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One Vote One Value
In Australia, one vote, one value is a democratic principle, applied in electoral laws governing redistributions of electoral divisions of the House of Representatives. The principle calls for all electoral divisions to have the same number of enrolled voters (not residents or population), within a specified percentage of variance. The electoral laws of the Commonwealth for the House of Representatives and all states follow the principle with some exceptions. The principle does not apply to the Senate, as each state is entitled under the constitution to the same number of senators irrespective of the population of the state. Degree of malapportionment Currently, for the House of Representatives, the number of enrolled voters in each division in a state or territory can vary by up to 10% from the average quota for the state or territory, and the number of voters can vary by up to 3.5% from the average projected enrolment three-and-a-half years into the future. The allowable quota ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a Megadiverse countries, megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with Deserts of Australia, deserts in the centre, tropical Forests of Australia, rainforests in the north-east, and List of mountains in Australia, mountain ranges in the south-east. The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south east Asia approximately Early human migrations#Nearby Oceania, 65,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Period, last i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australian Constitution
The Constitution of Australia (or Australian Constitution) is a constitutional document that is supreme law in Australia. It establishes Australia as a federation under a constitutional monarchy and outlines the structure and powers of the Australian government's three constituent parts, the executive, legislature, and judiciary. The constitution was drafted between 1891 and 1898, through a series of conventions conducted by representatives of the six self-governing British colonies in Australia. The final draft was then approved in a set of referendums from 1898 to 1900. The British government objected to some elements of the final draft, but a slightly modified form was enacted as section 9 of the ''Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900'', an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The act was given royal assent on 9 July 1900, was proclaimed on 17 September 1900, and entered into force on 1 January 1901. The constitution gave the six colonies the status o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Playmander
The Playmander was a gerrymandering system, a pro-rural electoral malapportionment in the Australian state of South Australia, which was introduced by the incumbent Liberal and Country League (LCL) government in 1936, and remained in place for 32 years until 1968. This consisted of 26 low-population rural seats holding as much as a 10-to-1 advantage over the 13 high-population metropolitan seats in the state parliament, even though rural seats contained only a third of South Australia's population during this period. At the peak of the malapportionment in 1968, the rural seat of Frome had 4,500 formal votes, while the metropolitan seat of Enfield had 42,000 formal votes. Additionally, there was also a change from multi-member seats to single-member seats for the first time in South Australia's history, while the number of MPs in the lower house was reduced from 46 to 39. During the Playmander's existence, Labor managed to win enough parliamentary seats to form government on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bjelkemander
The Bjelkemander was the term given to a system of malapportionment in the Australian state of Queensland in the 1970s and 1980s. Under the system, electorates were allocated to zones such as rural or metropolitan and electoral boundaries drawn so that rural electorates had about half as many voters each as metropolitan ones. The Country Party (later National Party), a rural-based party led by Joh Bjelke-Petersen, was able to govern uninhibited during this period due to the 'Bjelkemander' and the absence of an upper house of Parliament. Origin of term The term is a portmanteau of Joh Bjelke-Petersen's surname with the word "Gerrymander", where electoral boundaries are redrawn in an unnatural way with the dominant intention of favouring one political party or grouping over its rivals. Although Bjelke-Petersen's 1972 redistributions occasionally had elements of "gerrymandering" in the strict sense, their perceived unfairness had more to do with malapportionment whereby certain a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
One Man, One Vote
"One man, one vote", or "one person, one vote", expresses the principle that individuals should have equal representation in voting. This slogan is used by advocates of political equality to refer to such electoral reforms as universal suffrage, proportional representation, and the elimination of plural voting, malapportionment, or gerrymandering. Indices The violation of equal representation in the various systems of proportional representation can be measured with the Loosemore–Hanby index, the Gallagher index or the amount of unrepresented vote. A Gallagher index above 5 (%) is seen by many experts as violating the ''One man, one vote'' principle. In case of plurality voting, the wasted vote can be measured. Additionally, the percentage of spoilt vote and percentage of disfranchisement can be measured to detect violations of the equal representation principle. History The phrase surged in english-language usage around 1880, thanks in part to British trade unio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
McGinty V Western Australia
''McGinty v Western Australia,'' was a significant case decided in the High Court of Australia in 1996. The plaintiffs sought to enshrine the principle of ‘one vote one value’ in the Australian Constitution, and has had a significant impact on how the High Court approaches matters of the franchise, as well as malapportionment. The plaintiff's submissions were unanimously rejected by the court, who found that the interpretation of sections 7 and 24 of the Australian Constitution did not require that all votes hold the same value. The High Court exercised its original jurisdiction in hearing the matter, meaning that the case did not need to proceed as an appeal from the Supreme Court of Western Australia. Background Western Australian elections The Western Australian Legislature is made up of a bicameral parliamentary system, a legislative council and a legislative assembly, established in 1890. By 1996 the assembly had 57 members, which were divided between 34 metrop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elections In Australia
