Talk:Parliament of Australia/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 23:21, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:21, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

I'll copyedit as I go; please revert if I screw anything up. I'll add comments as I go through -- it might take me a day or two to finish.

• The article includes the Queen and the Governor-General as part of the legislative branch, in the description in the lead, but the Government of Australia article places the G-G in the executive branch. Just checking that this is the article that has it right.
• FYI, there's no need for citations in the lead. There's no need to remove them if you prefer to have them there, but the lead only needs citations for direct quotations and controversial material. You do have a couple of uncited sentences in the lead, which looks odd though it's technically not wrong.
• Through both Houses, however, there is a fused executive, drawn from the Westminster System. I don't think you need "however"; and what does "through both houses" mean?
• Suggest "As of 2018" for the statement that the government hasn't had a majority in the Senate since 1981.
• I'm not sure the information needs to be in the article, but can you explain the difference between instant runoff and single transferable vote? I had a look at the relevant articles and couldn't immediately figure it out.
• Although elections can be called early, every 3 years the full House of Representatives and half of the Senate is dissolved and goes up for reelection Presumably the "every 3 years" doesn't apply if there's been an early election? Or it does apply, so there's an extra election in the period? I took a look at the "Composition and electoral systems" section and couldn't spot an explanation of the election frequency; I'd suggest adding something, unless it's elsewhere in the article and I missed it.
• There are some uncited sentences/paragraphs in the body of the article. For example, the end of the first paragraph of "History", the second paragraph of "Old Parliament House", and quite a few more instances further down.
• Nevertheless, he designed the building by default: I think you can cut this; the reader already understands this from the previous two sentences.
• You have citations to "Constitution of Australia, section 1", and other sections,: 2, 49, 57, and several others. I looked both here and here and couldn't find consistent "section" titles. What do these refer to?
• to reserve a bill for the Queen's pleasure: what does this mean?
• (The US Senate has been directly elected only from 1913.) This isn't really relevant to this article; I'd suggest moving it to a footnote.
• a high rate of informal voting: What is "informal voting"?
• Most people won't know what preferential block voting, group ticket voting, or optional preferential voting are. I don't think you should distract from this article by trying to explain these inline, but perhaps a footnote giving some salient information would be a good idea.
• to avoid undue influence of preference deals amongst parties: what is an "influence of preference deal"?
• Unless I missed it, the article doesn't say how many seats each state has in the lower house. It also takes a bit of work to figure out how the 76 senators are allocated; I had to check to see that there are six states, which makes 72, plus two each for the two territories that elect senators. It would be good to make this clearer.
• Federal electorates have their boundaries redrawn or redistributed whenever a state or territory has its number of seats adjusted: This doesn't explain what triggers an adjustment of the number of seats. Censuses?
• Why doesn't the house have 152 seats, if the senate has 76? And why did the High Court bring the house seats down from 127 to 124 at a time when the Sentate had 64 seats? 128 seats would have been twice the number of Senate seats.
• the first time in federal history that Labor had obtained a net benefit from preferential voting: I don't follow this. What does it mean to say that a party gains a net benefit from preferential voting?
• Women did not gain the right to vote until 1902; I think this should be mentioned when discussing elections.
• You say the Constitution authorizes Parliament to set the quorum for each chamber; does this mean it must pass legislation through both chambers to do so? Has it always been set at one quarter of the Senate and one fifth of the House?
• It's interesting that the President can't break a tie. In governments with small majorities it must be a problem to lose a vote in this way. Have significant votes, such as votes of confidence, or votes on major legislation, been lost because of this rule?
• and goes through a number of stages to become a law: suggest cutting this; it doesn't say anything that is not immediately apparent on reading on.
• What is an "urgency motion"?
• Should "Question Time" be capitalized, as you have it? In the UK I think it's more usually "question time".
• In an election following a double dissolution, each state elects their entire 12-seat Senate delegation: but in fact some double dissolutions occurred before the states elected 12 senators each. I'd rephrase this to be more general.
• I'd also suggest making it clear in this section that there have been multiple double dissolutions; the first time I read this I assumed there had only been the one, in 1974.
• The quote from section 49 about committees implies there were subsequent declarations of the powers of committees. Or is it still the case that whatever the UK parliament says with regard to committees applies in Australia as well? For comparison, the constitution makes a similar statement about parliamentary privilege, and you make it clear that in 1987 this was clarified by legislation.
• The Federal Executive Council is not defined in the article; there's a link, but this seems an important enough element of the government that it should get a couple of words of explanation.
• The list of departments has presumably changed over time. I think you might consider splitting off some of the historical material into a history of the Parliament of Australia article; that would leave this article to focus on the current state of affairs. That would also allow you to shorten the article, which is fairly long, though not unreasonably so. The long historical tables at the end could also go in that article.
• After reading the description of the 1975 constitutional crisis and the earlier discussion of double dissolution, I'm not quite clear on the mechanism. Did the constitutional definition of double dissolution forces Kerr's hand? Or did he have some leeway under the constitution?
• By doing this, Labor and the Coalition each gained one Senate seat from 2019: I don't follow this.
• The Court of Disputed Returns is mentioned but its exact role is unclear.
• I think you can trim some of the rather long "See also" list. Do we really need the list of official openings by the Queen, for example? Or the list of legislatures by country?
• Not required for GA, but FYI you have inconsistent dates in the citations; some are "25 March 2017" and some are "2007-07-01".
• Why is Antony Green's blog a reliable source?
• Do we really need to cite a tweet for the fact you're using it for?
• There is at least one dead link: see here

That's everything for a first pass. I really think it would be a good idea to split out the historical material for a separate article; I won't fail this for GA on that basis if you don't agree, but if you're including history here then it does need to be thorough, and I think that's a fairly high bar. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:48, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Superegz, I see you haven't been very active recently; I'll give this another week so you have another chance to see this review. If you need more time than that, just let me know. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:58, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

It's been nearly three weeks so I am failing this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:16, 3 February 2018 (UTC)