1.
Division of Denison (state)
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The Electoral Division of Denison is one of the five electorates in the Tasmanian House of Assembly. The division is named after Sir William Denison, who was Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemens Land, the division shares its name and boundaries with the federal division of Denision. At each state election, five members are elected to Denison through the single transferable vote, the division is located on the western side of the Derwent River and includes most of the inner ring of the Hobart area. It includes the City of Hobart, the City of Glenorchy, covering an area of 290 km² it is the smallest of the five electoral divisions. The electorate has the highest Green vote in Tasmania, the Australian Labor Party polls strongly in Glenorchy and Moonah, whereas the Greens and Liberals obtain most of their votes in Hobart and Sandy Bay. Remarkably two of its current members Scott Bacon and Matthew Groom are both sons of former Premiers Jim Bacon and Ray Groom respectively
2.
Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
3.
Australian House of Representatives
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The Australian House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the Parliament of Australia. It is referred to as the house, with the Senate being referred to as the upper house. The House is almost always dissolved earlier, usually alone but sometimes in a double dissolution of both Houses, a member of the House may be referred to as a Member of Parliament, while a member of the Senate is usually referred to as a Senator. The government of the day and by extension the Prime Minister must achieve, the House of Representatives currently consists of 150 members, elected by and representing single member districts, known as electoral divisions. The number of members is not fixed, but can vary with boundary changes resulting from electoral redistributions, the most recent overall increase in the size of the House, which came into effect at the 1984 election, increased the number of members from 125 to 148. It reduced to 147 at the 1993 election, returned to 148 at the 1996 election, each division elects one member using full-preference Instant-runoff voting. This was put in place after the 1918 Swan by-election, which Labor unexpectedly won with the largest primary vote, the Nationalist government of the time changed the lower house voting system from first-past-the-post to full-preference preferential voting, effective from the 1919 general election. This system has remained in place since, allowing the Coalition parties to safely contest the same seats, the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act of 1900 established the House of Representatives as part of the new system of dominion government in newly federated Australia. The House is presided over by the Speaker, Members of the House are elected from single member electorates. One vote one value legislation requires all electorates to have approximately the number of voters with a maximum 10% variation. However, the quota for the number of voters in an electorate is determined by the number of voters in the state in which that electorate is found. Meanwhile, all the states except Tasmania have electorates approximately within the same 10% tolerance, voting is by the preferential system, also known as instant-runoff voting. A full allocation of preferences is required for a vote to be considered formal and this allows for a calculation of the two-party-preferred vote. Under Section 24 of the Constitution, each state is entitled to members based on a quota determined from the latest statistics of the Commonwealth. These statistics arise from the census conducted under the auspices of section 51, the parliamentary entitlement of a state or territory is established by the Electoral Commissioner dividing the number of the people of the Commonwealth by twice the number of Senators. This is known as the Nexus Provision, the reasons for this are twofold, to maintain a constant influence for the smaller states and to maintain a constant balance of the two Houses in case of a joint sitting after a double dissolution. The population of state and territory is then divided by this quota to determine the number of members to which each state. Under the Australian Constitution all original states are guaranteed at least five members, the Federal Parliament itself has decided that the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory should have at least one member each
4.
