Legislative Assembly | |
|---|---|
| 58th Parliament | |
 Badge of theParliament of Queensland | |
| Type | |
| Type | |
| History | |
| Founded | 22 May 1860; 165 years ago (22 May 1860) |
| Leadership | |
| Structure | |
| Seats | 93 |
 | |
Political groups | Government (52)
Opposition (35)
Crossbench (6)
|
Length of term | 4 years |
| Elections | |
| Fullpreferential voting | |
First election | 27 April – 11 May 1860 |
Last election | 26 October 2024 |
Next election | 28 October 2028 |
| Meeting place | |
 | |
| Legislative Assembly Chamber, Parliament House, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia | |
| Website | |
| parliament | |
TheLegislative Assembly of Queensland is the sole chamber of theunicameralParliament of Queensland established under theConstitution of Queensland. Elections are held every four years and are done byfull preferential voting. The Assembly has 93members, who have used the lettersMP after their names since 2000 (previously they were styledMLAs).
There is approximately the same population in eachelectorate; however, that has not always been the case (in particular, amalapportionment system - not, strictly speaking, agerrymander - dubbed theBjelkemander was in effect during the 1970s and 1980s). The Assembly first sat in May 1860 and produced Australia's firstHansard in April 1864.
Following the outcome of the2015 election, successful amendments to the electoral act in early 2016 include: adding an additional four parliamentary seats from 89 to 93, changing fromoptional preferential voting tofull-preferential voting, and moving from unfixed three-year terms to fixed four-year terms.[1] As of October 2024, theLiberal National Party (LNP) has 52 of 93 seats and formed majority government within the unicameral chamber.[2]
Initially, the Legislative Assembly was the lower house of abicameral parliament influenced by theWestminster system. Theupper house was theLegislative Council, its members appointed for life by thegovernor, on advice of the government of the day. The first sitting, in May 1860, was held in the old converted convict barracks inQueen Street.[3] It consisted of 26 members from 16 electorates, nearly half of whom were pastoralists or squatters. Early sessions dealt with issues of land, labour, railways, public works, immigration, education and gold discoveries.[3]
In April 1864, Australia's firstHansard was produced. That year also saw member numbers increased to 32, and by 1868—as more redistributions occurred—the number grew to 42. Members were not paid until 1886, effectively excluding the working class from state politics.[3]
The Assembly was elected under thefirst-past-the-post (plurality) system 1860 to 1892. From then until 1942 an unusual form of preferential voting called thecontingent vote was used. This was introduced by a conservative government to hinder the emerging Labor Party from gaining seats with minority support.[4]
In 1942 the plurality system was reintroduced. The Labor government then in power had seen its vote decline in the 1940s and sought to divide the opposition. In 1962, it was replaced with full preferential voting, as the governing conservatives wanted to take advantage of a split in Labor. In 1992, this was changed to the optional preferential system which was used until full preferential voting was reinstated in 2016.[4]
After 1912, electorates elected only a single member to the Assembly.[4] In 1922, the Legislative Council was abolished, with the help of members known as thesuicide squad,[5] who were specially appointed to vote the chamber out of existence. This left Queensland with aunicameral parliament—currently the only Australian state with this arrangement.
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From 1948 until the reforms following the end of theBjelke-Petersen era, Queensland used an electoral zoning system that was tweaked by the government of the day to maximise its own voter support at the expense of the opposition. It has been called a form ofgerrymander, dubbed the "Bjelkemander" however it is more accurately referred to as anelectoral malapportionment. In a classic gerrymander, electoral boundaries are drawn to take advantage of known pockets of supporters and to isolate areas of opposition voters so as to maximise the number of seats for the government for a given number of votes and to cause opposition support to be "wasted" by concentrating their supporters in relatively fewer electorates.
The Queensland "gerrymander", first introduced by theLabor Party (ALP) government ofNed Hanlon in 1949 used a series of electoral zones based on their distance from Brisbane.
Initially Queensland was divided into three zones—the metropolitan zone (Brisbane), the provincial cities zone (which also included rural areas around provincial cities) and the rural zone. While the number of electors in each seat in a zone was roughly equal, there was considerable variation in the number of electors between zones. Thus an electorate in the remote zone might have as few as 5,000 electors, while a seat in the metropolitan zone might have as many as 25,000. Using this system the Labor government was able to maximise its vote, particularly in its power base of the provincial city zone.
With the split in the party in the late 1950s the ALP lost office and a conservativeCoalition government led by the Country Party (laterNational Party) underFrank Nicklin came to power, which, as discussed above, initially modified the voting system to introduce preferential voting, to take advantage of Labor's split. It also separated the provincial cities from their hinterlands. The hinterlands were added to the rural zone, where new Country Party seats were created.
As the divisions in the ALP abated in the early 1970s, and tensions in the conservative coalition grew, (thus reducing the advantage to be gained by the use of preferential voting), the conservative government, now led byJoh Bjelke-Petersen, modified the zoning system to add a fourth zone—a remote zone, comprising seats with even fewer electors. Thus the conservative government was able to isolate Labor support in provincial cities and maximise its own rural power base. On average, the Country Party needed only 7,000 votes to win a seat, compared with 12,800 for a typical Labor seat.
The entrenchment of a Coalition government was also caused bysocio-economic anddemographic changes associated with mechanisation of farms and urbanisation which led to a drift of working class population from rural and remote electorates to the cities.
By the late 1980s the decline in the political fortunes of the National Party, together with rapid growth in south east Queensland meant that the zonal system was no longer able to guarantee a conservative victory.
In addition, in 1988 the Federal Labor Government heldfour constitutional referendums—one of which was for the adoption of fair electoral systems around Australia. Although the referendum did not succeed, it heightened public awareness of the issue. A large public interest non-partisan organisation, the Citizens for Democracy, lobbied extensively the Liberal and Labor parties to abolish the gerrymander and to make it a major issue in the lead up to the landmark 1989 Queensland election.
Despite the malapportionment, Labor was rarely able to garner a higher percentage of the vote than the Coalition for most of this period.
In 1989 Labor won government, promising to implement the recommendations of theFitzgerald Inquiry into police corruption, including the establishment of an Electoral and Administrative Reform Commission (EARC). EARC recommended the abolition of the zonal system in favour of a "modified one vote, one value" system. Under this proposal, subsequently adopted, most electorates consisted of approximately the same number of electors, but with a greater tolerance for fewer electors allowed in a limited number of remote electorates. This plan is still in use today. Presently, 42 seats are contested in Greater Brisbane and 47 in the rest of the state.
The youngest person ever elected to Queensland's Legislative Assembly wasLawrence Springborg, former Minister for Natural Resources andLeader of the Opposition.[6] In 1989, he entered parliament aged 21.
The Queensland Legislative Assembly sits inParliament House in theBrisbane central business district. The building was completed in 1891. The lower house chamber is decorated dark green in the traditionalWestminster style. The chamber once featured central tables which divided two rows of elevated benches on each side. The room is now configured in a U-shape away from the Speaker's chair with three rows of benches that have their own desks and microphones.[7]
As of October 2024, the LNP (Liberal National Party) has 52/93 seats and formed majority government within the unicameral chamber.[8]
As of October 2024, the composition of Parliament is:
| Party | Seats | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current Assembly(total 93 seats) | ||||||
| Liberal National | 52 | |||||
| Labor | 35 | |||||
| Katter's Australian | 2 | |||||
| Greens | 1 | |||||
| Independent | 2 | Vacant | 1 | |||
Parliaments of Australia – Federal, states and territories | |
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