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. It is the largest country in Oceania and the world's sixth-largest country by total area. The neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north; the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east; and New Zealand to the south-east. The population of 25 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Australia's capital is Canberra, and its largest city is Sydney. The country's other major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.
The states and territories are the first-level administrative divisions of the Commonwealth of Australia. They are the second level of government in Australia, located between the federal and local government tiers.
Queensland is the second-largest and third-most populous state in the Commonwealth of Australia. Situated in the north-east of the country, it is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean. To its north is the Torres Strait, with Papua New Guinea located less than 200 km across it from the mainland. The state is the world's sixth-largest sub-national entity, with an area of 1,852,642 square kilometres (715,309 sq mi).
The elections, only 15 months into the parliamentary term, were made necessary by the collapse of the nine-term Labor government. Gair had formed the Queensland Labor Party after being expelled from the Labor Party, and attempted to stay in power as a minority government. However, a request for supply was denied on 12 June, forcing the election. The Country-Liberal Coalition won a decisive victory, taking 42 seats against only 31 for the two Labor factions combined.
The Queensland Labor Party (QLP) was a political party of Queensland, Australia formed in 1957 by a breakaway group of the then ruling Labor Party Government after the expulsion of Premier Vince Gair. In 1962 the party became the Queensland section of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP). The party continued to hold seats in the Queensland state parliament until 1972, then suffered a collapse in its vote and wound itself up in 1978.
The Australian Labor Party , commonly known as Queensland Labor is the Queensland branch of the Australian Labor Party.
A minority government, or minority cabinet or minority parliament, is a cabinet formed in a parliamentary system when a political party or coalition of parties does not have a majority of overall seats in the parliament. It is sworn into office, with or without the formal support of other parties, to enable a government to be formed. Under such a government, legislation can only be passed with the support of enough other members of the legislature to provide a majority, encouraging multi-partisanship. In bicameral parliaments, the term relates to the situation in chamber whose confidence is considered most crucial to the continuance in office of the government.
On 18 April 1957, the Queensland Central Executive of the Labor Party passed a vote of no confidence in Premier Gair, and on 24 April, despite having gained a unanimous vote of support from the Cabinet, he was expelled from the Labor Party. On 26 April, Gair and 25 MLAs met and formed the Queensland Labor Party (QLP) with those present, with Gair as leader. Those at the meeting included all of the Cabinet except Deputy Premier Jack Duggan and two ex-Labor Independents. All these were also expelled from the party. Duggan resigned from the ministry on 29 April and succeeded Gair as leader of the Labor Party, which commanded the support of 22 MLAs.
John Edmund "Jack" Duggan was a member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly. He was the Deputy Premier of Queensland from 1953 until 1957 and Leader of the Opposition of Queensland from 1958 until 1966.
Gair almost immediately began talks with Nicklin for confidence and supply support in the legislature. However, Nicklin broke them off on the advice of federal Country Party leader Arthur Fadden, who believed the ructions in Labor gave Nicklin a chance to become Premier himself, ending 22 years in opposition. On 12 June 1957, Lieutenant Governor and Chief Justice of QueenslandAlan Mansfield (Governor John Lavarack was indisposed) ordered Parliament to reassemble. Shortly after 10:30 pm that night, Treasurer Ted Walsh moved that supply be granted to the Gair QLP government. The motion was defeated after the ALP and Coalition rose to vote against it, bringing the Gair government down. Gair immediately asked for new elections, which were called for 3 August.
In a parliamentary democracy based on the Westminster system, confidence and supply are required for a minority government to retain power in the lower house.
Sir Arthur William Fadden, was an Australian politician who served as Prime Minister of Australia from 29 August to 7 October 1941. He was the leader of the Country Party from 1940 to 1958.
The Chief Justice of Queensland is the senior judge of the Supreme Court of Queensland and the highest ranking judicial officer in the Australian state of Queensland. The Chief Justice is both the judicial head of the Supreme Court as well as the administrative head. He or she is responsible for arranging the business of the court and establishing its rules and procedures.
