Talk:South Australian Legislative Council

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The referendum in 2010 - opinions? Does somebody want to expand beyond the little bit of Rann quote I put there? Timeshift

I've expanded slightly. As it approaches, I suspect the referendum should get its own page. Rocksong 12:05, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Does someone know or can somebody update the 2002-2006 distribution of seats to display as what was voted in at the time rather than the aftermath of four years in government including two vacancies? Cheers :) Timeshift 15:02, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've done that. I've removed the distinction between the start and end of 2002-2006, because nothing really changed. Terry Cameron had left Labor before the 2002 election, and the two vacancies (ALP Terry Roberts' death, Liberal Angus Redford resigning to contest the lower house) were only not filled because parliament wasn't sitting, so are of no real interest any more. Rocksong 00:12, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Hansard

How long does it typically take for hansard to be uploaded? This time yesterday, 29/08/06 was up, but 30/08/06 (where Kanck referred to methods of suicide) has not been uploaded yet. Timeshift 05:47, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't know why everyone is making such a fuss of both Kanck's folly and the subsequent newspaper beatup. Kanck's in it for a publicity stunt, and the media's in it because they're so devoid of real news. michael ^talk 06:06, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Timeshift 06:14, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

The first news segment on 7pm ABC news... reporting that Kanck's speech has been wiped from the internet. It passed the legislative council 10 votes to 9. This sets a censorship precedent... Timeshift 09:31, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Upper house president...?

Does anyone know if Labor has selected the upper house equivalent of speaker? Not having much luck finding anything so far. The lower house was announced ages ago. Timeshift (talk) 12:41, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Historical MLC numbers

I've always believed what Antony Green says... "between 1941 and 1973, every Legislative Council election returned 2 Labor members to 8 for the Liberal Country League". So a total of 4 Labor/16 LCL. But when I look at, for example, Members of the South Australian Legislative Council, 1959–1962 or Members of the South Australian Legislative Council, 1968–1970, there's 5 Labor MLCs listed. Can anyone explain the discrepancy? Timeshift (talk) 03:52, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

I can't speak to the overall accuracy of Green's statement, but he is correct about those two: there are five members listed for each because Labor MPs died or resigned mid-term and were replaced in by-elections: in the first one, Condon died and Kneebone won the by-election, and in the second, Bevan resigned and Casey won the by-election. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:22, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Bad choices on my part. Members of the South Australian Legislative Council, 1970–1973? Members of the South Australian Legislative Council, 1944–1947? Timeshift (talk) 05:48, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

The first was an error on my part (Jessie Cooper was LCL but incorrectly listed as Labor). The second appears to be an error on Green's. James Beerworth won the normally conservative seat of Northern District in 1939 and was re-elected in 1941, but there was still only four Labor MPs until 1944 because of independent Joseph Anderson holding a normally safe Labor seat in Central District No. 1. Labor regained Anderson's seat in 1944, and thus had five until Beerworth lost in 1947. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:12, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. Timeshift (talk) 06:28, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Xenophon

The infobox had Xenophon Team as 'independent', while the table had them as Xenophon Team. Are we counting them as ind or not? Timeshift (talk) 02:47, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Parliament has Darley as independent. The listing current MPs as NXT thing is OR on Wikipedians' part as far as I'm concerned. The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:58, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Not taking sides here, i'm just looking for consistency, but I suspect the parliament website labels Darley as independent by default as there's no Xenophon party in the state political party register. Does this mean all unregistered parties and their candidates and/or MPs should be labelled with the same "independent" brush and nothing more? Just generating a dialogue. Timeshift (talk) 04:05, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

There functionally is no such thing as an unregistered party with an MP due to the registration rules. Sometimes it takes the MP a couple months to get their shit together (e.g. Aidan McLindon and The Queensland Party) or sometimes they get elected for an unregistered party and then sit as an independent (e.g. Janet Woollard), but otherwise, if they're an MP and a member of a party they'll sit as it. We already do label unregistered candidates as independent or ungrouped, because that's what they appear as on the ballot paper, and just make a note of the unregistered affiliation somewhere. Also, note that Xenophon is still formally an independent even though NXT are federally registered. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:30, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Hmm. It's all very unsatisfying ambiguous. Timeshift (talk) 04:42, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

The next federal election, I suspect, will clarify the issue one way or another. Frickeg (talk) 01:49, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Legislative Council electoral districts

It appears that the LC once had several electoral districts. This article seems to just brush over them with a sentence The electoral districts were drawn to favour regional areas with a 2:1 bias in place, with half of the council being elected each time. LC membership tables have a column for which district was represented, but the ones I've looked at are without links to an article for each district. There are red links for by-elections in List of South Australian Legislative Council by-elections but to me, those articles would need to have a link to the district in the first sentence. Do we even have an agreed naming standard for the articles for the districts, which seem to have been in 1918:

• Central No. 1
• Central No. 2
• Midland
• Northern
• Southern

From 1885 there were four districts with six members each:

• Central
• North-East/North-Eastern
• Northern
• Southern

The 1856 constitution provided to elect 18 members for the state (should be province!) as a single electoral district.

