Talk:Members of the Australian Senate, 2016–2019

Note location

I have undone an edit by Superegz as the different notes serve a different purpose & are placed and numbered separately. The composition box is intended to be a quick overview of the balance of power in the house, a format common to Australian political lists, eg Members of the Australian House of Representatives, 2016–2019. Any changes to these should be discussed first. Find bruce (talk) 04:16, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I hadn't meant to upset the layout of the notes like I did. I was just trying to put in the same note text as the other senate pages. I have done that now while fixing the notes. Superegz (talk) 04:33, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

No problems. I don't like reverting genuine edits & my post was meant as an explanation for my actions rather than criticism, sorry if it seemed otherwise. If, as expected, Lucy Gichuhi is declared elected, both notes can probably disappear from the composition box as there would be no change to the Senate composition

Please sign and date your posts. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:04, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Weasel words on seat allocation

It is wrong to offer weasel words and excuses for what happened - eg describing what Labor and the coalition did as 'consistent with convention' and 'in accordance with the constitution' - while failing to mention the repeated promises they broke to use the new method to allocate long and short term senate seats. Wikipedia should not be used as a propaganda tool for the major parties. Not sure how to navigate the competing demands of 'not enough references' vs the 'flood of references' criticism from Scott Davis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oz freediver (talk • contribs) 23:44, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Looking at your most recent change, I would think the problem would be obvious - the word "fairer", which is actually a characterisation I agree with but is clearly POV. I also think the word "reneged" is a bit much - it implies an actual agreement rather than a non-binding resolution; I wonder if "This was despite two previous bipartisan resolutions ..." might work better. The current sentence does need references - I would say one or two mainstream media sources should do the trick. Frickeg (talk) 02:21, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

I was not pinged to this conversation, and have not been watching Wikipedia much in the last few weeks, so could easily have missed that I am mentioned in this thread. I agree that the method of selection neesds to be mentioned in Wikipedia, and that this is a good place for it (along with the election article), not the lead of the general Australian Senate article. The facts are:

• The senate used the same method for allocating short terms as has been used every other time
• The AEC provided a special count to facilitate a slightly different allocation
• The constitution allows the sitting Senate to decide who gets which terms in any way it sees fit (I don't think it precludes drawing lots or alphabetical order!)
• Previous Senates had made (non-binding) indications of which method should be used in future

current text:

In accordance with section 13 of the Constitution, it was for the Senate to decide which Senators were allocated the full six-year terms ending on 30 June 2022 and which Senators were allocated three-year terms ending on 30 June 2019. The senate resolved that the first elected six of twelve Senators in each state would serve six-year terms, while the last six elected in each state would serve three-year terms. This was consistent with the Senate practice on all seven previous occasions that have required allocation of long and short terms. It followed an agreement between Liberal's Mathias Cormann and Labor's Penny Wong to choose a method that awarded longer, six year terms to Labor's Deborah O'Neill and Liberal's Scott Ryan at the expense of The Greens' Lee Rhiannon and the Justice Party's Derryn Hinch being allocated shorter, three year terms. By agreeing to this, Labor and the Coalition reneged on two previous bipartisan senate resolutions to use a new, fairer 'recount' method to allocate long term seats.

Potential rephrasing:

In accordance with section 13 of the Constitution, it was left to Senate to decide which Senators were allocated the full six-year terms ending on 30 June 2022 and which Senators were allocated three-year terms ending on 30 June 2019. The senate resolved that the first elected six of twelve Senators in each state would serve six-year terms, while the last six elected in each state would serve three-year terms. This was the Senate practice on the seven previous occasions that have required allocation of long and short terms. In 1983 the Joint Select Committee on Electoral Reform had unanimously recommended an alternative "recount" method to reflect proportional representation, and the Commonwealth Electoral Act was inserted to provide for a recount on that basis. This alternative method had been supported by both Labor and the Coalition in bipartisan senate resolutions passed in 1998 and 2010. Despite this, an agreement between Liberal's Mathias Cormann and Labor's Penny Wong led the Senate to choose the method that awarded longer, six year terms to Labor's Deborah O'Neill and Liberal's Scott Ryan at the expense of The Greens' Lee Rhiannon and the Justice Party's Derryn Hinch being allocated shorter, three year terms.

I borrowed and slightly modified text from Results for the Australian federal election, 2016 (Senate) to make this version. What do you think? --Scott Davis ^Talk 09:57, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree with the comments by Frickeg & the re-draft proposed by ScottDavis. If you want to include Hansard references for the 1998 & 2010 resolutions they are

• "Election of Senators" (PDF). Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Commonwealth of Australia: Senate. 29 June 1998. pp. 4326–4327.
• "Double Dissolution". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Commonwealth of Australia: Senate. 22 June 2010. p. 3912.

