Recent from talks
Bjelkemander
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Bjelkemander
The Bjelkemander was the term given to a system of malapportionment in the Australian state of Queensland in the 1970s and 1980s. Under the system, electorates were allocated to zones such as rural or metropolitan and electoral boundaries drawn so that rural electorates had about half as many voters each as metropolitan ones. The Country Party (later National Party), a rural-based party led by Joh Bjelke-Petersen, was able to govern uninhibited during this period due to the 'Bjelkemander' and the absence of an upper house of Parliament.
The term is a portmanteau of Joh Bjelke-Petersen's surname with the word "Gerrymander", where electoral boundaries are redrawn in an unnatural way with the dominant intention of favouring one political party or grouping over its rivals. Although Bjelke-Petersen's 1972 redistributions occasionally had elements of "gerrymandering" in the strict sense, their perceived unfairness had more to do with malapportionment whereby certain areas (normally rural) are simply granted more representation than their population would dictate if electorates contained equal numbers of voters (or population).
When the Country (later National) Party first won power in 1957, under Bjelke-Petersen's predecessor, Frank Nicklin, it inherited a system of malapportionment from the previous Labor Party government. After becoming premier, Nicklin reworked that set-up to benefit the Country and Liberal parties instead. The Labor-leaning provincial cities were split off from their hinterlands, in which new Country Party seats were created. At the same time, more Liberal seats were created in the Brisbane area. This slanted the system toward the Coalition.
Bjelke-Petersen tweaked that system even further after becoming premier, benefiting his own Country Party at the expense of both the Labor and Liberal parties. That meant that in Queensland, unlike at the federal level and in the other states, the Country/National Party was the senior partner in the non-Labor coalition, with the Liberals as junior partner. In fact, Bjelke-Petersen's system discriminated against the Liberals as much, if not more, than the Labor Party. As a party drawing its votes mainly from the Brisbane area, the Liberals were regarded by Bjelke-Petersen as "small-l-liberal" and averse to rural interests. When he became premier in 1968, the Liberals held only slightly fewer seats than the Country Party, providing further incentive for the Country Party to increase its parliamentary numbers at the expense of the Liberals.
From 1910 to 1949, Queensland had a "one person, one vote, one value" electoral system, with a maximum variation of 30% from the Statewide average quota. But in 1949 the Labor Party conducted a revision which varied the number of voters in each electorate according to their size and distance from Brisbane, the state capital in the far south-east of the huge state. Although difficulties in transport and communication were given as the reasons to reduce the size of remote and thinly-populated electorates, the effect was to give a huge advantage to the Labor Party, which at that time drew its voting strength from rural areas, a consequence of the party's formation in the outback Queensland town of Barcaldine half a century earlier.
The newly elected Country Party MP for Nanango, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, spoke out against the redistribution, saying that it meant that "the majority will be ruled by the minority" and that the Labor government was telling the people "whether you like it or not, we will be the Government".
The 1957 ALP split, in which Labor Premier Vince Gair led many MPs out of the party to form the Queensland Labor Party (QLP), undermined the advantage of the malapportionment to Labor. Since the boundaries were drawn to take advantage of the ALP's rural supporters (farm workers, miners etc.) the rural-based Country Party was able to take the most advantage from Labor's infighting.
In 1971, Bjelke-Petersen, who had become Premier in 1968, proposed to refine the malapportionment to favour his party at the expense of his Coalition partners, the Liberal Party, as well as Labor. Electoral demographics had changed since 1949 and Labor now drew most of its support from urban concentrations of workers. Labor opposed the scheme, as did enough of the Liberals to defeat the bill in Parliament. However, Bjelke-Petersen worked during a four-month Parliamentary recess to redraft the scheme just enough to ensure the support of the Liberals. The new map was used as the basis for the May 1972 election, from which Bjelke-Petersen emerged victorious as Premier despite only receiving 20% of the vote, a smaller percentage than the Liberals (22.2%) or Labor (46.7%). But due to the Country Party's heavy concentration of support in the rural and remote zones, it won 26 seats. Combined with the Liberals' 21 seats, this gave the Coalition 47 seats to Labor's 33, consigning Labor to opposition even though it won far more actual votes.
