1933 South Australian state election

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1933 South Australian state election
Flag of South Australia.svg
  1930 8 April 1933 (1933-04-08) 1938  

All 46 seats in the South Australian House of Assembly
24 seats needed for a majority
 First partySecond party
 
Richard Layton Butler.jpg
Edgar Dawes.jpg
Leader Richard L. Butler Edgar Dawes
Party Liberal and Country Labor
Leader since7 December 192512 May 1932
Leader's seat Wooroora Sturt
Last electionDid not exist30 seats
Seats won296
Seat changeIncrease2.svg 23Decrease2.svg 24
Percentage34.62%27.78%

 Third partyFourth party
 
Portrait of R.S. Richards(GN11825) (cropped).jpg
Doug Bardolph.png
Leader Robert Richards Doug Bardolph
Party Parliamentary Labor Lang Labor
Leader since1933August 1931
Leader's seat Wallaroo Adelaide
Last electionDid not existDid not exist
Seats won43
Seat changeIncrease2.svg 4Increase2.svg 3
Percentage16.30%3.68%
SwingIncrease2.svg 16.30Increase2.svg3.68

Premier before election

Robert Richards
Parliamentary Labor

Premier after election

Richard L. Butler
Liberal and Country

The 1933 South Australian state election was held on 8 April 1933 to elect all 46 members of the South Australian House of Assembly. The incumbent Parliamentary Labor Party government, led by Premier Robert Richards, was defeated by the opposition Liberal and Country League, led by Leader of the Opposition Richard L. Butler. Each district elected multiple members.

Contents

Background

After the ALP government of Premier Lionel Hill endorsed the controversial Premiers' Plan following the start of the Great Depression in Australia and the subsequent Australian Labor Party split of 1931, the ALP state executive expelled 23 of the 30 members of the ALP caucus, including the entire cabinet. The expelled MPs formed the Parliamentary Labor Party (also known as Premiers Plan Labor), with Hill as leader and Premier, and continued in office with the support of the Butler-led Liberal Federation.

Amid increasing riots and protests, as well as skyrocketing unemployment, Hill left politics to become Australian Agent-General to the United Kingdom. He was succeeded by Robert Richards, who had the impossible task of leading the government into the election.

In contrast to the ructions in Labor, the conservative forces in the state presented a united front at the 1931 federal election, when all anti-Labor major party candidates in the state ran under the banner of the Emergency Committee of South Australia. This grouping took an additional two seats to hold six of the state's seven seats in the federal House of Representatives and all three available seats in the bloc-voting winner-take-all Senate. In 1932, buoyed by this success, the Liberal Federation and the Country Party merged as the Liberal and Country League under Butler's leadership.

With three Labor factions—the official ALP, Premiers Plan Labor and Lang Labor—splitting the combined 47.8% total Labor vote, the result was a landslide victory for the LCL. The LCL won 29 seats versus only 13 for the three Labor factions combined. Though the Labor split in South Australia would only last until 1934, this would be the start of 32 years of LCL government in South Australia—one of the longest unbroken runs for a governing party in the Commonwealth. The LCL would stay in office until the 1965 state election with the assistance of a pro-LCL electoral malapportionment known as the Playmander, which would be introduced in 1936.

Results

Arrangement of the House of Assembly after the 1933 state election. South Australia House of Assembly 1933.svg
Arrangement of the House of Assembly after the 1933 state election.

South Australian state election, 8 April 1933 [1]
House of Assembly
<< 19301938 >>

Enrolled voters338,576
Votes cast182,693 Turnout 59.45%–11.91%
Informal votes8,904Informal4.87%-0.84%
Summary of votes by party
PartyPrimary votes %SwingSeatsChange
  Liberal and Country 60,15934.62%*29*
  Labor 48,27327.78%–20.86%6– 24
  Parliamentary Labor 28,31916.30%*4*
  Lang Labor 6,3983.68%*3*
  Single Tax League 5,4293.12%+1.80%1± 0
  Communist 1,9081.10%+0.77%0± 0
  Independent 23,30313.41%+11.09%3+ 3
Total173,789  46 

See also

References

Specific

  1. "Summary of 1938 Election". University of Western Australia. Retrieved 7 July 2015.