Legislative Assembly of Queensland
- Lab 7
- Independent 3
- PUP 2
- KUP 3
- LNP 74
The Legislative Assembly of Queensland is the only chamber of the Parliament of the Australian state of Queensland. Elections are held usually every three years. The electoral system corresponds to the Optional Preferential Voting, a form of ranking electoral system. The board consists of 89 members, which are referred to as "Member of Parliament" (MP). Until 2000, these were designated yet " Member of the Legislative Assembly " (MLA ).
The assembly was established in 1859, its first meeting was held in May 1860. Recorded are the meetings as Hansard since April 1864, Queensland was the first state in that time, have been introduced in which such records.
History
History before 1922
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, the members of its mandate occupied until her death. New members, as a substitute for becoming free seats were appointed by the current government. The first meeting of the Assembly in May 1860, held in an old barracks in Queen Street in Brisbane, which had previously served for the accommodation of prisoners. She had 26 members from 16 constituencies, of which nearly half were pastoralists and squatters. Early sessions dealt with topics such as land, labor, railways, public works, immigration, education and discovery of gold.
In April 1864, Hansard was first produced the recording of a parliamentary session. It was this is the first Hansard in Australia and the Commonwealth, after he had been introduced in Nova Scotia in 1855 second.
In the same year the number of MEPs was increased to 32 and 1868, after it had arrived in Queensland on a number of redistributions, on 42 MEPs were until 1886 not paid, whereby workers were excluded from the participation in the federal state policy as deputies de facto.
The assembly was elected from 1860 to 1892 according to the majority vote. Then was elected until 1942 after the Contingent Vote, an unusual form of ranking selection system. This was introduced by a Conservative government in order to ensure that the Labor Party wins as few seats. 1942, the majority voting was introduced again, this was back in 1962 replaced by the ranking of choice. This was a decision of the former Labor government, which was faced with voting losses since the 1940s and wanted to split with this election the opposition. 1992 there was a further change in the electoral system, with the introduction of the Optional Preferential Voting, a form of ranking electoral system. This is the current electoral system.
After a suffrage amendment in 1912, only one deputy was elected in each constituency. 1922, the Legislative Council was abolished, among other things, with the support of some members of the House of Lords, which voted for the resolution of their chamber, and were known as "suicide squad". After the dissolution of the House of Lords Queensland is still the only Australian state with a unicameral parliament.
The youngest person ever elected to the Legislative Assembly of Queensland is Lawrence Springborg, formerly Minister for Natural Resources and previously leader of the opposition. He was elected in 1989 at the age of 21 years in parliament.
Gerrymandering in Queensland
From 1948 up to the reforms after the end of the era of longtime Prime Minister John Bjelke -Petersen was in Queensland, a system used for constituency contraction, which was designed to the voters of the government - won as much power in the form of safe - at the expense of the opposition to send seats. This specific form of gerrymandering was expressed that the constituencies were so cut and distributed to the rural areas of more power than the urban approached.
The Queensland gerrymandering was introduced in 1949 by the Labor government Ned Hanlon and used a number of constituency zones, which were based on their distance from Brisbane.
Queensland was divided into three zones, the urban zone around Brisbane ( metropolitan zone ), the zone around the provincial towns around ( provincial cities zone ) and rural area ( rural zone ). While the number of voters per constituency in a zone was approximately the same, so there was a significant difference in the number of eligible voters between the zones. Thus there were in more remote areas constituencies where there were only 5,000 voters, while in the urban zone came a seat on 25,000 people. This system succeeded the Labor government to draw the maximum benefit from their voices, especially in the provincial town zone, which represented the power base of the Labor Party.
According to an internal split in the party in the late 50s took a conservative coalition government, headed by the Country Party. This changed the electoral system, first of all, to pull out the split in the Labor Party an advantage. Furthermore, the provincial towns were separated from the surrounding rural regions and slammed it to the rural zone. This new secure seats for the Country Party were created. As tensions in the Labor Party subsided in the early 1970s and, on the contrary, tensions arose in the conservative coalition, the advantages of the Conservatives, which attracted them from the suffrage reduced. Therefore, a fourth zone with the zone system has been added, in which there were remote areas (remote zone ) in which there were relatively many seats with even fewer voters. Also managed the Conservative government to isolate the supporters of the Labor Party in the provincial cities and to strengthen their own rural power base. On average, the Country Party needed only 7,000 votes for a seat, as opposed to laboratory, which took 12,800 votes for a typical seat for them.
This Redoubt the Conservatives was also based on socio-economic and demographic changes which brought the mechanization of farms and urbanization, the working people of the remote and rural areas to the cities.
In the late 1980s led to the demise of the National Party, in conjunction with a rapid population growth in South East Queensland, to the realization that the zone system could guarantee a conservative dominance no longer.
1988 four referenda were held, should specify one of which is fair electoral systems in Australia. The referendum was not accepted, but made it to the public on the current state of attention. A large interest group " Citizens for Democracy", operational excessive lobbying the Liberal and the Labor Party to make this issue into a major election issue and declare the elections in Queensland in 1989 turning point.
In 1989, the Labor Party and the government promised the proposals of the " Fitzgerald Inquiry" implement a judicial commission of inquiry concerning the corruption within the Queensland Police. These proposals included the creation of an " Electoral and Administrative Reform Commission ". The EARC recommended abolition of the zone system and its replacement by a "modified one vote, one value " system. After the implementation of these proposals, most constituencies had roughly the same number of voters, albeit with a greater tolerance to less voters in remote areas. This system is still in force today, so it has been found that 40 seats will be awarded in Brisbane and 49 in the rest of Queensland.
Election results
The following table lists the election results in the form of seats won are listed since 1932. The largest party in each case is highlighted. Given the option, this has usually an absolute majority of the seats and thus represents the government.
Parliament House
The Legislative Assembly of Queensland has its registered office at Parliament House in Brisbane. The building was completed in 1891. The meeting room is decorated in dark green of the traditional Westminster - style. Once the hall was divided by positioned in the middle of tables into two halves, in which there were increased benches. Today, three rows of benches are U-shaped aligned to the chair of the parliamentary speaker. All banks have their own tables and microphones.