Australian Capital Territory general election, 2008

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Australian Capital Territory general election, 2008
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All 17 seats of the unicameral Legislative Assembly
 First partySecond partyThird party
  JonStanhope2006.jpg Zed Seselja.jpg ACT Greens Parliamentary Convenor Meredith Hunter.JPG
Leader Jon Stanhope Zed Seselja Meredith Hunter
Party Labor Liberal Greens
Leader since19 March 199813 December 2007October 2008
Leader's seat Ginninderra Molonglo Ginninderra
Last election9 seats7 seats1 seat
Seats won7 seats6 seats4 seats
Seat changeDecrease2.svg2Decrease2.svg1Increase2.svg3
Percentage37.4%31.6%15.6%
SwingDecrease2.svg9.4Decrease2.svg3.2Increase2.svg6.3
Chief Minister before election

Jon Stanhope
Labor

Resulting Chief Minister

Jon Stanhope
Labor

Elections to the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly were held on Saturday, 18 October 2008. The incumbent Labor Party, led by Jon Stanhope, was challenged by the Liberal Party, led by Zed Seselja. Candidates were elected to fill three multi-member electorates using a single transferable vote method, known as the Hare-Clark system. The result was another hung parliament with Labor winning seven seats, the Liberals six seats and the Greens finishing with four seats, giving the Greens the balance of power in the 17-member unicameral Assembly. [1] [2] [3] [4] On 31 October 2008, after almost two weeks of deliberations, the Greens chose to support a Labor minority government. [5] [6] [7] Consequently, Labor was re-elected to a third consecutive term of government in the ACT. Stanhope was elected Chief Minister at the first sitting of the seventh Assembly on 5 November 2008. [8]

The Australian Labor Party , commonly known as ACT Labor, is the ACT branch of the Australian Labor Party. It is one of two major parties in the unicameral Parliament of the Australian Capital Territory.

Jon Stanhope former Australian politician; Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory; Administrator of the Australian Indian Ocean Territories

Jonathan Donald Stanhope is a former Australian politician who was Labor Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory from 2001 to 2011. Stanhope represented the Ginninderra electorate in the ACT Legislative Assembly from 1998 until 2011. He is the only ACT Chief Minister to have governed with a majority in the ACT Assembly. From 2012 to 2014 Stanhope was Administrator of the Australian Indian Ocean Territories, which consists of Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands.

Zed Seselja Australian politician

Zdenko Matthew "Zed" Seselja is an Australian politician who has been a Senator for the Australian Capital Territory since 2013, representing the Liberal Party. He was previously a member of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly from 2004 to 2013, and served as leader of the Canberra Liberals and Leader of the Opposition from 2007 to 2013.

Contents

Key dates

[9]

The electoral roll is a list of persons who are eligible to vote in a particular electoral district and who are registered to vote, if required in a particular jurisdiction. An electoral roll has a number of functions, especially to streamline voting on election day. Voter registration is also used to combat electoral fraud by enabling authorities to verify an applicant's identity and entitlement to a vote, and to ensure a person doesn't vote multiple times. In jurisdictions where voting is compulsory, the electoral roll is used to indicate who has failed to vote. Most jurisdictions maintain permanent electoral rolls while some jurisdictions compile new electoral rolls before each election. In some jurisdictions, people to be selected for jury or other civil duties are chosen from an electoral roll.

Overview

The incumbent centre-left Labor Party, led by Chief Minister Jon Stanhope, attempted to win re-election for a third term after coming to power in 2001. They were challenged by the opposition centre-right Liberal Party, led by Zed Seselja, who assumed the Liberal leadership in December 2007. A third party, the ACT Greens, held one seat in the Assembly through retiring MLA Deb Foskey.

ACT Greens political party in the Australian Capital Territory

The ACT Greens is a green political party located in the Australian Capital Territory, and a member of the federation of the Australian Greens.

Deb Foskey is a former Australian politician with the ACT Greens.

The election saw all 17 members of the Assembly face re-election, with members being elected by the Hare-Clark system of proportional representation. The Assembly is divided into three electorates: five-member Brindabella (including Tuggeranong and parts of the Woden Valley) and Ginninderra (including Belconnen and suburbs) and seven-member Molonglo (including North Canberra, South Canberra, Gungahlin, Weston Creek, and the remainder of the Woden Valley). Election dates are set in statute to occur once every four years; the government has no ability to set the election date.