Campaign
On 1 July, Frank Nicklin delivered the Country Party's policy speech at Maroochydore, while Kenneth Morris delivered the Liberal Party's policy speech in Brisbane. The two coalition partners declared to the electorate that only they could deliver unity and effective government, an acceleration of development and civil rights, as well as court supervision of union ballots to limit strike action.[7]
Sir George Francis Reuben Nicklin, was an Australian politician. He was the Premier of Queensland from 1957 to 1968, the first non Labor Party premier since 1932.
Maroochydore is a town and suburb of the Sunshine Coast Region, Queensland, Australia. At the 2016 census the suburb recorded a population of 16,800.
Brisbane is the capital of and the most populated city in the Australian state of Queensland, and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of approximately 2.5 million, and the South East Queensland metropolitan region, centred on Brisbane, encompasses a population of more than 3.6 million. The Brisbane central business district stands on the historic European settlement and is situated inside a peninsula of the Brisbane River, about 15 kilometres from its mouth at Moreton Bay. The metropolitan area extends in all directions along the floodplain of the Brisbane River Valley between Moreton Bay and the Great Dividing Range, sprawling across several of Australia's most populous local government areas (LGAs)—most centrally the City of Brisbane, which is by far the most populous LGA in the nation. The demonym of Brisbane is "Brisbanite" or "Brisbanian".
On 4 July, Jack Duggan, the Labor leader, announced Labor's campaign slogan, "A fair go for all", and promised three weeks' annual leave (the issue over which Premier Vince Gair and the party executive had split) would be implemented if his party was elected. On 8 July, Gair, the incumbent Premier representing the Queensland Labor Party (QLP), spent half his speech talking about the dispute that had led to the split, promised an attack upon Communism and a continuance of the previous government's development platform.[7]
Vincent Clair Gair was an Australian politician. He served as Premier of Queensland from 1952 until 1957, when his stormy relations with the trade union movement saw him expelled from the Labor Party. He was elected to the Australian Senate and led the Democratic Labor Party from 1965 to 1973. In 1974 he was appointed Australian Ambassador to Ireland by the Whitlam government, which caused his expulsion from the DLP.
Nominations closed on 12 July, with a record total of 219 candidates. Four seats were uncontested, but many seats had both Labor and QLP contestants. Some contests became particularly bitter as the Labor Party accused their QLP opponents of sectarianism and alleged direct interference by ministers of the Catholic Church, despite Archbishop James Duhig's refusal to get involved. The campaigns were strongest in the leaders' and deputy leaders' own seats.[7]
When the writs were dropped, the Labor forces were in a precarious position. Every ALP MP faced a QLP challenger, and every QLP MP faced an ALP challenger. This created dozens of three-cornered contests, and the first-past-the-post system left them without the option of directing preferences to each other even if they wanted to do so.
The Coalition actually suffered a swing of 1.2 percent against it. However, the ructions in Labor allowed the Coalition to win a number of three-cornered contests, assuring a comfortable majority for Nicklin, with 42 seats against only 31 for the two Labor factions combined. The ALP lost both Duggan and deputy leader Felix Dittmer, whose seats were won by Liberal candidates. The QLP lost 14 seats (two of them to the ALP), but seven of the ten ministers retained their seats. This began what would be 32 years of non-Labor government in Queensland.
1 791,719 electors were enrolled to vote at the election, but three Country seats representing 30,956 enrolled voters and one Liberal seat representing 13,308 voters were unopposed.
Aftermath
The Country Party's win in this election proved to be one of the major turning points in Queensland politics; they remained in power continuously until the 1989 state election.
The ALP elected Leslie Wood as party leader and Eric Lloyd as deputy leader; neither had previously served in a ministry. Wood, the member for North Toowoomba, died in office on 29 March 1958, and Duggan returned as both a member of Parliament and leader of the party at the by-election on 31 May. Dittmer, meanwhile, was elected to the Australian Senate.
Former Prime Minister Frank Forde, who lost his seat of Flinders by one vote, alleged the wrongful disallowance of some votes and successfully lodged a petition against his opponent's return at the Court of Disputed Returns; however he lost the resulting by-election.
The Bjelkemander was the term given to a system of malapportionment in the Australian state of Queensland in the 1970s and 1980s. Under the system, electorates were allocated to zones such as rural or metropolitan and electoral boundaries drawn so that rural electorates had about half as many voters as metropolitan ones. The Country Party, a rural-based party led by Joh Bjelke-Petersen, was able to govern uninhibited during this period due to the 'Bjelkemander' and the absence of an upper house of Parliament.
