Election
Section 35 of the Constitution provides:
The House of Representatives shall, before proceeding to the despatch of any other business, choose a member to be the Speaker of the House, and as often as the office of Speaker becomes vacant the House shall again choose a member to be the Speaker.The Speaker is elected by the House of Representatives in a secret ballot. The Clerk conducts the election.
Unlike the Speaker of the House of Commons in Britain, the Speaker generally remains an active member of their party. They continue to attend party meetings, and at general elections they stand as party candidates. Two exceptions to this were the first Speaker, Sir Frederick Holder and Peter Slipper, who resigned from their respective parties upon election as Speaker, and sat as independents.
There is no convention in Australia that the Speaker should not be opposed in his or her seat, and three Speakers (Groom in 1929, Nairn in 1943 and Aston in 1972) have been defeated at general elections. Because the Speaker is always the nominee of the governing party, there is no expectation that a Speaker will continue in office following a change of government. While the Opposition sometimes nominates one of its own members for Speaker after a general election, this is understood to be a symbolic act, and party discipline is always followed in any ballot.
There is no convention in Australia that Speakers should resign from Parliament at the end of their term: two Speakers (Makin and Scholes) have become Cabinet ministers after having been Speaker.
Most Speakers have been senior backbenchers of the party holding office at the start of a new Parliament, or at the time of the death or resignation of an incumbent Speaker. Four Speakers have been former government ministers (Watt, Groom, Cameron and Sinclair), one a former Parliamentary Secretary (Martin), and one (Snedden) both a former minister and a former Leader of the Opposition. Two were former state premiers (Holder and Watt).
Anna Burke was elected as the Speaker after Peter Slipper's resignation on 9 October 2012.
Read more about this topic: Speaker Of The Australian House Of Representatives
Famous quotes containing the word election:
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