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All 89 seats in the Legislative Assembly of Queensland 45 Assembly seats were needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Elections were held in the Australian state of Queensland on 1 November 1986 to elect the 89 members of the state's Legislative Assembly. It followed a redistribution which increased the number of seats in the Assembly from 82 to 89.
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 election resulted in a seventh consecutive term for the National Party under Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. It was the 11th consecutive term for the National Party in Queensland since it first came to office in 1957. The Nationals secured a majority in their own right, with 49 seats. It is the only time that the Nationals have ever won enough seats to govern alone in an election at any level. They had come up one seat short of an outright majority in 1983, but picked up a majority after persuading two Liberals to cross the floor.
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.
Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, was an Australian politician. He was the longest-serving and longest-lived Premier of Queensland, holding office from 1968 to 1987, during which time the state underwent considerable economic development. His uncompromising conservatism, his political longevity, and his leadership of a government that, in its later years, was revealed to be institutionally corrupt, made him one of the best-known and most controversial political figures of 20th century Australia.
This was the last time that a non-Labor Government was elected at a Queensland state election until 2012, although the Coalition briefly held government from 1996 to 1998 following the Mundingburra by-election.
Date | Event |
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30 September 1986 | Writs were issued by the Governor to proceed with an election. [1] |
9 October 1986 | Close of nominations. |
1 November 1986 | Polling day, between the hours of 8am and 6pm. |
1 December 1986 | The Bjelke-Petersen Ministry was reconstituted. |
8 January 1987 | The writ was returned and the results formally declared. |
All three parties had high hopes for the election. The Nationals knew that they needed to increase their number of seats in order to hang onto Government (they had held a majority of one in the last Parliament, which had been increased from 82 seats to 89 for the 1986 election). The Liberals desperately needed to win back some of their losses from their disastrous performance in 1983, and Labor hoped to exploit disunity between the conservative parties to make gains.
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.
The Australian Labor Party , commonly known as Queensland Labor is the Queensland branch of the Australian Labor Party.
The already malapportioned boundaries (the "Bjelkemander") had been redrawn earlier in the year in a manner which further advantaged the National Party. [2]
The Bjelke-Petersen Government won a commanding victory, winning an extra eight seats and thus increasing its majority. The Liberals gained two seats, but were still nowhere near making up for their 1983 losses. Labor lost two seats.
Queensland state election, 1 November 1986 [3] [4] | ||||||
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Enrolled voters | 1,563,294 | |||||
Votes cast | 1,426,478 | Turnout | 91.25% | –0.44% | ||
Informal votes | 30,903 | Informal | 2.17% | +0.70% | ||
Summary of votes by party | ||||||
Party | Primary votes | % | Swing | Seats | Change | |
Labor | 577,062 | 41.35% | –2.63% | 30 | – 2 | |
Nationals | 553,197 | 39.64% | +0.71% | 49 | + 8 | |
Liberals | 230,310 | 16.50% | +1.62% | 10 | + 2 | |
Democrats | 8,747 | 0.63% | –0.20% | 0 | ± 0 | |
Independent | 26,259 | 1.88% | +0.59% | 0 | – 1 | |
Total | 1,395,575 | 89 | ||||
Seat | Pre-1986 | Swing | Post-1986 | ||||||
Party | Member | Margin | Margin | Member | Party | ||||
Ashgrove | Labor | Tom Veivers | 2.6 | -4.6 | 2.0 | Alan Sherlock | Liberal | ||
Caboolture | National | Bill Newton | -2.3 | -1.0 | 3.7 | Ken Hayward | Labor | ||
Callide | Independent | Lindsay Hartwig | 9.3 | -22.5 | 13.2 | Di McCauley | National | ||
Merthyr | Liberal | Don Lane | 2.2 | N/A | 6.0 | Don Lane | National | ||
Mount Isa | Labor | Bill Price | 1.7 | -4.4 | 2.7 | Peter Beard | Liberal | ||
Toowong | National | Earle Bailey | 2.8 | -21.2 | 18.4 | Denver Beanland | Liberal | ||
Townsville | Labor | Ken McElligott | -0.5 | -3.9 | 4.4 | Tony Burreket | National | ||
Stafford is a Legislative Assembly of Queensland electoral district in the state of Queensland, Australia.
The 1986 election is significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, it saw the National Party retain a majority of seats in the Parliament. This was only the second election in Australian history (the other being the 1983 Queensland election) in which the National Party won enough seats to form Government in its own right.
More importantly, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s victory gave him the confidence to launch the ‘Joh for PM’ campaign, which would play a major part in the 1987 federal election, and would later be a major factor in his undoing.
The Joh for Canberra campaign, initially known as the "Joh for PM" campaign, was an attempt by Queensland National Party premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen to become Prime Minister of Australia. The campaign was announced in January 1987 and drew substantial support from Queensland businessmen and some conservative politicians. The campaign succeeded in causing a split in the federal Coalition. It did not attract widespread support and collapsed in June 1987. The Australian Labor Party under Bob Hawke went on to win by an increased majority in the 1987 federal election, gaining its highest-ever number of seats. Bjelke-Petersen came under increasing scrutiny as the Fitzgerald Inquiry gained traction, and was forced out of politics altogether in December 1987.
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.
The Legislative Assembly of Queensland is the sole chamber of the unicameral Parliament of Queensland. Elections are held every four years. Voting is by the full-preferential voting form of the alternative vote system. The Assembly has 93 members, who have used the letters MP after their names since 2000.
Elections were held in the Australian state of Queensland on 2 December 1989 to elect the 89 members of the state's Legislative Assembly. This was the first election following the downfall of seven-term premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen at the end of 1987.
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Elections were held in the Australian state of Queensland on 22 October 1983 to elect the 82 members of the state's Legislative Assembly.
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Terrence Anthony "Terry" White is an Australian pharmacist, businessman, and former politician. White achieved notoriety when, as Queensland state leader of the Liberal Party he terminated the longstanding coalition agreement between the Liberal Party and the National Party of Joh Bjelke-Petersen. In the ensuing election, the Liberals were badly defeated, and White was replaced as party leader. After leaving politics, he established a nationwide chain of pharmacies using a franchise model and became a widely respected businessman.
The ginger group, in Queensland politics was a group of Liberal Party MLAs during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, who despite nominally being a part of the government, were opposed to some of the policies of their senior coalition partner, the National Party. Initially a small informal grouping within the Liberal Party, the group came to wield greater and greater power within the Liberal partyroom, culminating in Terry White's successful leadership challenge in 1983, and the party's subsequent defeat and loss of influence at the 1983 election.
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Guelfi Paul Scassola was an Australian politician. He was a Liberal Party member of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland from 1977 until 1983, representing the electorate of Mount Gravatt.
This is a list of electoral district results for the 1986 Queensland state election.