Hub AI
Bjelkemander AI simulator
(@Bjelkemander_simulator)
Bjelkemander
The Bjelkemander was the term given to a system of malapportionment in the Australian state of Queensland in the 1970s and 1980s. Under the system, electorates were allocated to zones such as rural or metropolitan and electoral boundaries drawn so that rural electorates had about half as many voters each as metropolitan ones. The Country Party (later National Party), a rural-based party led by Joh Bjelke-Petersen, was able to govern uninhibited during this period due to the 'Bjelkemander' and the absence of an upper house of Parliament.
The term is a portmanteau of Joh Bjelke-Petersen's surname with the word "Gerrymander", where electoral boundaries are redrawn in an unnatural way with the dominant intention of favouring one political party or grouping over its rivals. Although Bjelke-Petersen's 1972 redistributions occasionally had elements of "gerrymandering" in the strict sense, their perceived unfairness had more to do with malapportionment whereby certain areas (normally rural) are simply granted more representation than their population would dictate if electorates contained equal numbers of voters (or population).
When the Country (later National) Party first won power in 1957, under Bjelke-Petersen's predecessor, Frank Nicklin, it inherited a system of malapportionment from the previous Labor Party government. After becoming premier, Nicklin reworked that set-up to benefit the Country and Liberal parties instead. The Labor-leaning provincial cities were split off from their hinterlands, in which new Country Party seats were created. At the same time, more Liberal seats were created in the Brisbane area. This slanted the system toward the Coalition.
Bjelke-Petersen tweaked that system even further after becoming premier, benefiting his own Country Party at the expense of both the Labor and Liberal parties. That meant that in Queensland, unlike at the federal level and in the other states, the Country/National Party was the senior partner in the non-Labor coalition, with the Liberals as junior partner. In fact, Bjelke-Petersen's system discriminated against the Liberals as much, if not more, than the Labor Party. As a party drawing its votes mainly from the Brisbane area, the Liberals were regarded by Bjelke-Petersen as "small-l-liberal" and averse to rural interests. When he became premier in 1968, the Liberals held only slightly fewer seats than the Country Party, providing further incentive for the Country Party to increase its parliamentary numbers at the expense of the Liberals.
From 1910 to 1949, Queensland had a "one person, one vote, one value" electoral system, with a maximum variation of 30% from the Statewide average quota. But in 1949 the Labor Party conducted a revision which varied the number of voters in each electorate according to their size and distance from Brisbane, the state capital in the far south-east of the huge state. Although difficulties in transport and communication were given as the reasons to reduce the size of remote and thinly-populated electorates, the effect was to give a huge advantage to the Labor Party, which at that time drew its voting strength from rural areas, a consequence of the party's formation in the outback Queensland town of Barcaldine half a century earlier.
The newly elected Country Party MP for Nanango, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, spoke out against the redistribution, saying that it meant that "the majority will be ruled by the minority" and that the Labor government was telling the people "whether you like it or not, we will be the Government".
The 1957 ALP split, in which Labor Premier Vince Gair led many MPs out of the party to form the Queensland Labor Party (QLP), undermined the advantage of the malapportionment to Labor. Since the boundaries were drawn to take advantage of the ALP's rural supporters (farm workers, miners etc.) the rural-based Country Party was able to take the most advantage from Labor's infighting.
In 1971, Bjelke-Petersen, who had become Premier in 1968, proposed to refine the malapportionment to favour his party at the expense of his Coalition partners, the Liberal Party, as well as Labor. Electoral demographics had changed since 1949 and Labor now drew most of its support from urban concentrations of workers. Labor opposed the scheme, as did enough of the Liberals to defeat the bill in Parliament. However, Bjelke-Petersen worked during a four-month Parliamentary recess to redraft the scheme just enough to ensure the support of the Liberals. The new map was used as the basis for the May 1972 election, from which Bjelke-Petersen emerged victorious as Premier despite only receiving 20% of the vote, a smaller percentage than the Liberals (22.2%) or Labor (46.7%). But due to the Country Party's heavy concentration of support in the rural and remote zones, it won 26 seats. Combined with the Liberals' 21 seats, this gave the Coalition 47 seats to Labor's 33, consigning Labor to opposition even though it won far more actual votes.