Proportional representation (PR) characterizes electoral systems in which divisions in an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. If n% of the electorate support a particular political party, then roughly n% of seats will be won by that party. The essence of such systems is that all votes contribute to the result - not just a plurality, or a bare majority. The most prevalent forms of proportional representation all require the use of multiple-member voting districts, as it is not possible to fill a single seat in a proportional manner. In fact, the implementations of PR that achieve the highest levels of proportionality tend to include districts with large numbers of seats.

Brindabella electorate electorate of the Australian Capital Territory

The Brindabella electorate is one of the five electorates for the unicameral 25-member Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly. It elects five members, and is the largest of the electorates in geographic area.

Tuggeranong Cadastral in Australian Capital Territory

The District of Tuggeranong is one of the original eighteen districts of the Australian Capital Territory used in land administration. The district is subdivided into divisions (suburbs), sections and blocks and is the southernmost town centre of Canberra, the capital city of Australia. The district comprises nineteen suburbs and occupies 117 square kilometres (45 sq mi) to the east of the Murrumbidgee River.

Following the 2004 election outcome, Labor held 9 seats, becoming the first majority government in the territory's history. The opposition Liberal Party held 7 seats, with the Greens holding a further one. The Liberal numbers in the Assembly dropped to six in December 2007 when former Shadow Treasurer Richard Mulcahy was expelled from the party and began sitting as an independent. The opposition thus would have needed to win a further three seats, on top of regaining Mulcahy's seat, to hold government in its own right.

A majority government refers to one or multiple governing parties that hold an absolute majority of seats in legislature. This is as opposed to a minority government, where the largest party in a legislature only has a plurality of seats.

Richard John Mulcahy, a former Australian politician, was a member of the unicameral Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly for one term, from 2004 to 2008, representing the Liberal Party and later as an independent.

The Liberal campaign suffered early problems in February 2008 when a number of prominent Liberal Party and business figures, including popular former Chief Minister Kate Carnell and high-profile businessman and former party finance director Jim Murphy, relaunched the 250 Club, previously a Liberal fundraising group, as the independent Canberra Business Club. The new organisation pledged to support minor party and independent pro-business candidates in the election, citing their disillusion with both major parties and the need for a third political force in the Assembly. [10] At the same time, their best prospect for winning Mulcahy's seat of Molonglo, the Liberal Candidate for Fraser in the previous Federal election, withdrew.[ citation needed ]

Anne Katherine Carnell is an Australian businesswoman and former Liberal Party politician, who served as the third Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) from 1995 to 2000.

A minor party is a political party that plays a smaller role than a major party in a country's politics and elections. The difference between minor and major parties can be so great that the membership total, donations, and the candidates that they are able to produce or attract are very distinct. Some of the minor parties play almost no role in a country's politics because of their low recognition, vote and donations. Minor parties often receive very small numbers of votes at an election. The method of voting can also assist or hinder a minor party's chances. For example, in an election for more than one member, the proportional representation method of voting can be advantageous to a minor party as can preference allocation from one or both of the major parties.

Polling

Conducted by Patterson Market Research, and published in The Canberra Times, polling released on 4 October suggested the Green vote had doubled to tripled since the last election, at the expense of Labor, with the Liberal vote relatively unchanged. Commentators predicted the Greens would hold the balance of power and decide who forms government. The Greens stated they were willing to court both major parties. [11] [12] [13]

Scanning of ballot papers

In the 2001 and 2004 elections, after the first manual count of paper ballots the preferences were data entered for distribution. For the 2008 election, paper ballots were scanned and character recognition software used to identify preferences. Any preferences that could not be identified by the software were entered manually. [14]

Candidates

[15] Sitting members at the time of the election are in bold. Tickets that elected at least one MLA are highlighted in the relevant colour. Successful candidates are indicated by an asterisk (*).

Retiring Members

Labor

Liberal

Greens

Brindabella

Five seats were up for election. The Labor Party was defending three seats. The Liberal Party was defending two seats.

