Legislative Assembly of Queensland

Legislative Assembly of Queensland

Queensland coat of arms	Parliament House in Brisbane
Basic data
Seat:	Parliament House , Brisbane
Legislative period :	3 years
First session:	1860
MPs:	89
Current legislative period
Last choice:	November 25, 2017
Chair:	Ray Stevens ( LNP )
48 3 4th 38 48 3 4th 38
Distribution of seats:	Laboratory 48 CHAP 3 Otherwise. 4th LNP 38
Website
www.parliament.qld.gov.au

The Legislative Assembly of Queensland is the only chamber of parliament in the Australian state of Queensland . Elections usually take place every three years. The voting system corresponds to the Optional Preferential Voting , a form of instant runoff voting . The chamber consists of 89 members, who are referred to as "Members of Parliament" (MP). Until 2000 the name was still "Member of the Legislative Assembly" (MLA).

The Assembly was founded in 1859 and its first meeting took place in May 1860. The meetings have been recorded as Hansard since April 1864, when Queensland was the first state to introduce such recordings.

history

History before 1923

Originally, the Legislative Assembly was the lower house of a typical Westminster parliament with two chambers . The House of Lords was the Legislative Council of Queensland , whose members held their mandate until her death. New members, to replace seats that became vacant, were appointed by the current government. The first session of the Assembly in May 1860 was held in an old barracks on Queen Street in Brisbane, which previously housed convicts. It had 26 members from 16 constituencies, nearly half of whom were pastoralists or squatters . Early sessions dealt with topics such as land ownership, labor, railways, public works, immigration, education, and gold discoveries .

In April 1864 the first Hansard , the recording of a parliamentary session, was produced. It was the first Hansard in Australia and the second in the Commonwealth after being introduced to Nova Scotia in 1855.

In the same year the number of MPs increased to 32 and in 1868, after a series of redistributions in Queensland , to 42. MPs were not paid until 1886, effectively excluding workers from participating in state politics as MPs.

The Assembly was elected by majority vote from 1860 to 1892 . Thereafter, until 1942, contingent voting was used, an unusual form of instant runoff voting. This was introduced by a conservative government to ensure that the Labor Party wins as few seats as possible. Majority voting was reintroduced in 1942, and in 1962 it was replaced by instant run-off voting. This was a decision by the Labor government at the time, which had been confronted with voting losses since the 1940s and which wanted to split the opposition with this right to vote. In 1992 there was another change in the voting system , with the introduction of Optional Preferential Voting , a form of instant runoff voting. This is the current electoral system.

After a change in the electoral law in 1912, only one deputy was elected in each constituency. In 1922 the Legislative Council was abolished, among other things with the support of some upper house members, who voted for the dissolution of their chamber and became known as the " suicide squad ". After the House of Lords was dissolved, Queensland is still the only Australian state with a unicameral parliament .

The youngest person ever elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly is Lawrence Springborg , former Minister for Natural Resources and previously opposition leader . He was elected to parliament in 1989 at the age of 21.

Gerrymandering in Queensland

From 1948 until the reforms after the end of the era of long-time Prime Minister Johannes Bjelke-Petersen , a constituency drawing system was used in Queensland, which was designed to give government voters as much power as possible - at the expense of the opposition - in the form of surely gained To let sit. This specific form of gerrymandering expressed itself in the fact that the constituencies were designed and distributed in such a way that the rural regions had more power than the urban ones.

The Queensland Gerrymandering was introduced in 1949 by the Labor government under Ned Hanlon and used a number of constituency zones based on their distance from Brisbane .

Queensland was divided into three zones, the urban zone around Brisbane ( metropolitan zone ), the zone around the provincial cities ( provincial cities zone ) and the rural zone ( rural zone ). While the number of voters per constituency in a zone was approximately the same, there was a significant difference in the number of eligible voters between the zones. For example, in more remote zones there were constituencies in which there were only 5,000 eligible voters, while in the urban zone there was one seat for every 25,000 people. Through this system, the Labor government was able to get the maximum benefit from its votes, especially in the provincial city zone, which was the Labor Party's power base.

