1977 Australian referendum (Simultaneous Elections)

The Constitution Alteration (Simultaneous Elections) 1977 was an Australian referendum held in the 1977 referendums which sought to amend the Australian constitution for the second time to ensure that elections for both houses of parliament occurred simultaneously.

Question

It is proposed to alter the Constitution to ensure that Senate elections are held at the same time as House of Representatives elections.

Do you approve the proposed law?

Results
Result [1]
StateOn

rolls

 Ballots

issued

 For Against Invalid
% %
New South Wales3,007,511 2,774,388 1,931,77570.71% 800,331 29.29%42,282
Victoria2,252,831 2,083,136 1,325,70865.00% 713,929 35.00%43,499
Queensland1,241,426 1,138,842 534,96847.51% 590,942 52.49%12,932
South Australia799,243 745,990 480,82765.99% 247,762 34.01%17,401
Western Australia682,291 617,463 292,34448.47% 310,765 51.53%14,354
Tasmania259,081246,063 82,78534.26% 158,818 65.74%4,460
Australian Total8,242,383 7,605,882 4,648,40762.22% 2,822,547 37.78%134,928
Obtained majority in three States and an overall majority of 1,825,860 votes.
Not carried

Discussion

This was one of several occasions that the double majority rule resulted in a referendum with a clear 'Yes' overall majority not being approved, as it failed to receive approval in a majority of States. The margin of failure, 9211 votes (in WA), made it the third-closest referendum result in Australian history. Charles Court the Liberal Premier of Western Australia, Joh Bjelke-Petersen the National Party Premier of Queensland and Max Bingham Leader of the Tasmanian state Liberal Party (then in Opposition at the state level) campaigned against the referendum, causing its defeat in those three states.

References
  1. Handbook of the 44th Parliament (2014) "Part 5 - Referendums and Plebiscites - Referendum results". Parliamentary Library of Australia..

See also


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.