Australian federal election, 2016
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It was the first double dissolution election since the 1987 election and the first under a new voting system for the Senate that replaced group voting tickets with optional preferential voting. After a week of vote counting, still no party had won seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives to form a majority government. Many political commentators predicted a hung parliament such as occurred at the 2010 election, Turnbull claimed victory later that day. In the closest federal majority result since the 1961 election, the ABC declared on 11 July that the incumbent Coalition would be able to form a majority government. In the 150-seat House of Representatives, the one-term incumbent Liberal/National Coalition government was re-elected with a reduced 76 seats, the Coalitions victory marked the first time since 2004 that a government had been reelected with an absolute majority in the House of Representatives. Resulting from the national two-party swing against the government, the Labor opposition picked up a significant number of previously government-held seats − totaling 69 seats, on the crossbench the Greens, the Nick Xenophon Team, Katters Australian Party, and independents Wilkie and McGowan won a seat each. On 19 July the Australian Electoral Commission announced a re-count for the Coalition-held, at the start of the Herbert re-count, Labor led by eight votes. The AEC announced on 31 July that Labor had won Herbert by 37 votes, the final outcome in the 76-seat Australian Senate took over four weeks to complete despite significant voting changes. Earlier in 2016, legislation changed the Senate voting system from a single transferable vote with group voting tickets to an optional-preferential single transferable vote. The final Senate result was announced on 4 August, Liberal/National Coalition 30 seats, Labor 26 seats, Greens 9 seats, One Nation 4 seats and Nick Xenophon Team 3 seats. Former broadcaster and founder of the Justice Party Derryn Hinch, won a seat, while Jacqui Lambie, Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm, the number of crossbenchers increased by two to a record 20. The Liberal/National Coalition will require at least nine additional votes to reach a Senate majority and this approach differs to the recount method, whereby the Senators who would have been elected in a normal half-Senate election are allocated a six-year term instead. By choosing the order elected method rather than the recount method, Labor, independents, Andrew Wilkie, Cathy McGowan Members in italics did not re-contest their House of Representatives seats at this election. Notes 1 As a result of the 2015 boundary redistribution, the New South Wales Liberal-held seats of Barton, Dobell,2 A re-count commenced on 19 July in the Queensland division of Herbert. Prior to the re-count, Labor was provisionally ahead of its LNP candidate by eight votes, on 31 July the Australian Electoral Commission announced Labor had won Herbert by 37 votes. The LNP was considering a challenge to the result. The final Senate result was announced on 4 August, the Labor opposition won 26 seats, a gain of one − a Senator in Western Australia. The number of crossbenchers increased by two to a record 20, the Liberal/National Coalition will require at least nine additional votes to reach a Senate majority, an increase of three
5.
Andrew Wilkie
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Andrew Damien Wilkie is an Australian politician and independent federal member for Denison. He has been an officer and an intelligence analyst. Following his resignation he said, Iraqs weapons of mass destruction program is very disjointed and contained by the regime thats been in place since the last Gulf War, and there is no hard intelligence linking the Iraqi regime to al-Qaeda in any substantial or worrisome way. He opposed Australias contribution to the 2003 invasion of Iraq under the Howard government, Wilkie later argued the Iraq War was based on a lie. Since 2003 he has active in Australian politics. He was a Greens candidate for the federal Division of Bennelong in the 2004 federal election, in 2010 he stood as an independent candidate for the state seat of Denison at the Tasmanian state election, narrowly missing out on the final vacancy. Wilkie finished first on the vote at the 2013 federal election. Wilkie trained at the Royal Military College, Duntroon and graduated in 1984 and he joined the Young Liberals while a cadet. He also studied at the University of New South Wales, and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree, a Graduate Diploma of Management, after graduation and being stationed in Brisbane, he joined the Liberal Party before allowing his membership to lapse. His military career spanned 1980–2000 and he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and he was seconded to the Office of National Assessments, an Australian intelligence agency, from 1999 until late 2000. After a stint with US defence company Raytheon, Wilkie returned to the ONA shortly after the 11 September attacks, Iraq failed to comply with demands to allow unfettered arms inspections, and the Howard Government elected to send forces to support the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. While the Government was considering the case for war, Wilkie was asked to report on humanitarian considerations, according to a leaked report published in the Herald Sun, in December 2002 Wilkie had submitted an ONA report on the humanitarian implications of war in Iraq to the Government. In it he cautioned against unpredictable but potentially serious humanitarian consequences of war against Saddam and he told the ABC, I think that invading Iraq at this time would be wrong. For a start, Iraq does not pose a security threat to any country at this point in time. Its military is very weak, its a fraction of the size of the military at the time of the invasion of Kuwait and its weapons of mass destruction program is very disjointed and contained by the regime thats been in place since the last Gulf War. And there is no hard intelligence linking the Iraqi regime to al-Qaeda in any substantial or worrisome way, Wilkie later told the press that in the lead up to his resignation he had increasingly encountered ethical conflict between his duty as an intelligence officer and his respect for the truth. In response to opposition to the war, Wilkie gave extensive television interviews. He subsequently gave evidence to official British and Australian inquiries into the case for involvement in the Iraq war
6.
