1976 Australian Labor Party leadership spill

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1976 Australian Labor Party
Leadership spill
Flag of Australia (converted).svg
  1968 27 January 1976 May 1977  
  Gough Whitlam headshot.jpg Lionel Bowen 1973 (cropped).jpg Frank Crean 1973.jpg
Candidate Gough Whitlam Lionel Bowen Frank Crean
Caucus vote36 (57.1%)14 (22.2%)13 (20.6%)

Leader before election

Gough Whitlam

Elected Leader

Gough Whitlam

A leadership spill in the Australian Labor Party, the party of opposition in the Parliament of Australia, was held on 27 January 1976, the date of the first Caucus meeting following the 1975 election.

Contents

Dismissed Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was comfortably re-elected leader of the ALP ahead of senior MPs Lionel Bowen and Frank Crean on the first ballot. A much more extensive series of ballots was required to fill the deputy leadership with eight contenders narrowed down to a final ballot seeing Tom Uren narrowly defeat Paul Keating 33 votes to 30. [1]

To date, this is the last Australian Labor Party leadership spill at the federal level to be contested by more than two candidates.

Candidates

Withdrawn candidates

Potential candidates who declined to run

Results

Australian Labor Party
Deputy Leadership spill, 1976
Australian-Labor-Party-stub.svg
 1975
May 1977  
  Tom Uren 1966 (cropped).jpg Paul Keating 1970.png
Candidate Tom Uren Paul Keating
Third ballot33 (53.4%)30 (47.6%)

Deputy Leader before election

Frank Crean

Deputy Leader after election

Tom Uren

Leader

The following table gives the ballot results:

NameVotesPercentage
Gough Whitlam 3657.14
Lionel Bowen 1422.22
Frank Crean 1320.63

Deputy leader

The following table gives the ballot results: [3]

Candidate1st ballot2nd ballot3rd ballot
Tom Uren 152633
Paul Keating 132130
Mick Young 1316Eliminated
Kim Beazley 6Eliminated
Gordon Bryant 5Eliminated
Gordon Scholes 4Eliminated
Moss Cass 4Eliminated
Les Johnson 3Eliminated

See also

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References

  1. "Clear win to Whitlam". The Canberra Times . 28 January 1976. p. 1.
  2. "Whitlam to stay as leader: supporters". The Canberra Times. 22 December 1975. p. 3. Retrieved 21 December 2021.
  3. "Voting for Party Leaders". The Canberra Times . 28 January 1976. p. 9.