Elections in Australia take place periodically to elect the legislature of the Commonwealth of Australia, as well as for each Australian state and territory and for local government councils. Elections in all jurisdictions follow similar principles, although there are minor variations between them. The elections for the Australian Parliament are held under the federal electoral system, which is uniform throughout the country, and the elections for state and territory Parliaments are held under the electoral system of each state and territory. Part IV of Chapter 1 of the Australian Constitution briefly deals with eligibility for voting and election to the federal Australian Parliament. It does not prescribe how elections should be conducted. Election campaigns and associated political advertisements are subject to some regulation. Public funding of political parties and party registration was introduced in 1983. Voting for the federal and each state and territory parliament i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Party Of Australia
The National Party of Australia, also known as The Nationals or The Nats, is an List of political parties in Australia, Australian political party. Traditionally representing graziers, farmers, and regional voters generally, it began as the Australian Country Party in 1920 at a Government of Australia, federal level. In 1975 it adopted the name National Country Party, before taking its current name in 1982. A Conservatism in Australia, conservative and Agrarianism, agrarian party, the Nationals combine social conservatism with agrarian socialist economic policies. Ensuring support for farmers, either through government grants and subsidies or through community appeals, is a major focus of National Party policy. The process for obtaining these funds has come into question in recent years, such as during the Sports rorts affair (2020), Sports Rorts Affair. According to Ian McAllister (political scientist), Ian McAllister, the Nationals are the only remaining party from the "wav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liberal Party Of Australia
The Liberal Party of Australia is a centre-right political party in Australia, one of the two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-left Australian Labor Party. It was founded in 1944 as the successor to the United Australia Party and has since become the most successful political party in Australia's history. The Liberal Party is the dominant partner in the Coalition with the National Party of Australia. At the federal level, the Liberal Party and its predecessors have been in coalition with the National Party since the 1920s. The Coalition was most recently in power from the 2013 federal election to the 2022 federal election, forming the Abbott (2013–2015), Turnbull (2015–2018) and Morrison (2018–2022) governments. After the Liberal Party lost the 2022 Australian federal election, Morrison announced he would step down as leader of the Liberal Party. Deputy Leader Josh Frydenberg also lost his seat, making senior Liberal MP Peter Dutton ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joh Bjelke-Petersen
Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen (13 January 191123 April 2005), known as Joh Bjelke-Petersen, was a conservative Australian politician. He was the longest-serving and longest-lived premier of Queensland, holding office from 1968 to 1987, during which time the state underwent considerable economic development."Sir Joh, our home-grown banana republican" , ''The Age'', 25 April 2005. He has become one of the most well-known and controversial figures of 20th-century Australian politics because of his uncompromising conservatism (including his role in the downfall of the Whitlam federal government), political longevi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gerrymandering
In representative democracies, gerrymandering (, originally ) is the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries with the intent to create undue advantage for a party, group, or socioeconomic class within the constituency. The manipulation may involve "cracking" (diluting the voting power of the opposing party's supporters across many districts) or "packing" (concentrating the opposing party's voting power in one district to reduce their voting power in other districts). Gerrymandering can also be used to protect incumbents. Wayne Dawkins describes it as politicians picking their voters instead of voters picking their politicians. The term ''gerrymandering'' is named after American politician Elbridge Gerry, Vice President of the United States at the time of his death, who, as governor of Massachusetts in 1812, signed a bill that created a partisan district in the Boston area that was compared to the shape of a mythological salamander. The term has negative conn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australian Referendum, 1988 (Fair Elections)
The ''Constitution Alteration (Fair Elections) Bill'' 1988, was an unsuccessful proposal to alter the Australian Constitution to enshrine the principle that each elector's vote should have equal value in Australia, also referred to as one vote, one value, including in states and territories. It was put to voters for approval in a referendum held on 3 September 1988. Question ''A Proposed Law: To alter the Constitution to provide for 4 year maximum terms for members of both Houses of the Commonwealth Parliament.'' ''Do you approve this proposed alteration?'' The proposal was to vary existing provisions of the Constitution as follows (removed text stricken through; substituted text in bold): ; Section 8 Qualification of electors :Subject to this Constitution,the qualification of electors of senators shall be in each State or Territory that which is prescribed by this Constitution, or by the Parliament as the qualification for electors of members of the House of Representatives; ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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