1933 South Australian state election

← 1930 8 April 1933 (1933-04-08) 1938 →
All 46 seats in theSouth Australian House of Assembly 24 seats needed for a majority
First party Second party   Leader Richard L. Butler Edgar Dawes Party Liberal and Country Labor Leader since 7 December 1925 12 May 1932 Leader's seat Wooroora Sturt Last election Did not exist 30 seats Seats won 29 6 Seat change 23 24 Percentage 34.62% 27.78% Swing 20.86   Third party Fourth party   Leader Robert Richards Doug Bardolph Party Parliamentary Labor Lang Labor Leader since 1933 August 1931 Leader's seat Wallaroo Adelaide Last election Did not exist Did not exist Seats won 4 3 Seat change 4 3 Percentage 16.30% 3.68% Swing 16.30 3.68
Premier before election Robert Richards Parliamentary Labor Premier after election Richard L. Butler Liberal and Country

The1933 South Australian state election was held on 8 April 1933 to elect all 46 members of theSouth Australian House of Assembly. The incumbentParliamentary Labor Party government, led byPremierRobert Richards, was defeated by the oppositionLiberal and Country League, led byLeader of the OppositionRichard L. Butler. Each district elected multiple members.

After the ALP government of PremierLionel Hill endorsed the controversialPremiers' Plan following the start of theGreat Depression in Australia and the subsequentAustralian Labor Party split of 1931, the ALP state executive expelled 23 of the 30 members of the ALP caucus, including the entire cabinet. The expelled MPs formed theParliamentary Labor Party (also known as Premiers Plan Labor), with Hill as leader and Premier, and continued in office with the support of the Butler-ledLiberal Federation.

Amid increasing riots and protests, as well as skyrocketing unemployment, Hill left politics to become Australian Agent-General to theUnited Kingdom. He was succeeded byRobert Richards, who had the impossible task of leading the government into the election.

In contrast to the ructions in Labor, the conservative forces in the state presented a united front at the1931 federal election, when all anti-Labor major party candidates in the state ran under the banner of theEmergency Committee of South Australia. This grouping took an additional two seats to hold six of the state's seven seats in the federalHouse of Representatives and all three available seats in thebloc-voting winner-take-allSenate. In 1932, buoyed by this success, the Liberal Federation and theCountry Party merged as theLiberal and Country League under Butler's leadership.

With three Labor factions—theofficial ALP, Premiers Plan Labor andLang Labor—splitting the combined 47.8% total Labor vote, the result was a landslide victory for the LCL. The LCL won 29 seats versus only 13 for the three Labor factions combined. Though the Labor split in South Australia would only last until 1934, this would be the start of 32 years of LCL government in South Australia—one of the longest unbroken runs for a governing party in the Commonwealth. The LCL would stay in office until the1965 state election with the assistance of a pro-LCL electoralmalapportionment known as thePlaymander, which would be introduced in 1936.

• Results of the South Australian state election, 1933 (House of Assembly)
• Candidates of the South Australian state election, 1933
• Members of the South Australian House of Assembly, 1933-1938
• Members of the South Australian Legislative Council, 1933–1938

• History of South Australian elections 1857-2006, volume 1: ECSA
• State and federal election resultsArchived 18 January 2015 at theWayback Machine in Australia since 1890

Specific

• Elections in South Australia
• 1933 elections in Australia
• 1930s in South Australia
• April 1933

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