Before I attempt to construct these articles from scratch using cross references from other articles and newspapers from Trove, can anyone tell me if I have just missed finding a series of articles, or that you have already started preparing them?

Pinging a few of the people who might know more than me about it: @Doug butler, Timeshift9, and The Drover's Wife: Thanks. --Scott Davis ^Talk 12:37, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Nope, it was something I managed to completely skip over back in the day. These articles would be extremely helpful as they're really needed to explain Labor's extreme underrepresentation in the Legislative Council of that era, since (IIRC) they were only able to regularly win seats in one safe electorate. It would also be useful to be able to explain the demographic (or campaigning?) changes that made a couple others more a bit more competitive right at the end, among other things. I'm not aware of any other formal names that might lead to an easier/more usual naming convention, so whatever you choose is fine by me (I think I just went with "Southern District" "or "Central District No. 1" in naming by-election red links.) Also - you're probably aware of this, but just in case, the SA Government Gazette at Austlii is a godsend for key details of abolished electorates and such. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:00, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Not much to add except that I had come across our lack of these articles doing candidate pages a few weeks back. Except for some very early Tasmanian Legislative Council divisions and the pre-self-government territories, I believe these are the only remaining gaps in our coverage of federal/state/colonial electoral divisions. Frickeg (talk) 13:04, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, but as you know I'm not an expert on anything much. Thought I understood the transition from appointed Council to partly elected, but a lot of neurones have gone AWOL since then. Several important factors in representation were (1) representation was an unpaid privilege, which made it hard for plebs, no matter how talented, to stand until the rise of Unionism, and (2) suffrage was restricted to land-owning males. The gender bit is probably overemphasised as like marries like as far as class is concerned, but landownership (tenants were later eligible but don't know from when) clearly important. Yes, State is a misnomer and many seem to eschew "Colony" for "Province" but I don't know the difference and personally prefer Colony for no good reason except it is truthful. Doug butler (talk) 21:02, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughts so far. I will put some more work into it, but it might be a week or so before much comes to fruit, as I have other things in life to think about. It looks like the missing articles might be:

• Maybe The Province (South Australian Legislative Council) (1856-1884)
• Central District (South Australian Legislative Council) (1885-1910)
• North-East District (South Australian Legislative Council) (1885-1910) need to check whether there is a hyphen and 'ern' on this
• Northern District (South Australian Legislative Council) (1885-1975)
• Southern District (South Australian Legislative Council) (1885-1975)
• Central No. 1 District (South Australian Legislative Council) (1910-1975)
• Central No. 2 District (South Australian Legislative Council) (1910-1975)
• Midland District (South Australian Legislative Council) (1910-1975)

Are they acceptable page names? I haven't found the legislation dates to be sure they years of effect are exactly right. Obviously there will be improvements to the history in the main article too. --Scott Davis ^Talk 01:37, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Works for me. Only change I would make is that (from memory and confirmed with a quick Trove) "Central District No. 1" was several times more commonly used than "Central No. 1 District" for some reason. I'm not sure I see the point of the "The Province" article though, when it's not really an electorate but an unsubdivided parliament, as is the case with the current SALC. The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:10, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

OK. These names are consistent with the red links to the by-election articles too

• Central District No. 1 (South Australian Legislative Council) (1910-1975)
• Central District No. 2 (South Australian Legislative Council) (1910-1975)

I am not sure if The Province article is needed either, but included it as a maybe in case there needs to be a distinction between elected and appointed members, or between the franchise for the Council and the Assembly. Agreeing the name with the others means that if the process of making links in other articles needs a target that is somehow different to the whole council, there is a single agreed target (even if it's a redirect to start with). The reference I drew the names from was "South Australian By-Elections 1851-2013". Electoral Commission of South Australia. which lists by-elections under those names without the word "District", and inconsistent about a hyphen in "North-East" (but not North-Eastern, which Trove seems to suggest was at least equally common). The by-elections listed there go back further than the current version of List of South Australian Legislative Council by-elections which starts in 1906. --Scott Davis ^Talk 10:38, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