Labor Candidates Liberal Candidates Greens Candidates Motorist Candidates CAP Candidates
  

Joy Burch*
Mick Gentleman
John Hargreaves *
Tracey Macket
Wayne Sievers

Steve Doszpot*
David Morgan
Steve Pratt
Audrey Ray
Brendan Smyth *

Amanda Bresnan*
Sue Ellerman

Ben Doble
Burl Doble
Brian McLachlan
Geoff Rake
Bruce Ritchie

Val Jeffery
James Sizer

Ginninderra

Five seats were up for election. The Labor Party was defending three seats. The Liberal Party was defending two seats.

Labor Candidates Liberal Candidates Greens Candidates Motorist Candidates CAP CandidatesUngrouped Candidates
   

Chris Bourke
Adina Cirson
Mary Porter *
Dave Peebles
Jon Stanhope *

Alistair Coe*
Vicki Dunne *
Jacqui Myers
Andrea Tokaji
Matthew Watts

James Higgins
Meredith Hunter*

Deborah Hannigan
Chris Seddon
Andrew Simmington
Denis Walford
Wayne Whiting

Mike Crowther
Roger Nicoll
Jane Tullis

Harold Hird (Ind)
Cathy McIlhoney (Ind)
Mark Parton (Ind)
Adam Verwey (Ind)
Darren Churchill (-)
Eddie Sarkis (-)
Barry Smith (Ind)

Molonglo

Seven seats were up for election. The Labor Party was defending three seats. The Liberal Party was defending three seats. The Greens were defending one seat.

Labor Candidates Liberal Candidates Greens Candidates Motorist Candidates CAP Candidates
  

Andrew Barr *
Eleanor Bates
Simon Corbell *
Louise Crossman
Katy Gallagher *
Mike Hettinger
David Mathews

Belinda Barnier
Jacqui Burke
Jeremy Hanson*
Giulia Jones
Gary Kent
Zed Seselja *
Clinton White

Elena Kirschbaum
Caroline Le Couteur*
Shane Rattenbury*

David Cumbers
Kim Evans
Stuart Green
Angus Laburn
Darren O'Neil
Stephen Rowland
Anthony Seddon

Alvin Hopper
Owen Saddler
Nancy-Louise Scherger
Norvan Vogt

Mulcahy Candidates LDP CandidatesPangallo CandidatesUngrouped Candidates
 

Joanne Allen
Richard Mulcahy
Ben O'Neill

David McAlary
David Pinkerton

Luciano Lombardo
Frank Pangallo
Phil Thompson

Helen Cross (Ind)
Tony Farrell (Ind)
Greg Tannahill (-)
Kerri Taranto (Ind)

Results

Australian Capital Territory general election, 18 October 2008 [20]
Legislative Assembly
<< 2004–2012 >>

Enrolled voters243,471
Votes cast220,019 Turnout 90.4%−2.4
Informal votes8,370Informal3.8%+1.1
Summary of votes by party
PartyPrimary votes%SwingSeatsChange
  Labor 79,12637.4−9.47−2
  Liberal 66,85531.6−3.26–1
  Greens 33,05715.6+6.34+3
  Motorist 10,5535.0+5.000
  Community Alliance 7,7303.7+3.700
  Independent 6,9613.3+1.500
 Pangallo Independents4,2522.0+2.000
  Mulcahy Canberra Party 2,3411.1+1.100
  Liberal Democrats 7740.4−0.900
Total211,649  17 

At the close of counting on election night 18 October 2008, with 82.1 per cent of the vote counted Labor had obtained 37.6 per cent of the vote across the ACT, with the Liberals at 31.1 per cent and the Greens at 15.8 per cent. Swings were recorded against both the Labor (-9.3 per cent) and Liberal (-3.7 per cent) parties with a +6.6 per cent swing towards the Greens. Labor won 7 seats, the Liberals won 6 seats, while the Greens won 4 seats, giving them the balance of power, and negotiated with both major parties for the formation of a minority government. [4] [21] After almost two weeks of deliberations, the Greens chose to form a minority government with Labor. [5] The ACT Electoral Commission determined and announced the election's final results on 25 October 2008 after distribution of preferences. [22]

In Brindabella, Labor lost one of its three seats to Greens candidate Amanda Bresnan. Government minister John Hargreaves was re-elected, but Labor backbencher Mick Gentleman was beaten by another Labor candidate, Joy Burch. For the Liberal Party, former leader Brendan Smyth was re-elected, but shadow minister Steve Pratt lost his seat to party colleague Steve Doszpot. [22]

