Snap Elections - Australia

Australia

• Australian federal election, 1983: This was a rare example of a snap election backfiring on the prime minister who called it. On the morning of 3 February, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser had gone to the Governor-General to seek a double dissolution. He expected he would be facing Opposition Leader Bill Hayden (the parliamentary leader of the Australian Labor Party) in the campaign. But unbeknownst to Fraser, Labor had changed leadership from Hayden to the popular Bob Hawke earlier that same morning. Under Hawke, Labor went on to defeat the Fraser government at the election held a month later.

• Australian federal election, 1984: This election was held 18 months ahead of time in order to bring the elections for the House of Representatives and Senate back into line. They had been thrown out of balance by the double dissolution of 1983. It was widely expected that the incumbent Hawke Labor government would be easily re-elected, but an exceptionally long 10-week campaign and a strong campaign performance by Liberal leader, Andrew Peacock, saw the government’s majority reduced (although this was disguised by the increase in the size of the House from 125 to 148).

• Australian federal election, 1987: This double dissolution election was called 6 months early by Prime Minister Bob Hawke, to capitalise on the disunity in the conservative opposition (in John Howard's Liberal Party and Joh Bjelke-Petersen's "Joh for Canberra" campaign) and seek a mandate to implement the Australia Card. The election saw the Hawke government returned with an increased majority in the House of Representatives, and Labor's largest ever lower house seat count in an election but with no majority in the Senate. Thus, the Australia Card proposal was scrapped.

• Australian federal election, 1998: Prime Minister John Howard called an early election just 2 1/2 years into his 3 year term, seeking a new mandate on the issue of implementing a Goods and Services Tax. Despite a massive swing to Kim Beazley's Labor Party and the Coalition winning a minority of the two-party-preferred vote, the Howard Government was returned for a second term, albeit with a reduced majority.

• Australian federal election, 2010: Prime Minister Julia Gillard called an election just 3 weeks after the ousting of her predecessor Kevin Rudd, and resulted in Australia's first hung parliament since 1940. Gillard negotiated with independent and Green MPs to form a minority government.