Queensland Legislative Assembly

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).

The 89 Members of Parliament are intended to represent approximately the same population in each electorate, however that has not always been the case (see Queensland's Gerrymander).

Current distribution of seats

* 17 elected as National Party candidates and 8 as Liberal Party candidates.

History

Historical distribution of seats

Before 1922

The Legislative Assembly was the lower house of a normal Westminster style bicameral parliament. The upper house, the Legislative Council, with members appointed by the government of the day for life. 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. In 1942 the plurality system was reintroduced until it was replaced in 1962 by the 'full preferential' form of the Alternative Vote. In 1992 this was changed to the optional preferential system currently used.

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. [http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/view/forSchools/documents/factSheets/Sheet%2039-%20%20ABOLITION%20OF%20THE%20UPPER%20HOUSE%20.pdf]

Queensland's "gerrymander"

Queensland, from 1948 until the reforms following the end of the Bjelke-Petersen 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. So the 'one vote one value' principle, while overwhelmingly adopted in Queensland, was not universally adopted.

ee also

*Parliaments of the Australian states and territories
*Current list of Members of the Queensland Legislative Assembly

External links

* [http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/EPetitions%5FQLD/cgi-bin/Petitions.cgi?Action=1 Current E-Petitions] , currently online petitions for Queensland parliament

References