Labor also lost a seat in Ginninderra, where Greens candidate Meredith Hunter was elected. Chief Minister Jon Stanhope and Labor MLA Mary Porter were both re-elected, and on the Liberal ticket sitting MLA Vicki Dunne was joined by Alistair Coe, who replaced retiring Bill Stefaniak. [22]

In seven-member Molonglo, the Liberals lost one seat to the Greens. Labor ministers Katy Gallagher, Andrew Barr and Simon Corbell all won re-election, as did Liberal leader Zed Seselja. Sitting MLA Jacqui Burke lost to Jeremy Hanson for the second Liberal seat. The Greens increased their representation in this seat to two, electing new MLAs Shane Rattenbury and Caroline Le Couteur, the latter at the expense of Liberal-turned-Independent MLA Richard Mulcahy. [22]

ElectorateSeats held
Brindabella      
Ginninderra      
Molonglo        

See also

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References

  1. ↑ "ACT election officially declared". ABC News . Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 29 October 2008. Retrieved 16 July 2010.
  2. ↑ "ACT 2008 - ABC elections". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 18 October 2008. Retrieved 16 July 2010.
  3. ↑ Williams, George (25 October 2008). "Case for a new umpire". The Canberra Times . Fairfax Media. Archived from the original on July 6, 2011. Retrieved 16 July 2010.
  4. 1 2 "Greens take extra seat in ACT election". ABC News. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 25 October 2008. Retrieved 16 July 2010.
  5. 1 2 "Labor to form minority government in ACT". The Age . Fairfax Media. 31 October 2008. Retrieved 16 July 2010.
  6. ↑ Stockman, David (1 November 2008). "Greens' nod sees Stanhope keep job". The Canberra Times. Fairfax Media. Archived from the original on 11 August 2011. Retrieved 16 July 2010.
  7. ↑ "Parliamentary Agreement for the 7th Legislative Assembly for the ACT" (PDF). 31 October 2008. Retrieved 16 July 2010.
  8. ↑ "Legislative Assembly for the ACT - Week 1". ACT Hansard . ACT Legislative Assembly. 5 November 2008. Retrieved 8 August 2010.
  9. ↑ "Election timetable". ACT Legislative Assembly election - 2008. ACT Electoral Commission. 2008. Archived from the original on September 30, 2009. Retrieved 8 August 2010.
  10. ↑ Alexander, Cathy (27 January 2008). "Business gives up on ACT Liberals". The Canberra Times. Fairfax Media. Archived from the original on November 9, 2011. Retrieved 8 October 2010.
  11. ↑ McLennan, David (4 October 2008). "Stanhope will need Greens to hold power". The Canberra Times. Fairfax Media. Archived from the original on October 27, 2009. Retrieved 16 July 2010.
  12. ↑ McLennan, David (4 October 2008). "Poll results no comfort to Labor or Liberals". The Canberra Times. Fairfax Media. Archived from the original on October 27, 2009. Retrieved 16 July 2010.
  13. ↑ McLennan, David (5 October 2008). "Stanhope Slump". The Canberra Times. Fairfax Media. Archived from the original on 7 August 2011. Retrieved 16 July 2010.
  14. ↑ "Scanning of ballot papers". ACT Electoral Commission. Archived from the original on October 21, 2008.
  15. ↑ "Candidate list". 2008 Election. ACT Electoral Commission. 2008. Archived from the original on September 30, 2009. Retrieved 8 August 2010.
  16. 1 2 Alexander, Cathy (24 January 2008). "Labor Member to quit politics". The Canberra Times. Fairfax Media.
  17. ↑ Alexander, Cathy (4 March 2008). "Labor to reveal ACT poll hopefuls". The Canberra Times. Fairfax Media.
  18. ↑ "Stefaniak quits politics". ABC News. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 26 August 2008. Retrieved 16 July 2010.
  19. ↑ Rudra, Natasha (31 May 2008). "Foskey moving to greener pastures". The Canberra Times. Fairfax Media.
  20. ↑ "2008 Election results". Elections ACT. Retrieved 25 August 2018.
  21. ↑ "2008 Australian Capital Territory Election". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 18 October 2008. Retrieved 16 July 2010.
  22. 1 2 3 4 "List of elected candidates". 2008 Election. ACT Electoral Commission. 2008. Archived from the original on September 30, 2009. Retrieved 8 August 2010.
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