Bulimba is an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of Queensland.
Edmund Denis (Ed) Casey was best known as the leader of the Australian Labor Party in Queensland between 1978 and 1982. He also served as Primary Industries Minister in the government of Wayne Goss between 1989 and 1995. Casey was the member for Mackay in the Legislative Assembly of Queensland between 1969 and 1995.
Condon Bryan Byrne, Australian politician, was a Senator for the Australian Labor Party and later the Democratic Labor Party. Prior to entering politics he was private secretary to Vince Gair who was then Premier of Queensland.
Elections were held in the Australian state of Queensland on 22 October 1983 to elect the 82 members of the state's Legislative Assembly.
This is a list of members of the 34th Legislative Assembly of Queensland from 19 May 1956 to 3 August 1957, as elected at the 1956 state election held on 19 May 1956.
Elections were held in the Australian state of Queensland on 15 April 1944 to elect the 62 members of the state's Legislative Assembly.
The Gair Ministry was a ministry of the Government of Queensland and was led by Labor Premier Vince Gair. It succeeded the Hanlon Ministry on 17 January 1952 following Ned Hanlon's death two days earlier. On 26 April 1957, Gair and most of the Ministry were expelled from the Labor Party and formed the Queensland Labor Party (QLP), retaining the ministry but losing the confidence of the Assembly. The ministry was followed by the Nicklin Ministry on 12 August 1957 following the defeat of both Labor and the QLP at the resulting election.
Elections were held in the Australian state of Queensland on 22 May 1915 to elect the 72 members of the state's Legislative Assembly.
Elections were held in the Australian state of Queensland on 19 May 1956 to elect the 75 members of the state's Legislative Assembly. The Labor government was seeking its ninth continuous term in office since the 1932 election; it would be Vince Gair's second election as Premier.
The Nicklin Ministry was a ministry of the Government of Queensland and was led by Country Party Premier Frank Nicklin. It succeeded the Gair Ministry on 12 August 1957 following the defeat of both Labor and the QLP at the state election held nine days earlier. It was succeeded by the Pizzey Ministry on 17 January 1968 when Nicklin retired from politics.
Elections were held in the Australian state of Queensland on 28 May 1960 to elect the 78 members of the state's Legislative Assembly. The election followed the enactment of the Electoral Districts Act 1958 which increased the Assembly from 75 to 78 seats and modified the zonal system first established by Labor ahead of the 1950 election.
Elections were held in the Australian state of Queensland on 1 June 1963 to elect the 78 members of the state's Legislative Assembly.
The Kurilpa state by-election, 1949 was a by-election held on 10 September 1949 for the Queensland Legislative Assembly seat of Kurilpa, based in the inner southern Brisbane suburbs of West End and South Brisbane.
The National Party, known as the Country Party until 1974, was a political party in Queensland, Australia, for much of the period from 1915 until 2008. Formed by the Queensland Farmers' Union and serving as the state branch of the National Party of Australia, it initially sought to represent the interests of the farmers but over time became a more general conservative political party in the state, leading to much debate about relations with other conservative parties and a string of mergers that were soon undone. From 1957 it held power as part of a coalition with the state Liberal Party until 1983 when the Liberals broke away and the Nationals continued to govern in their own right until defeat in 1989. The party formed another coalition with the Liberals that took power in 1996 but was defeated in 1998. After a further decade in opposition the two parties merged to form the Liberal National Party of Queensland.
The Liberal Party, originally the Queensland People's Party, was a political party in Queensland, Australia, from the Second World War until 2008. Initially formed as independent body in 1943, it became the Queensland division of the Liberal Party of Australia in 1949. Based predominantly in Brisbane and other cities in Queensland, from 1957 it held power as the junior party in a coalition with the state Country Party, later the National Party, until 1983 when the Liberals broke away and went into opposition. The party formed another coalition with the Nationals that took power in 1996 but was defeated in 1998. After a further decade in opposition the two parties merged to form the Liberal National Party of Queensland.
1 2 3 4 Morrison, Allan Arthur (May 1958). "Australian Political Chronicle: July–December 1957". Australian Journal of Politics and History. 3 (2): 237–238. ISSN0004-9522.
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