Find bruce (talk) 11:11, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I have inserted my redrafted text, with two grammatical corrections and the references for the resolutions. --Scott Davis ^Talk 11:38, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Fine by me Oz freediver (talk)

Is it really significant that Wong and Cormann negotiated the agreement? Oz freediver (talk)

I'm not sure, but all the sources name them, and it emphasises that it was a decision made by the elected members on the floor of the Senate, (even if they voted along party lines), not driven by the party's policy platforms. I'm not terribly fussed either way. --Scott Davis ^Talk 08:13, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Scott Ludlam?

Given that Scott Ludlam has recently been announced to have been ineligible to run for the Senate (and has hence resigned), should the table not reflect the current situation? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.243.72.248 (talk) 05:00, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Ineligible & short v long terms

Is anyone aware of a reliable source on what will happen with short and long terms ? - eg Stephen Parry was elected 5th in Tasmania & so got a long term ending in 2022. Jonathon Duniam was elected 7th & so got a short term ending in 2019. If Richard Colbeck is declared elected, does he take Parry's long term or is there a reshuffle & he gets a short term while Duniam who was ahead of Colbeck on the ticket gets the long term. I suspect that Colbeck will get the long term, but I haven't seen a reliable source even discussing the issue. Find bruce (talk) 22:53, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

As with the original allocation, this will be up to the discretion of the Senate. It is likely that they will use the order of election from the recount - so in the Tasmanian instance Duniam will be elected fifth and so will get a long term. Of course in this case it will somewhat depend on what the Court decides regarding McKim/McCulloch. It is of course possible that they will just do a straight replacement as well and Colbeck will get the long term; they may even mix and match depending on the vacancies (although to do so would be pretty brazen). It's entirely up to them. Frickeg (talk) 23:14, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Fair call - the Senate has been consistent in making politically expedient decisions & will probably do so again. On McKim/McCulloch, the directions to the AEC will include "The special count identify which candidate is entitled to be elected to the place left unfilled by the ineligibility of" Stephen Parry. I can't see how the AEC could continue the count after one person has been identified, but time will tell. Find bruce (talk) 02:58, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

Note format

Any objection to fixing up the notes so that they are in chronological order? Given the chaos of this particular Senate, it is really important that changes are depicted in an easy-to-follow way. Frickeg (talk) 22:19, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Although looking a bit further, I see that they have all been changed to be non-chronological. This is a really bad idea and they need to go back to being chronological across the board - this is an important way to keep track of changes to the parliaments both current and historical. Frickeg (talk) 22:24, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, please do! The Drover's Wife (talk) 22:28, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

I was the editor that changed the notes to use template:efn which has the main advantage of showing the text of the note if a reader hovers their mouse over the note in the list, which means when looking at a long list you don't need to keep jumping up & down to see the notes. I have no issue with the notes being sorted in chronological order, rather than the order they appear on the page, I just don't know how to do so without losing the mouse hover feature. Find bruce (talk) 23:25, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't know how to do that either - perhaps someone does. But if it is a choice between the two, for me the chronology is more important than the mouse hover feature. We used to be able to scroll down to the bottom of a Senate list and see a chronological list of changes in that parliament; now it's an incomprehensible mishmash, especially for eventful parliaments like the current one. I don't think asking the reader to actually click on the note is that much of an imposition. Frickeg (talk) 00:34, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

I asked on the template talk page if it is possible. If it's not, I agree with Frickeg that we'd be better to ditch it so we have coherent notes sections again. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:29, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

If its not possible to do sort them via the template, one way to force them into chronological order is the order in which they first appear, eg if we included a sentence between the text and the table, something like "There were numerous changes to the composition of the Senate during its term.^[c][d]...[y]" A list of 20 notes is a little bit clunky, but it would ensure chronological order, retain the mouse hover feature & importantly in the current senate, be easy to maintain - just add the next note to the end of the first list & it will flow through. I have made the change I suggested so that people could see the effect, intending it to enable rather than preempt discussion. Find bruce (talk) 02:42, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

I think it looks really messy, unfortunately. Not a fan. The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:45, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

I agree that I don't think it's acceptable in its current form, although it's a valiant attempt. I tried hiding the initial text but it didn't seem to work, so we're back to square one. Let's hope the template folks have an answer, but otherwise I still think chronology should take precedence. Frickeg (talk) 03:37, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

I haven't been following the progression of the conversation above, and didn't notice the problem it is trying to solve. I think a string of 16 footnote markers which appear to be providing reference for "numerous changes" just looks silly. I'd be inclined to remove them all in favour of a single reference that says there were numerous changes. That would throw away the information in the footnotes, which is obviously not good either.--Scott Davis ^Talk 03:49, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

