Swan by-election, 1918

The 1918 Swan by-election was a by-election for the Division of Swan in the Australian House of Representatives, following the death of the sitting member Sir John Forrest. Held on 26 October 1918, the by-election not only led to the election of the youngest person ever to be elected to the Parliament of Australia, Edwin Corboy, but saw the conservative vote split by the Country Party and the Nationalist Party, directly prompting the introduction of instant-runoff voting in Australia.

Background

Sir John Forrest, who had been the first Premier of Western Australia, was elected to the Australian House of Representatives for the Division of Swan at the first federal election on 29 March 1901.

On 6 February 1918, Forrest was offered a place in the British peerage (he was to be created Baron Forrest of Bunbury), though the relevant letters patent had not at the time been issued. Forrest set out for England to accept the offer and take up his place in the House of Lords, but he died en route on 2 September 1918, off the coast of Sierra Leone, from cancer. Thus, a by-election was called to replace Forrest as the representative for Swan.

Electoral system and political parties in Australia

By 1909, Australia had a stable two-party system at the federal level, with the conservative Commonwealth Liberal Party and the progressive Australian Labor Party alternating terms in power. This system was upset in November 1916, when the Labor party split over the issue of conscription; then Prime Minister Billy Hughes and his pro-conscription supporters leaving the Labor party and forming a minority government as the "National Labor Party", before merging with the Liberals in February 1917 to form the Nationalist Party of Australia with Hughes as their leader.cite web | last = Green | first = Antony | authorlink = Antony Green | title = History of Preferential Voting in Australia | work = Antony Green Election Guide: Federal Election 2004 | publisher = Australian Broadcasting Corporation | year = 2004 | url = http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2004/guide/prefhistory.htm | accessdate = 2007-07-01 ]

However, Hughes was distrusted by some on the conservative side of politics for his past involvement in socialist politics as Labor leader, and disaffected conservative farmers were moved to support the new Country Party, now known as the National Party of Australia, which had been formed in Western Australia in 1913 (and would be formed federally in 1922 from an amalgamation of state-based parties).

At the time of the 1918 Swan by-election, Australia used a "first past the post" voting system, as was used in the United Kingdom, in all elections at the federal level. Under this system, the winner was simply the candidate with the greatest number of votes.

Election

Candidates from both the conservative parties contested the election — William Hedges from the Nationalist Party and Basil Murray from the Country Party — against Edwin Corboy from Labor and independent candidate William Watson. Hedges was previously a member of the House of Representatives for the Division of Fremantle, from 1906 to 1913.cite web | last = Black | first = David | title = William Hedges | work = The Federal Electorate of Fremantle: A history since 1901 | publisher = John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library | year = 2006 | url = http://john.curtin.edu.au/fremantle/hedges.html | accessdate = 2007-07-01 ]

Results

In the end, the Nationalist and Country candidates split the conservative vote, Hedges achieving 29.6% and Murray gathering 31.4% of the total; however, both were beaten by the Labor candidate Corboy, who received 34.4% of the total vote.cite web | last = Carr | first = Adam | title = BY-ELECTIONS 1917-19 | work = Adam Carr's Election Archive | url = http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/1917/1917repsby.txt | format = text file | accessdate = 2007-07-01 ] Corboy was duly elected as the member for Swan.

Election box candidate AU party
party = Labor
candidate = Edwin Corboy
votes = 6,540
percentage = 34.4
change = N/AElection box candidate AU party
party = Country
candidate = Basil Murray
votes = 5,975
percentage = 31.4
change = N/AElection box candidate AU party
party = Nationalist
candidate = William Hedges
votes = 5,635
percentage = 29.6
change = N/AElection box candidate AU party
party = Independent
candidate = William Watson
votes = 884
percentage = 4.6
change = N/AElection box turnout
votes = 19,213
percentage = 64.3%
change = Election box gain with party link
winner = Australian Labor Party
loser = Nationalist Party of Australia
swing = N/A

Consequences

Corboy, who at the time of the by-election was just twenty-two years and two months old, remains the youngest person ever to be elected to either house of the Parliament of Australia.cite web | last = Carr | first = Adam | title = RECORDS AND MISCELLANEOUS FACTS | work = Adam Carr's Election Archive | url = http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/statistics/records.txt | format = text file | accessdate = 2007-07-01 ] cite web | author = Lundie, Rob & Lumb, Martin | title = Update on Selected Australian Political Records | work = Parliamentary Library | publisher = Parliament of Australia | date = 1999-02-09 | url = http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rn/1998-99/99rn13.htm | accessdate = 2007-07-01 ]

Shocked by the loss of a previously safe Nationalist seat to Labor, the Nationalist government was moved to initiate electoral reform and replace the first past the post system with instant-runoff voting (typically referred to as preferential voting in Australia), as part of a rewrite of the electoral legislation with the "Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918".cite web | title = A Short History of Federal Election Reform in Australia | work = Australian electoral history | publisher = Australian Electoral Commission | date = 2007-06-08 | url = http://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/Australian_Electoral_History/history.htm | accessdate = 2007-07-01 ] While preferential voting had already been introduced at the state level in Western Australia (1907) and Victoria (1911), and had been considered at the federal level by Sir Joseph Cook's government (1913-1914), it was only these "considerations of partisan advantage [and not] the finer points of electoral theory" which provided the impetus for the change.cite book | last = Reilly | first = Benjamin | title = Democracy in Divided Societies: Electoral Engineering for Conflict Management | publisher = Cambridge University Press | year = 2001 | location = Cambridge | pages = 36 | id = 2007-07-01 ]

Preferential voting was first put to use in the Corangamite by-election for the Victorian seat of Corangamite two months later, where Labor candidate and future Prime Minister James Scullin topped the primary vote, only to be defeated after distribution of preferences by William Gibson of the Victorian Farmers Union. The preferential voting system remains in place to this day, and has helped to support a fairly stable three-party system, albeit with the non-Labor parties (presently the Liberal Party of Australia and the since-renamed National Party) regularly forming coalition governments.

At the 1919 election, Corboy once again polled the highest percentage of the primary vote, with two conservative candidates again splitting the conservative vote; yet with the introduction of preferential voting, Corboy was easily defeated by John Prowse of the Farmers' and Settlers' Association on preferences.cite web | last = Carr | first = Adam | title = LEGISLATIVE ELECTION OF 13 DECEMBER 1919: VOTING BY CONSTITUENCY: WESTERN AUSTRALIA | work = Adam Carr's Election Archive | url = http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/1919/1919repswa.txt | format = text file | accessdate = 2007-07-01 ]

In a twist of fate William Watson, who finished a distant fourth in this by-election with just 4.6% of the vote, was successfully elected to the House of Representatives for the Division of Fremantle at the 1922 election on the back of preferences from Nationalist candidate William Hedges, the same man who had also contested this by-election, and who had previously been the member for Fremantle.cite web | last = Black | first = David | title = William Watson | work = The Federal Electorate of Fremantle: A history since 1901 | publisher = John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library | year = 2006 | url = http://john.curtin.edu.au/fremantle/watson.html | accessdate = 2007-07-01 ]

ee also

* List of Australian federal by-elections

References

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