The 1918 Swan by-election was a

by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election ( Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election use ...

for the Division of Swan in the

Australian House of Representatives The House of Representatives is the lower house of the bicameralism, bicameral Parliament of Australia, the upper house being the Australian Senate, Senate. Its composition and powers are established in Chapter I of the Constitution of Austra ...

, following the death of the sitting member Sir John Forrest. Held on 26 October 1918, the by-election led to the election of the youngest person to be elected until 2010 to the

Parliament of Australia The Parliament of Australia (officially the Federal Parliament, also called the Commonwealth Parliament) is the legislative branch of the government of Australia. It consists of three elements: the monarch (represented by the governor-g ...

Edwin Corboy Edwin Wilkie "Ted" Corboy (24 August 1896 – 6 August 1950) was an Australian politician. From 1918 to 2010, he held the record as the youngest ever Australian Member of Parliament. Early life Born in Victoria, he was educated in Western A ...

. It saw the conservative vote split between the Country Party and the Nationalist Party, which directly prompted the introduction of preferential voting in Australia.

Background

Sir John Forrest, who had been the first Premier of Western Australia, was elected to the

for the Division of Swan at the first federal election on 29 March 1901. On 6 February 1918, Forrest was offered a place in the British peerage (he was to be created Baron Forrest of Bunbury), though the relevant

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had not at the time been issued. Forrest set out for England to accept the offer and take up his place in the

House of Lords The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by appointment, heredity or official function. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster ...

, but he died en route on 2 September 1918, off the coast of

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierra ...

, from

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal bl ...

. Thus, a by-election was called to replace Forrest as the representative for Swan.

Electoral system and political parties in Australia

By 1909, Australia had evolved a

two-party system A two-party system is a political party system in which two major political parties consistently dominate the political landscape. At any point in time, one of the two parties typically holds a majority in the legislature and is usually refe ...

at the federal level, with the conservative

Commonwealth Liberal Party The Liberal Party was a parliamentary party in Australian federal politics between 1909 and 1917. The party was founded under Alfred Deakin's leadership as a merger of the Protectionist Party and Anti-Socialist Party, an event known as the ...

and the progressive

Australian Labor Party The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also simply known as Labor, is the major centre-left political party in Australia, one of two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia. The party forms ...

having both alternately won power via general election. This system was upset in November 1916, when the Labor party split over the issue of conscription;

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is ...

Billy Hughes and his pro-conscription supporters left the Labor party and formed a minority government as the " National Labor Party", before merging with the Liberals in February 1917 to form the Nationalist Party with Hughes as their leader. However, Hughes was distrusted by some on the conservative side of politics for his past involvement in

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...

politics as Labor leader, and disaffected conservative farmers were moved to support the new Country Party, which had been formed in Western Australia in 1913 (and would be formed federally in 1922 from an amalgamation of state-based parties). At the time of the 1918 Swan by-election, Australia used a

first past the post In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast thei ...

voting system, as was used in the

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, in all elections at the federal level. Under this system, the winner was simply the candidate with the highest numerical total of votes, regardless of whether it was a majority.

Election

The by-election was the first of what have come to be known in Australia as "three-cornered contests" with two anti-Labor parties both running candidates against Labor. The Nationalist candidate was William Hedges; Basil Murray was the Country Party candidate;

was the Labor candidate, with William Watson standing as an

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. Hedges was previously a member of the House of Representatives for the Division of Fremantle, from 1906 to 1913. Forrest had won Swan in the previous election unopposed.

Results

In the end, the Nationalist and Country candidates split the anti-Labor vote, Hedges achieving 29.6% and Murray gathering 31.4% of the total; however, both were beaten by the Labor candidate Corboy, who received 34.4% of the total vote. Corboy was duly elected as the member for Swan.

Consequences

Corboy, who was elected just 22 years and two months old, remained the youngest person ever to be elected to either house of the

until the 2010 election, when 20-year-old Wyatt Roy was elected as a member of the Liberal National Party of Queensland to the seat of

Longman Longman, also known as Pearson Longman, is a publisher, publishing company founded in London, England, in 1724 and is owned by Pearson PLC. Since 1968, Longman has been used primarily as an imprint by Pearson's Schools business. The Longman bra ...

. Shocked by the loss of a safe Nationalist seat to Labor, the Nationalist government was moved to initiate electoral reform and change the voting system to preferential voting (also known outside Australia as instant-runoff voting) as part of a rewrite of the electoral legislation, with the '' Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918''. While preferential voting had already been introduced at the state level in

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to ...

(1907) and Victoria (1911) and had been considered at the federal level by Sir Joseph Cook's government (1913–1914), it was only the "considerations of partisan advantage nd notthe finer points of electoral theory" that provided the impetus for the change. Preferential voting was first put to use in the Corangamite by-election for the Victorian seat of Corangamite two months later, and Labor candidate and future Prime Minister James Scullin topped the primary vote, only to be defeated after distribution of preferences by William Gibson of the

Victorian Farmers' Union The Victorian Farmers' Union (VFU) was an association of farmers and primary producers formed in 1914 in the Australian state of Victoria. Although initially formed as an "absolutely non-political" entity, the VFU became a political party in 191 ...

. The preferential voting system remains in place and has helped to support a fairly stable three-party system, with the anti-Labor parties (presently the

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 Aus ...

and the National Party of Australia) regularly forming coalition governments. At the 1919 election, Corboy once again polled the highest percentage at the first count, with two conservative candidates again splitting the conservative vote, but with the introduction of preferential voting, Corboy was easily defeated by the Country Party's John Prowse on preferences. In a twist of fate William Watson, who finished a distant fourth in this by-election with just 4.6% of the vote, would be elected to the House of Representatives for the Division of Fremantle at the 1922 election on the back of preferences from Nationalist candidate William Hedges, the same man who had also contested the by-election and had previously been the member for Fremantle.

References