I've just done a bit of digging because I thought the use of "The Province" in the document you linked seemed curious and wanted to know more, and I've realised that the Statistical Register refers to every modern Legislative Councillor as being member for "The State", which perhaps sheds a bit of light on whether we should use it. I don't think we need to do it to distinguish appointed members - where we've done it in the past (although not for unsubdivided electorates), we've just addressed that by having a column to note whether elected or appointed. Also - there's no significance to the 1906 cutoff for the by-election list, looking at the edit history it's just the point at which I got bored. The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:08, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Project goals

I have been reading some more and discovering how little of the SA Legislative Council is covered in Wikipedia. We have an article for each "general election", but not all of them mention the legislative council at all, even though as far as I have determined so far, most of the 20th century ones did. There were also a number of LC-only elections which don't seem to have articles at all (and I haven't seen red links to confirm the naming convention).

The to-do list I have come up with so far is

• Expand the history in South Australian Legislative Council
• Create each of the district articles
  • Central District (South Australian Legislative Council) (1885-1913)  Done
  • North-Eastern District (South Australian Legislative Council) (1885-1910)  Done
  • Northern District (South Australian Legislative Council) (1885-1975)  Done
  • Southern District (South Australian Legislative Council) (1885-1975)  Done
  • Midland District (South Australian Legislative Council) (1910-1975)  Done (redirected to North-Eastern)
  • Central District No. 1 (South Australian Legislative Council) (1913-1975)  Done
  • Central District No. 2 (South Australian Legislative Council) (1913-1975)  Done
  • context
  • Description of geography
  • table of representatives
• Wikilink every mention of the districts to the articles
  • Members
  • Elections
  • Lists of members of the LC
• Ensure that each general election article mentions the LC as well as the House if it was for both houses
• Create an election article for each stand-alone LC election
  • Add LC elections to {{South Australian elections}}  Done
    • Some general elections don't mention the LC, and 1906 claims to have been a double dissolution but the LC did not change (I think it's wrong - 1902 was a DD)
• Complete the table in List of South Australian Legislative Council by-elections
• Various constitution amendments to give effect to the changes
  • Electoral Act 1861 is not really needed for this project, but might be for tracking the Assembly districts Electoral Act 1861 ( SA )
  • Electoral Districts Act 1872 Done
  • Constitution Act Further Amendment Act 1881 Done
  • Constitution Act Amendment Act, 1901 Done
  • Constitution Amendment Act 1908 (redistribute/restructure districts, renamed North-Eastern to Midland)
  • Constitution Act Further Amendment Act 1913 (Assembly boundaries redrawn, numbers elected changed, split Central Districts into No. 1 and No. 2)
  • Constitution and Electoral Acts Amendment Act 1973 (a single electoral district again, 22 members)
• Add party affiliations to district member lists

I have started a couple of these tasks, and discovered that AutoWikiBrowser wasn't quite as helpful as I had hoped it would be for the bulk updates. --Scott Davis ^Talk 22:01, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm really glad you're taking all of this on - it's been a long time but I remember finding the vagaries of the Legislative Council extremely confusing back when I was doing a lot of work in this area, even for working out things like term dates. You probably won't find any red links to the LC-only elections - if anyone put these kind of red links in it was probably me and I didn't even know they existed until you pointed it out! The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:07, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. I finally got round to looking harder than just wondering why I hadn't already seen it on Wikipedia. I will probably name the links (and perhaps eventual articles) "South Australian Legislative Council election, <year>" which avoids the question of whether it was a province or a state at the time, and distinguishes them from general elections which include (or are only for) the lower house. Some of the general election articles don't even mention the upper house (I have not looked at the article history - that is not a personal criticism of whoever did all the work to create the articles). It seems to be a lot easier because of Dean Jaensch's research work being available online, and even that admits to having some gaps he could not fill! --Scott Davis ^Talk 08:22, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

District articles are now all created and lists of members included. A few of them could benefit from a bit more history and geography, and I have not assigned any of the members to parties as the source I was using didn't include them in the same tables. --Scott Davis ^Talk 00:30, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Update graphic and seat totals post-2022 election?

9 Labor, 8 Lib, 2 Green, 2 SA-BEST and 1 One Nation have been confirmed as per ABC. Jacsam2 (talk) 05:17, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

2022 Update

This page needs updating in light of this year's election results which are now available here.

You're welcome to remove this section once the update has been made.

1.127.105.202 (talk) 18:06, 27 April 2022 (UTC)