Electoral Systems Of The Australian States And Territories
- For elections to the Australian Parliament, see the Australian electoral system.
The legislatures of the Australian states and territories all follow the Westminster model described in the Australian electoral system. When the Australian colonies were granted responsible government in the nineteenth century, their constitutions provided for legislative assemblies (lower houses) elected by the people from single-member constituencies, with all adult males able to vote. This was considerably more democratic than the system which existed in the United Kingdom at that time. To balance this democratic element, however, the legislative councils which had existed before responsible government were retained as upper houses, whose members were either nominated by the Governor or elected on a restricted franchise. This ensured that the upper houses were dominated by representatives of the wealthy. In the twentieth century, the Legislative Council of Queensland was abolished, while direct elections on a broad franchise were eventually introduced for all of the remainder.
Read more about Electoral Systems Of The Australian States And Territories: Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, Australian Capital Territory, Northern Territory
Famous quotes containing the words electoral, systems, australian, states and/or territories:
“Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“The only people who treasure systems are those whom the whole truth evades, who want to catch it by the tail. A system is just like truth’s tail, but the truth is like a lizard. It will leave the tail in your hand and escape; it knows that it will soon grow another tail.”
—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)
“Each Australian is a Ulysses.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)
“By intervening in the Vietnamese struggle the United States was attempting to fit its global strategies into a world of hillocks and hamlets, to reduce its majestic concerns for the containment of communism and the security of the Free World to a dimension where governments rose and fell as a result of arguments between two colonels’ wives.”
—Frances Fitzgerald (b. 1940)
“For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature I live a sort of border life, on the confines of a world into which I make occasional and transient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance to the state into whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)