1967 Australian referendum (Parliament)

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1967 Parliament referendum
Flag of Australia (converted).svg
27 May 1967 (1967-05-27)
Question 1
Do you approve the proposed law for the alteration of the Constitution entitled—

'An Act to alter the Constitution so that the number of members of the House of Representatives may be increased without necessarily increasing the number of Senators'?
Results
Choice
Votes%
Check-71-128-204-brightblue.svg Yes2,298,66940.25%
Light brown x.svg No3,411,94059.75%
Valid votes5,710,60998.43%
Invalid or blank votes90,9751.57%
Total votes5,801,584100.00%
Registered voters/turnout6,182,58593.84%

1967 Australian referendum (Parliament).svg
Australian referendum, 1967 (Parliament).svg
Results by county

The first part of the 1967 Australian referendum to change the Constitution was the Parliament question, which related to the relative number of members in each house of the Australian Parliament − the so-called "nexus". The 1967 Australian referendum called by the Holt government on 27 May 1967 consisted of two parts, with the second question relating to Aboriginal Australians.

Contents

Section 24 of the Australian Constitution requires that the number of members in the House of Representatives be, as nearly as possible, twice the number of members in the Senate. [1] The most important effect of the "nexus" in the Australian Constitution is to prevent the dilution of the collective voting power of the Senate, which represents the Australian states equally, in any joint sitting of both houses following a double dissolution election. The nexus ensures that Senators will always have about one-third of the votes in a joint sitting, and Members of the House of Representatives about two-thirds. The referendum question asked the public to vote on whether "the number of members of the House of Representatives may be increased without necessarily increasing the number of Senators". [2] It was defeated, with 59.75% of voters voting "No" to this question.

Question

Do you approve the proposed law for the alteration of the Constitution entitled 'An Act to alter the Constitution so that the number of members of the House of Representatives may be increased without necessarily increasing the number of Senators'?

Results

Result [3]
StateElectoral rollBallots issuedForAgainstInformal
Vote%Vote%
New South Wales2,315,8282,166,5071,087,69451.011,044,45848.9934,355
Victoria1,734,4761,630,594496,82630.871,112,50669.1321,262
Queensland904,808848,728370,20044.13468,67355.879,855
South Australia590,275560,844186,34433.91363,12066.0911,380
Western Australia437,609405,666114,84129.05280,52370.9510,302
Tasmania199,589189,24542,76423.06142,66076.943,821
Total for Commonwealth6,182,5855,801,5842,298,66940.253,411,94059.7590,975
ResultsObtained majority in one state and an overall minority of 1,113,271 votes.Not carried

See also

References

  1. Constitution (Cth) s 24 Constitution of House of Representatives.
  2. Constitution Alteration (Parliament) 1967 and Constitution Alteration (Aboriginals) 1967: The arguments for and against, Commonwealth of Australia, 6 April 1967, retrieved 3 June 2020 via Trove
  3. Handbook of the 44th Parliament (2014) "Part 5 - Referendums and Plebiscites - Referendum results". Parliamentary Library of Australia.

Further reading