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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 used to f ...
for the
Division of Swan The Division of Swan is an Australian electoral division located in Western Australia. Swan is a marginal electorate that has swung between both major political parties in the past two decades. It extends across the Swan River from central P ...
in the
Australian House of Representatives The House of Representatives is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the upper house being the Senate. Its composition and powers are established in Chapter I of the Constitution of Australia. The term of members of the ...
, following the death of the sitting member Sir
John Forrest Sir John Forrest (22 August 1847 – 2 SeptemberSome sources give the date as 3 September 1918 1918) was an Australian explorer and politician. He was the first premier of Western Australia (1890–1901) and a long-serving cabinet minister i ...
. 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 legislature, legislative branch of the government of Australia. It consists of three elements: the monarch (represented by the ...
,
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#Australia, Member of Parliament. Early life Born in Victoria, ...
. It saw the conservative vote split between the Country Party and the Nationalist Party, which directly prompted the introduction of
preferential voting {{short description, Election systems Preferential voting or preference voting (PV) may refer to different election systems or groups of election systems: * Ranked voting methods, all election methods that involve ranking candidates in order of pr ...
in
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
.


Background

Sir
John Forrest Sir John Forrest (22 August 1847 – 2 SeptemberSome sources give the date as 3 September 1918 1918) was an Australian explorer and politician. He was the first premier of Western Australia (1890–1901) and a long-serving cabinet minister i ...
, who had been the first
Premier of Western Australia The premier of Western Australia is the head of government of the state of Western Australia. The role of premier at a state level is similar to the role of the prime minister of Australia at a federal level. The premier leads the executive bra ...
, was elected to the
Australian House of Representatives The House of Representatives is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the upper house being the Senate. Its composition and powers are established in Chapter I of the Constitution of Australia. The term of members of the ...
for the
Division of Swan The Division of Swan is an Australian electoral division located in Western Australia. Swan is a marginal electorate that has swung between both major political parties in the past two decades. It extends across the Swan River from central P ...
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
letters patent Letters patent ( la, litterae patentes) ( always in the plural) are a type of legal instrument in the form of a published written order issued by a monarch, president or other head of state, generally granting an office, right, monopoly, titl ...
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 Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the ...
, 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 b ...
. 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 referre ...
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 Fu ...
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 the f ...
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 Conscription (also called the draft in the United States) is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day un ...
;
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 not ...
Billy Hughes William Morris Hughes (25 September 1862 – 28 October 1952) was an Australian politician who served as the seventh prime minister of Australia, in office from 1915 to 1923. He is best known for leading the country during World War I, but ...
and his pro-conscription supporters left the Labor party and formed a
minority government A minority government, minority cabinet, minority administration, or a minority parliament is a government and Cabinet (government), cabinet formed in a parliamentary system when a political party or Coalition government, coalition of parties do ...
as the "
National Labor Party The National Labor Party was formed by Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes in 1916, following the 1916 Labor split on the issue of World War I conscription in Australia. Hughes had taken over as leader of the Australian Labor Party and Pr ...
", 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 e ...
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 their ...
voting system An electoral system or voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and referendums are conducted and how their results are determined. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections ma ...
, as was used in the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
, 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;
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#Australia, Member of Parliament. Early life Born in Victoria, ...
was the Labor candidate, with
William Watson William, Willie, Bill or Billy Watson may refer to: Entertainment * William Watson (songwriter) (1794–1840), English concert hall singer and songwriter * William Watson (poet) (1858–1935), English poet * Billy Watson (actor) (1923–2022), A ...
standing as an
independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...
. Hedges was previously a member of the House of Representatives for the
Division of Fremantle The Division of Fremantle is an electoral division of the Australian House of Representatives in Western Australia. Geography Since 1984, federal electoral division boundaries in Australia have been determined at redistributions by a redistrib ...
, 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
Parliament of Australia The Parliament of Australia (officially the Federal Parliament, also called the Commonwealth Parliament) is the legislature, legislative branch of the government of Australia. It consists of three elements: the monarch (represented by the ...
until the 2010 election, when 20-year-old Wyatt Roy was elected as a member of the
Liberal National Party of Queensland The Liberal National Party of Queensland (LNP) is a major political party in Queensland, Australia. It was formed in 2008 by a merger of the Queensland divisions of the Liberal Party and the National Party. At a federal level and in most other ...
to the seat of
Longman Longman, also known as Pearson Longman, is a 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 brand is also ...
. 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 The ''Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918'' is an Act of the Australian Parliament which continues to be the core legislation governing the conduct of elections in Australia, having been amended on numerous occasions since 1918. The Act was introd ...
''. 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 th ...
(1907) and
Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada * Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory * Victoria, Seychelle ...
(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 James Henry Scullin (18 September 1876 – 28 January 1953) was an Australian Labor Party politician and the ninth Prime Minister of Australia. Scullin led Labor to government at the 1929 Australian federal election. He was the first Catho ...
topped the primary vote, only to be defeated after distribution of preferences by
William Gibson William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as ''cyberpunk''. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his ...
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 1916 ...
. 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 Au ...
and the
National Party of Australia The National Party of Australia, also known as The Nationals or The Nats, is an List of political parties in Australia, Australian political party. Traditionally representing graziers, farmers, and regional voters generally, it began as the Au ...
) 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 William, Willie, Bill or Billy Watson may refer to: Entertainment * William Watson (songwriter) (1794–1840), English concert hall singer and songwriter * William Watson (poet) (1858–1935), English poet * Billy Watson (actor) (1923–2022), A ...
, 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 The Division of Fremantle is an electoral division of the Australian House of Representatives in Western Australia. Geography Since 1984, federal electoral division boundaries in Australia have been determined at redistributions by a redistrib ...
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.


See also

*
List of Australian federal by-elections This is a list of by-elections for the House of Representatives from its creation in 1901 until the present day. Casual vacancies in the House of Representatives arise when a member dies, is disqualified or resigns, or for some other reason th ...


References

{{Aus by-elections 7th parl 1918 elections in Australia Western Australian federal by-elections 1910s in Western Australia