As 4 out of 4 editors are of the same view (including me) I have deleted the line. The relevant edit should any editor wish to view it is here. Scott Davis deleting the line doesn't throw away the footnotes - they were just duplicates to force the sort order. I am a bit busy this week, but will have a think & see if I can come up with another way. Template:Hidden might work to hide a list Find bruce (talk) 06:04, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. So the "issue" is that the plethora of notes appear in alphabetical order of surname of the person they apply to, interspersed with other notes about party room affiliations etc, rather than in chronological order of events? And "we" would like the notes to appear in the order of the events occurring, so that a narrative appears by just reading the list of notes? A possible solution to that would be to actually write the narrative as prose in the body of the article ahead of the table. That would enable slightly more verbose treatment of some of the complex ones, and shorter footnotes too. Explanatory footnotes that need two or three reference footnotes embedded are crying out to become article body, I'd have thought? We're at notes a-w already, with some senators mentioned in multiple notes. The Notes section is already twice the length of the article lead and we'll need another long explanation for the term of Senator Parry's replacement. Have I missed something?--Scott Davis ^Talk 08:02, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

I mean, this is a list, though. I appreciate your point but I also think it's clear that this particular Senate is a bit of an outlier as far as these things go. We could consider alternative ways of presenting this information, but I don't think prose is the way to go. The Americans use these nifty tables that I've been playing around with for a while, but I'm not convinced they quite work for us, and if we were to do something like that we would be duplicating the notes (because we really do need notes in the table since we have everyone listed together). And ultimately, these notes used to work quite well originally, even if in this particular section they are getting long. Possibly some of the explanations could be elided with links to the citizenship crisis page. Frickeg (talk) 09:49, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

I got a response at the template page saying that it couldn't be changed, so I'd be strongly in favour of going back to the previous format. We need coherent notes sections more than we need the notes to appear when one hovers with the cursor as opposed to having to make one click. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:10, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

The "nifty tables" seem to keep the notes in chronological order as the first use of the notes is the table of party representation through time. --Scott Davis ^Talk 14:07, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

A table like that would be nifty, but complex. Because there are so many changes in this Senate, another way to achieve what we want is to do a simple table that sets out the Changes in membership in chronological order. While I much prefer the mouse hover feature, thus far it would appear I am in the minority. Find bruce (talk) 21:25, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Not really a fan of that either - seems a bit unwieldy to me. And as that loses the mouse hover feature as well, I'm not sure I understand the appeal for anyone. The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:04, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

In the absence of a better solution, are there any objections to me going through these to restore chronological order, even if it will remove the hover function? Frickeg (talk) 08:11, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Please do! The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:23, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

I finally found a way to work around this issue - it takes advantage of a technical issue as to how notes are displayed. If you look at the page note af ag is a list of names which is what forces the sort order. Being the final note it is reasonably unobtrusive. Find bruce (talk) 05:51, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

David Leyonhjelm

David Leyonhjelm resigned from the Senate on 1 March, 2019. Shouldn't the diagram be updated to show a vacancy --Mrodowicz (talk) 11:47, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

His replacement, Duncan Spender, has already been appointed. Frickeg (talk) 11:59, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Cheers @Frickeg, I didn't know that. Thank you. --Mrodowicz (talk) 12:10, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Terms of Territory senators

I've made a few edits to the lede of these lists, just thought I would explain why. The lede said that the terms of Territory senators end at the dissolution of the House of Representatives—it appears that is not correct. David Smith resigned from the Senate yesterday (11 April), after the Prime Minister had called the election and the House of Representatives had been dissolved. The President of the Senate has written to the ACT Chief Minister to inform him of a vacancy, because Smith's term expires on 17 May. In Odgers' Australian Senate Practice it says the following:

Territory senators' terms commence on the date of their election and end on the day of the next election. They therefore do not have the fixed six year terms commencing on 1 July of the senators elected to represent the states. Their terms are, however, unbroken, which is important in ensuring that the Senate has a full complement of members during an election period. Their elections coincide with general elections for the House of Representatives.

--Canley (talk) 22:28, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Mangled opening pargraph

I had to read this a few times to figure out what it is trying to say. Needs clarification.

"All 76 senators were elected due to the election being the result of a double dissolution"

"The terms of senators from the states could only have been truncated if another double dissolution election had been called."

Oz freediver (talk) 03:05, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

I've had another go at simplifying it. --Scott Davis ^Talk 07:16, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Colour Inconsistency

Why does Brian Burston's colour in the table match One Nation's but in the represenation of the Senate/House it matches United Australia? Which should it be?

1.126.104.66 (talk) 19:43, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

 Fixed The correct answer is what that reliable source in the article says, but as there wasn't one I have added one & changed the colour to United Australia. Find bruce (talk) 22:24, 3 May 2019 (UTC)