William Denison
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Sir William Thomas Denison, KCB was Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemens Land from 1847 to 1855, Governor of New South Wales from 1855 to 1861, and Governor of Madras from 1861 to 1866. According to Percival Serle, Denison was a man of high character and he showed great interest in the life of the colony, and helped to foster education, science and trade, during the period when Tasmania was developing into a prosperous colony. In New South Wales his task was easier, and he had no difficulty in coping adequately with the problems arose during the early days of responsible government in Australia. In November 1838 he married Caroline Hornby, Lt. Denison was one of the junior Royal Engineers who worked under Lt. Colonel John By on the Rideau Canal in Upper Canada. Of note, Denison carried out experiments under the direction of Lt. Col, by to determine the strength, for construction purposes of the old growth Canadian timber in the vicinity of Bytown. His findings were published by the Institution of Civil Engineers in England who bestowed him the prestigious Telford Medal in silver. He returned to England in 1831 and worked at Woolwich and as an instructor at Chatham from 1833 and he worked at Greenwich observatory with Ramsdens zenith sector and in 1837 he was engineer in charge of Woolwich Dockyard. He was promoted to captaion in 1841 and he visited Bermuda in 1842, in 1844-5 he worked with the royal commission on the health of towns. Denison was knighted for his work in the Admiralty in 1846, Denison was offered the position of Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemens Land in 1846 on the recommendation of Sir John Burgoyne, and arrived at Hobart on 25 January 1847. There had been a strong protest from members of the Anti-Transportation League, Denison was told that no convicts would be sent so that he could fix the problem. The Tasmanian Legislative Council had no quorum and he became at odds with the two judges, the power of the Council to levy taxes. This had arisen after a case of dog tax that John Morgan, Denison thereupon charged the judges with neglect of duty in failing to identify the faults in the laws before they were enacted. He suggested that the Chief Justice should apply for leave of absence, Denison was afterwards reprimanded by the Secretary of State, Earl Grey, for his conduct towards Pedder, but the dismissal of Montagu was confirmed. He, however, succeeded in conciliating some of the citizens by granting 5 acres of land in Hobart as a site for an unsectarian school, subsequently, the British Government began sending convicts in large numbers. The Anti-Transportation League formed to oppose transportation had the support of all the leading colonists of Tasmania. While this movement had been going on, the question of granting responsible government had much to the front. In 1850 an act for the government of the Australian colonies was passed. A council of 16 members was elected in Tasmania, all supporting the Anti-Transportation movement, and he, however, incurred some criticism by proclaiming pre-emptive right land regulations before the new Council met
7.
Voting
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Voting is a method for a group such as a meeting or an electorate to make a decision or express an opinion, usually following discussions, debates or election campaigns. Democracies elect holders of high office by voting, residents of a place represented by an elected official are called constituents, and those constituents who cast a ballot for their chosen candidate are called voters. In a democracy, a government is chosen by voting in an election, in a representative democracy voting is the method by which the electorate appoints its representatives in its government. In a direct democracy, voting is the method by which the electorate directly make decisions, turn bills into laws, a secret ballot has come to be the practice to prevent voters from being intimidated and to protect their political privacy. Voting usually takes place at a station, it is voluntary in some countries, compulsory in others. Different voting systems use different types of votes, a Plurality voting system does not require the winner to achieve a vote majority, or more than fifty percent of the total votes cast. In a voting system uses a single vote per race. A side effect of a vote per race is vote splitting, which tends to elect candidates that do not support centrism. An alternative to a system is approval voting. To understand why a vote per race tends to favor less centric candidates. If five marbles are assigned names and are placed up for election, the reason is that the three green marbles will split the votes of those who prefer green. In fact, in analogy, the only way that a green marble is likely to win is if more than sixty percent of the voters prefer green. If the experiment is repeated with other colors, the color that is in the majority will still rarely win, in other words, from a purely mathematical perspective, a single-vote system tends to favor a winner that is different from the majority. A development on the single system is to have two-round elections. The winner must receive a majority, which is more than half, if subsequent votes must be used, often a candidate, the one with the fewest votes or anyone who wants to move their support to another candidate, is removed from the ballot. An alternative to the Two-round voting system is the single round instant-runoff voting system as used in elections in Australia, Ireland. Voters rank each candidate in order of preference, votes are distributed to each candidate according to the preferences allocated. If no single candidate has 50% or more votes than the candidate with the least votes is excluded, the process repeating itself until a candidate has 50% or more votes