After an internal split in the party in the late 1950s, a conservative coalition took over government, led by the Country Party . First and foremost, it changed the electoral system in order to take advantage of the split in the Labor Party. Furthermore, the provincial cities were separated from the surrounding rural regions and these were added to the rural zone. This created new safe seats for the country party. As tensions in the Labor Party subsided in the early 1970s and, on the contrary, tensions arose in the Conservative coalition, the conservatives' advantages diminished from their voting rights. Therefore, a fourth zone the zone system has been added in which to remote areas were ( remote zone ) in which it is relatively many seats with even fewer voters were. The Conservative government also managed to isolate Labor Party's supporters in the provincial towns and to strengthen its own rural power base. On average, the Country Party only needed 7,000 votes for a seat, as opposed to Labor, which needed 12,800 votes for a typical seat.

This entrenchment of the conservatives was also based on socio-economic and demographic changes, which with the mechanization of the farms and urbanization brought the working population from the rural and remote regions to the cities.

In the late 1980s, the decline of the National Party , coupled with rapid population growth in Southeast Queensland, led to the realization that the zone system could no longer guarantee conservative dominance.

Four referendums were held in 1988 , one of which was intended to establish fair electoral systems in Australia. The referendum was not passed, but it drew the public's attention to the current situation. A large advocacy group , Citizens for Democracy, lobbied the Liberals and Labor Party excessively to make this a major election issue and to make the Queensland elections of 1989 a turning point.

In 1989 the Labor Party took over the government and promised to implement the proposals of the " Fitzgerald Inquiry ", a judicial inquiry into corruption within the Queensland police force. These proposals included the creation of an "Electoral and Administrative Reform Commission". The EARC recommended abolishing the zone system and replacing it with a "modified one vote, one value" system. After implementing these proposals, most constituencies had roughly the same number of eligible voters, albeit with a greater tolerance for fewer voters in remote areas. This system remains in place to this day, resulting in 40 seats being allocated in Brisbane and 49 in the rest of Queensland.

Election results

The table below shows the election results in terms of the number of seats won since 1932. The strongest party is highlighted in color. Due to the electoral law, this usually has an absolute majority of the seats and thus constitutes the government.

Political party	32	35	38	41	44	47	50	53	56	57	60	66	66	69	72	74	77	80	83	86	89	92	95	98	01	04	06	09	12	15th	17th
laboratory	33	46	44	41	37	35	42	50	49	20th	25th	26th	26th	31	33	11	23	25th	32	30th	54	54	45	44	66	63	59	51	7th	44	48
NPA / LPA / LNP	28	16	13	14th	12	14th	31	23	24	42	46	46	47	45	47	69	59	57	49	56	35	35	43	32	15th	20th	25th	34	74	42	39
One Nation																								11	3	1	1				1
Other	1		5	7th	13	13	2	2	2	13	7th	6th	5	2	2	2			1				1	2	5	5	4th	4th	8th	3	5
All in all	62	62	62	62	62	62	75	75	75	75	78	78	78	78	82	82	82	82	82	89	89	89	89	89	89	89	89	89	89	89	93

Parliament House

The Legislative Assembly of Queensland is based in Parliament House in Brisbane . The building was completed in 1891. The boardroom is decorated in the dark green of the traditional Westminster style . The hall was once divided into two halves by tables positioned in the middle with raised benches. Today three rows of benches are arranged in a U-shape on the chair of the parliament speaker. All benches have their own tables and microphones.

Current allocation of seats

Political party	Seats			Current Assembly (93 seats)
	2012	2015	2017
Australian Labor Party	7th	44	48
Liberal National Party	78	42	39
Katter's Australian Party	3	2	3
Other	2	1	3

Web links

• Official website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Lyn Armstrong: Brisbane: Corridors of Power . Brisbane History Group Inc, 1997, ISBN 0-9586469-1-0 , pp. 54-55
2. ^ ^{A b c d} John Wanna: Australian Politics and Government: The Commonwealth, the States and Territories . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003, ISBN 0-521-82507-5 , pp. 93–94 ( preview on Google Books )
3. ↑ Bligh calls early Queensland election . In: The Courier-Mail , February 22, 2009; Retrieved August 21, 2013
4. ^ Precis of results of Queensland state elections 1932 to 2009 . ( Memento of the original from March 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) Queensland Parliamentary Record; Retrieved August 21, 2013 
5. ^ John Wanna: The Ayes Have it: The History of Queensland Parliament 1957-1989 . ANU E Press, Canberra 2010, ISBN 978-1-921666-30-8 ( preview on Google Books )