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1974 Australian Referendum (Democratic Elections)
The ''Constitution Alteration (Democratic Elections) Bill 1974'', (Cth). was an unsuccessful proposal to alter the Australian Constitution to make population instead of electors, the basis of determining the average size of electorates in each state. It applied not only to the House of Representatives, but also to the various state Legislative Assemblies, requiring the use demographical population size to ensure democratic elections. This was intended to replace alternative methods of distributing seats, such as geographical size, with instead the population of states and territories. It was put to voters for approval in a referendum held on 18 May 1974. Background The referendum was held in conjunction to the 1974 Federal Election on 18 May 1974. After the rejection of 6 Bills by the Opposition-controlled Senate, a double dissolution election was called from the 1974 Federal Election. The incumbent Labor Party led by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam defeated the opposition Liber ... [...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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apportionment (politics)
Apportionment is the process by which seats in a legislative body are distributed among administrative divisions, such as states or parties, entitled to representation. This page presents the general principles and issues related to apportionment. The page Apportionment by country describes specific practices used around the world. The page Mathematics of apportionment describes mathematical formulations and properties of apportionment rules. The simplest and most universal principle is that elections should give each voter's intentions equal weight. This is both intuitive and stated in laws such as the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (the Equal Protection Clause). However, there are a variety of historical and technical reasons why this principle is not followed absolutely or, in some cases, as a first priority. Common problems Fundamentally, the representation of a population in the thousands or millions by a reasonable size, thus accountable govern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constitutional Referendums In Australia
A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of Legal entity, entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these principles are written down into a single document or set of legal documents, those documents may be said to embody a ''written constitution''; if they are encompassed in a single comprehensive document, it is said to embody a ''codified constitution''. The Constitution of the United Kingdom is a notable example of an ''uncodified constitution''; it is instead written in numerous fundamental Acts of a legislature, court cases or treaties. Constitutions concern different levels of organizations, from Sovereign state, sovereign countries to Company, companies and unincorporated Club (organization), associations. A treaty which establishes an international organization is also its constitution, in that it would define how that organiza ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1974 Referendums
Major events in 1974 include the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis and the resignation of President of the United States, United States President Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal. In the Middle East, the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War determined politics; following List of Prime Ministers of Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir's resignation in response to high Israeli casualties, she was succeeded by Yitzhak Rabin. In Europe, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, invasion and occupation of northern Cyprus by Turkey, Turkish troops initiated the Cyprus dispute, the Carnation Revolution took place in Portugal, and Chancellor of Germany, Chancellor of West Germany Willy Brandt resigned following an Guillaume affair, espionage scandal surrounding his secretary Günter Guillaume. In sports, the year was primarily dominated by the 1974 FIFA World Cup, FIFA World Cup in West Germany, in which the Germany national football team, German national team won the championshi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1974 In Australia
The following lists events that happened during 1974 in Australia. Incumbents *Monarch – Elizabeth II *Governor-General – Sir Paul Hasluck (until 11 July), then Sir John Kerr *Prime Minister – Gough Whitlam **Deputy Prime Minister – Lance Barnard (until 12 June), then Jim Cairns **Opposition Leader – Billy Snedden * Chief Justice – Sir Garfield Barwick State and Territory Leaders *Premier of New South Wales – Sir Robert Askin **Opposition Leader – Neville Wran *Premier of Queensland – Joh Bjelke-Petersen **Opposition Leader – Jack Houston (until 1 July), then Perc Tucker (until 7 December), then Tom Burns *Premier of South Australia – Don Dunstan **Opposition Leader – Bruce Eastick *Premier of Tasmania – Eric Reece **Opposition Leader – Max Bingham *Premier of Victoria – Rupert Hamer **Opposition Leader – Clyde Holding *Premier of Western Australia – John Tonkin (until 8 April), then Sir Charles Court **Opposition Leader – Sir Charles C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parliamentary Library Of Australia
The Parliamentary Library of Australia (or Commonwealth Parliamentary Library) is the library of the Parliament of Australia, administered by its Department of Parliamentary Services. It provides library services to elected officials, namely members of the Senate and House of Representatives, as well as their staff, parliamentary committees, the Governor-General of Australia, and the staff of parliamentary departments. History The library was established in 1901, the year of the federation of the Commonwealth of Australia. Control of the new library was controversial as the fledgling parliament was located in Melbourne where the Victorian premier and the library committee of the State Library of Victoria sought to influence the control and management of the library. From 1923 the library used two names describing the two roles and two collections ''Commonwealth Parliament Library'' which designated the parliamentary collection and ''Commonwealth National Library'' to designate th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Democratic Design Process
Design by committee is a pejorative term for a project that has many designers involved but no unifying plan or vision. Usage of the term The term is used to refer to suboptimal traits that such a process may produce as a result of having to compromise between the requirements and viewpoints of the participants, particularly in the presence of poor leadership or poor technical knowledge, such as needless complexity, internal inconsistency, logical flaws, banality, and the lack of a unifying vision. This design process by consensus is in contrast to autocratic design, or design by dictator, where the project leader decides on the design. The difference is that in an autocratic style, members of the organizations are not included and the final outcome is the responsibility of the leader. The term is especially common in technical parlance; and stresses the need for technical quality over political feasibility. The proverb " too many cooks spoil the broth" expresses the same idea. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electoral System
An electoral system or voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and Referendum, referendums are conducted and how their results are determined. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections may take place in business, Nonprofit organization, non-profit organisations and informal organisations. These rules govern all aspects of the voting process: when elections occur, suffrage, who is allowed to vote, who can stand as a candidate, voting method, how ballots are marked and cast, how the ballots are counted, how votes translate into the election outcome, limits on campaign finance, campaign spending, and other factors that can affect the result. Political electoral systems are defined by constitutions and electoral laws, are typically conducted by election commissions, and can use multiple types of elections for different offices. Some electoral systems elect a single winner to a unique position, such as prime ministe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parliamentary System
A parliamentary system, or parliamentarian democracy, is a system of democratic governance of a state (or subordinate entity) where the executive derives its democratic legitimacy from its ability to command the support ("confidence") of the legislature, typically a parliament, to which it is accountable. In a parliamentary system, the head of state is usually a person distinct from the head of government. This is in contrast to a presidential system, where the head of state often is also the head of government and, most importantly, where the executive does not derive its democratic legitimacy from the legislature. Countries with parliamentary systems may be constitutional monarchies, where a monarch is the head of state while the head of government is almost always a member of parliament, or parliamentary republics, where a mostly ceremonial president is the head of state while the head of government is regularly from the legislature. In a few parliamentary republics, among ... [...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 onl ... [...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] |
