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The 1963 Australian federal election was held in Australia on 30 November 1963. All 122 seats in the
House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...
were up for election. The incumbent Liberal–Country coalition government, led by Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies, won an increased majority over the opposition Labor Party, led by
Arthur Calwell Arthur Augustus Calwell (28 August 1896 – 8 July 1973) was an Australian politician who served as the leader of the Labor Party from 1960 to 1967. He led the party to three federal elections. Calwell grew up in Melbourne and attended St J ...
. This was the only time that a Federal Government won a seventh consecutive term in office.


Background

The election was held following the early dissolution of the House of Representatives. The
Prime Minister of Australia The prime minister of Australia is the head of government of the Commonwealth of Australia. The prime minister heads the executive branch of the federal government of Australia and is also accountable to federal parliament under the princip ...
, Sir Robert Menzies, gave as his reason for calling an election within two years that there was an insufficient working majority in the House. The 1961 election had been won with a substantially reduced majority of only two seats. One of the consequences of an early House election was that there were separate Senate and House elections until
1974 Major events in 1974 include the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis and the resignation of United States President Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal. In the Middle East, the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War determined politics; ...
. This became a factor in the
Gair Affair The Gair Affair was an episode in Australian political life in 1974, during the government led by the Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Whitlam offered the post of Ambassador to Ireland to a non-government senator from Queensland, Vince Gair, ...
. The Coalition government of the
Liberal Party The Liberal Party is any of many political parties around the world. The meaning of ''liberal'' varies around the world, ranging from liberal conservatism on the right to social liberalism on the left. __TOC__ Active liberal parties This is a li ...
led by Sir Robert Menzies and the Country Party led by
John McEwen Sir John McEwen, (29 March 1900 – 20 November 1980) was an Australian politician who served as the 18th prime minister of Australia, holding office from 1967 to 1968 in a caretaker capacity after the disappearance of Harold Holt. He was the ...
was returned with a substantially increased majority over the
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 t ...
led by
Arthur Calwell Arthur Augustus Calwell (28 August 1896 – 8 July 1973) was an Australian politician who served as the leader of the Labor Party from 1960 to 1967. He led the party to three federal elections. Calwell grew up in Melbourne and attended St J ...
.
Indigenous Australians Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...
could vote in federal elections on the same basis as other electors for the first time in this election following an amendment to the
Commonwealth Electoral Act 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 introdu ...
becoming law on 1 November. The amendment enfranchised Indigenous people in Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory. Indigenous voting rights in other states had been in place since 1949.


Issues


State aid for non-government schools

The election was notable for the issue of state aid to non-government schools being finally resolved. There was a school strike in Goulburn, New South Wales in 1962. Health officials had requested the installation of three extra toilets at a
Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
primary school. The Catholic Church declared it had no money to install the extra toilets. The
archdiocese In church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop. History In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided provinces were administratively associat ...
closed down its schools and sent the children to government schools. Nearly 1,000 children turned up to be enrolled locally and the state schools were unable to accommodate them. The strike received national attention. The Labor
premier of New South Wales The premier of New South Wales is the head of government in the state of New South Wales, Australia. The Government of New South Wales follows the Westminster Parliamentary System, with a Parliament of New South Wales acting as the legislatur ...
, Robert Heffron, had promised money for science labs at non-government schools. This policy was overturned by a meeting of the Labor Party's federal executive. Under ALP rules the federal executive had responsibility for party policy when the party's national conference was out of session. Menzies called a snap election with state aid for science blocks and Commonwealth scholarships for students at both government and non-government schools as part of his party's platform. This tended to woo Catholic voters away from the Labor Party which they traditionally supported; the wedge driven between the ALP and its Catholic constituency took nearly a decade to overcome. Most non-government schools were Catholic. The Labor Party suffered a first-preference swing of −2.43% and the loss of ten seats. The Country Party vote was higher than the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) vote for the first time since
1955 Events January * January 3 – José Ramón Guizado becomes president of Panama. * January 17 – , the first nuclear-powered submarine, puts to sea for the first time, from Groton, Connecticut. * January 18– 20 – Battle of Yijian ...
; the DLP had evolved from the Catholic wing of the ALP. The Liberal Party was, however, not dependent on the state-aid issue to win the election; other issues, such as the "36 faceless men" gibe, also did damage to the ALP.


North-west Cape communications facility

Other key issues in the election included the proposal by the United States to build the North-west Cape communications facility which would support the US nuclear submarine capability. A special federal conference of the ALP was called in March 1963 which, by a narrow margin, supported the base. The
Left faction The Left Faction ( he, סיעת שמאל, ''Siat Smol'') was a short-lived political party in Israel. History The Left Faction was formed on 20 February 1952 (during the second Knesset) as a breakaway from Mapam in the aftermath of the Prague Tr ...
was opposed to a foreign base on Australian soil, especially one which supported America's nuclear weapons capability.


"36 faceless men"

During the ALP Federal Conference in March 1963, journalist Alan Reid commissioned a photograph of Arthur Calwell and
Gough Whitlam Edward Gough Whitlam (11 July 191621 October 2014) was the 21st prime minister of Australia, serving from 1972 to 1975. The longest-serving federal leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) from 1967 to 1977, he was notable for being the h ...
standing outside the conference venue at Kingston, a suburb of
Canberra Canberra ( ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The ci ...
. Although Calwell was the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Representatives and Whitlam was his deputy, neither man was eligible to attend the conference, which consisted of six members elected by each state ALP branch. Reid jibed that the ALP was ruled by "36
faceless men Faceless men is a term from Australian politics. The term is generally used to refer to men and women who exert political influence and are not elected representatives to state, territory or federal legislative bodies, yet are elected representativ ...
" – an accusation that was picked up by Menzies and the Liberal Party in its election propaganda, and is still remembered more than 40 years later.


Assassination of US President Kennedy

The week before the election, on 22 November 1963, John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States, was assassinated.
Alister McMullin Sir Alister Maxwell McMullin, (14 July 1900 – 7 August 1984) was an Australian politician who served as a Senator for New South Wales from 1951 to 1971, representing the Liberal Party. He was President of the Senate for a record term of a ...
,
President of the Senate President of the Senate is a title often given to the presiding officer of a senate. It corresponds to the speaker in some other assemblies. The senate president often ranks high in a jurisdiction's succession for its top executive office: for ex ...
, represented Australia at the
funeral A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial or cremation, with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect ...
in Washington. It has been suggested that this tragedy helped to consolidate Menzies' position.


Results

See
1961 Australian federal election The 1961 Australian federal election was held in Australia on 9 December 1961. All 122 seats in the House of Representatives and 31 of the 60 seats in the Senate were up for election. The incumbent Liberal–Country coalition led by Prime Minist ...
and
1964 Australian Senate election Elections were held on 5 December 1964 to elect members to half of the 60 seats in the Australian Senate. There was no accompanying election to the House of Representatives, as Robert Menzies had called an early House-only election the previous ...
for Senate compositions.


Seats changing hands


See also

* Candidates of the Australian federal election, 1963 *
Members of the Australian House of Representatives, 1963–1966 Member may refer to: * Military jury, referred to as "Members" in military jargon * Element (mathematics), an object that belongs to a mathematical set * In object-oriented programming, a member of a class ** Field (computer science), entries in ...


Notes


References


University of WA
election results in Australia since 1890

*Prior to 1984 the AEC did not undertake a full distribution of preferences for statistical purposes. The stored ballot papers for the 1983 election were put through this process prior to their destruction. Therefore, the figures from 1983 onwards show the actual result based on full distribution of preferences. {{Australian elections Australian federal election, 1963 federal
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...