate Labor support in provincial cities and maximise its own rural power base.
The entrenchment of a conservative government was also caused by socio-economic and demographic changes associated with mechanisation of farms and urbanisation which led to a drift of working class population from rural and remote electorates to the cities.
By the late 1980s the decline in the political fortunes of the National Party, together with rapid growth in south east Queensland meant that the zonal system was no longer able to guarantee a conservative victory.
In addition, in 1988 the Federal Labor Government held four constitutional referendums
Australian referendum, 1988
The 1988 Australian Referendum was held on 3 September 1988. It contained four referendum questions, none of which passed. The failure was generally attributed to the open ended and nondescriptive wording of the proposed amendments....
—one of these
Australian referendum, 1988 (Fair Elections)
Constitution Alteration 1988 proposed to enshrine in the constitution a guarantee that allCommonwealth, State and Territory elections would be conducted democratically.The question was put to a referendum in the Australian referendum, 1988....
was for the adoption of fair electoral systems around Australia. Although the referendum did not succeed, it heightened public awareness of the issue. A large public interest non-partisan organisation, the Citizens for Democracy, lobbied extensively the Liberal and Labor parties to abolish the gerrymander and to make it a major issue in the lead up to the landmark 1989 Queensland election.
In 1989 Labor won government, promising to implement the recommendations of the Fitzgerald Inquiry
Fitzgerald Inquiry
The Fitzgerald Inquiry into Queensland Police corruption was a judicial inquiry presided over by Tony Fitzgerald QC. The inquiry resulted in the deposition of a premier, two by-elections, the jailing of three former ministers and a police commissioner who was jailed and lost his...
into police corruption, including the establishment of an Electoral and Administrative Reform Commission (EARC). EARC recommended the abolition of the zonal system, and its replacement of a "modified one vote, one value" system. Under this proposal, subsequently adopted, most electorates consisted of approximately the same number of electors, but with a greater tolerance for fewer electors allowed in a limited number of remote electorates.
Parliament House
Parliament House, Brisbane
Parliament House in Brisbane is the home of the Parliament of Queensland, housing the Legislative Assembly. It is situated on the corner of George Street and Alice Street...
in the Brisbane central business district
Brisbane central business district
The Brisbane central business district , sometimes referred to as the city, is a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia and is located on a point on the northern bank of the Brisbane River. The triangular shaped area is bounded by the Brisbane River to the east, south and west...
. The building was completed in 1891. The lower house chamber is decorated dark green in the traditional Westminster
Westminster System
The Westminster system is a democratic parliamentary system of government modelled after the politics of the United Kingdom. This term comes from the Palace of Westminster, the seat of the Parliament of the United Kingdom....
style. The chamber once featured central tables which divided two rows of elevated benches on each side. It is now based around a U—shape away from the speakers chair with three rows of benches and their own desk and microphone.
Current distribution of seats
| Party | Seats held | Current Assembly | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 Queensland state election, 2009 The Queensland state election was held to elect members to the unicameral Parliament of Queensland on 21 March 2009. The election saw the incumbent Labor government led by Premier Anna Bligh defeat the Liberal National Party of Queensland led by Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg, and gain a... |
Now | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Australian Labor Party Australian Labor Party The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia... |
51 | 51 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Liberal National Party of Queensland | 34 | 31 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Independent Independent (politician) In politics, an independent or non-party politician is an individual not affiliated to any political party. Independents may hold a centrist viewpoint between those of major political parties, a viewpoint more extreme than any major party, or they may have a viewpoint based on issues that they do... |
4 | 5 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Katter's Australian Party Katter's Australian Party Katter's Australian Party is a registered political party in Australia. It was formed by the independent Federal Member of Parliament Bob Katter with a registration application lodged to the Australian Electoral Commission on 3 June 2011... |
0 | 2 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
See also
- Parliaments of the Australian states and territoriesParliaments of the Australian states and territoriesThe Parliaments of the Australian states and territories are legislative bodies within the federal framework of the Commonwealth of Australia. Before the formation of the Commonwealth in 1901, the six Australian colonies were self-governing, with parliaments which had come into existence at various...
- Politics of QueenslandPolitics of QueenslandThe politics of Queensland has several unique features with respect to other states in Australia including a unicameral legislature.-Executive:...
External links
- Queensland Parliament official website