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Electorate template help

I'm afraid I need help from someone more able with templates again. Electoral district of Murray (South Australia) is wrong about two MPs: both George Dunn and Maurice Parish were elected as Labor MPs and left the party to join the National Party in the 1917 split, and Parish resigned from the National Party to sit as an independent in 1918. At the moment, it just says they were always members of the Nationalist Party, which never existed at state level in that form. If it were a single-member electorate, I could fix this easy, but I have no idea how to do it in that gigantic three-member table. The Drover's Wife (talk) 17:01, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Sorry I'm only getting to this now. I can fix it, but I see in the meantime it's gone back to single-line. I am strongly opposed to this format for multi-member electorates as it is misleading and also much more difficult to see the proper timeline. I'm more than happy to make the requisite changes to the old template. Frickeg (talk) 10:24, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
I see the value of having the MPs displayed side-by-side, and I'm not wholly opposed to it, but I feel like on a lot of these it's sacrificing accuracy: it's often hard to pin down party changes to an exact day, they include almost no party changes as-is, and they're an absolute cow for someone who isn't really familiar with tables to correct. I find them difficult to read with the dates on the side (such as with long-term MPs having a whole bunch of date ranges listed next to them), so if I'm making minor edits I tend to feel like I have to check the Statistical Register every time to make sure I've read the table correctly whereas normally I'd just go off the electorate article. It also leads to the morass of different-sized tables for different eras, as opposed to the one unified table as in Queensland. The Drover's Wife (talk) 11:16, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
I find the multicolumn form makes it clearer who was serving simultaneously with who else. It is confusing when people jump from one column to another though. I guess it depends which information is most important to represent clearly. Some articles have cascading timeline graphs that look a bit like Gantt charts. I think they are ugly and not helpful on most of the articles Ive seen them on where exactly one person is in office at a time, with no repeats, but it could be very useful if a chart like that could be done in combination with the single list. MPs listed once each down the y axis, time across the x axis, bars for when they were in office. It could support concurrent members and gaps in service, and the colour of the bar could represent the party. I have no idea how to make those charts or how hard they are to maintain though. --Scott Davis Talk 14:13, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
Hypothetically, could we make a multi-member table that does both what the single-list and broader-table approaches do now? If we could list the MP, their party, and their dates of service, then the same for the next MP, then the next MP, and have it all fit I think it'd be a lot more legible and I'd be much keener on the idea than the awkward dates-at-the-end contraption. If we toasted the full dates, and just went with years, it'd probably fit and it'd solve the problem of pinning down the exact date of party changes. It also really needs someone to go through and do a bunch of the party switches (the defecting Laborites in 1917 being easy examples) so that it's easier to copy and paste template text. Separately, I'd also be really grateful if someone could go through and add parties in the first place to a bunch of the SA multi-member lists that still lack them: I've done all the research work on the member lists so it'd be a copy/paste job but trying to get the party data into those tables is too hard for me. The Drover's Wife (talk) 16:56, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
As an example of why I hate the current setup: I just went to fill in succession boxes for Richard Butler, and the current table is confusing as hell for telling me when he was elected and when he left office, if useful for telling me who he sat alongside. It actually doesn't even tell readers when he was elected at all (1902). I think these really need to have a date column for each member if the side-by-side format is to work at all. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:03, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
Conceptually I prefer the former mufti-column layout as it shows who was in office concurrently, whereas the current single column makes that much harder to see at a glance. I can edit the table quite easily to change time increments, and add in the party changes if you'd like, The Drover's Wife. I think the term column should be changed to election, and link to the election pages, while footnotes on the table could deal with specific dates of events outside of the normal election cycle. ColonialGrid (talk) 05:46, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
I feel like changing the term column would make it more, not less, confusing than it already is. I don't object to the side-by-side format in principle, but it really has some issues that need addressing if it's going to stay: not least, as in the example I just pointed out with Richard Butler and the Electoral district of Barossa that it can't actually tell me when a former Premier was elected to his seat. I feel like there's a compromise here that keeps the side-by-side format and is readable and accurate, but I feel like too much accuracy is being sacrificed with the tables as they are. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:38, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
Could footnotes be used on the tables to increase the accuracy, but maintain the visual ease of use? ColonialGrid (talk) 11:26, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
I don't think so. Like, the basics of these tables need to be who was in that office when and what party they represented, and they're unable to convey that in their current format. The Drover's Wife (talk) 11:54, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

There's a long term example of the Irish table at Clare (Dáil Éireann constituency)#TDs. It's got TDs changing parties, reorganisations of parties and former TDs returning to the Dáil. How does this structure look to outside eyes? Timrollpickering (talk) 11:09, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

I think it's a better-looking table than what we currently have, and it solves some of the problems: it acknowledges elections and by-elections and isn't just referring to a completely random date range in between which the members stayed the same. It's definitely less confusing. However, it still doesn't acknowledge any party changes that did occur, unless they were re-elected under the new banner at an election, and doesn't have room to implement this at all, which I would see as a big problem. It's also still very difficult to tell exactly which elections are the relevant one to changes in the third, fourth and fifth seats. As we're only dealing with three-member seats here, I don't see why we can't include the date ranges for each member as we would for a single-member seat, though. 11:54, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
My understanding was that the date ranges in the table you removed denoted the period between elections, rather than being arbitrary. Additional rows could easily be put in to show changes in political allegiance - with footnotes states dates and reasons, and I fail to see how footnotes couldn't be used to indicate where members vacate early and by-elections were called. I can easily do this, but it would be a waste of time if I did, and you reverted saying it still failed to indicate what you wanted it to. ColonialGrid (talk) 12:57, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
Across the SA articles, they denote the time in between changes in members, which could be one election but could be twenty years. This is rarely as clear as in the Murray article, and as in the Barossa case I mentioned above there's a past Premier of SA who was elected at a general election that isn't mentioned in the date ranges in that template. (In fact, Barossa is generally a brilliant example of why the current format is confusing as all hell.)
The reason I'm opposed to the footnotes suggestion is because it's either unnecessary (if it depicts party changes as we would a single-member electorate) or it's wrong (if it doesn't, and as in the case of Murray denotes MPs who were fervently anti-Labor for half their time in office as being plain Labor). The existing example of Electoral district of MacKillop, which incorporates the abolished electorate of Victoria, removes all of the ambiguity that exists in cases like Barossa by doing what I'm suggesting and adding term columns for each member, just without the parties, which I imagine could be easily remedied. I'm not sure what the opposition to that is: it keeps the multi-member tables, removes the ambiguity and wide room for error in these articles, and as long as the code isn't too impenetrable would seem to give everyone what they want. The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:38, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
It's easy to break them up into the times they served under certain parties, but if every change gets a spot in the date field, it will get messy and confusing, this is why I suggest footnotes to explain the dates, but use the graphic to show the change in party. Should I give it a try at Electoral district of Murray (South Australia) and then seek further feedback? ColonialGrid (talk) 14:59, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
I'm not quite sure what this would look like, but I see where you're coming from and I'm certainly at least open to the idea. Murray is probably not a bad one to start with, because it's a comparatively simple case. The Drover's Wife (talk) 17:11, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
Am I correct in thinking we're looking for something like this? Because that would be my preferred format. Frickeg (talk) 22:46, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
That is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. I also think especially if you only go with years, as is the case there, it becomes really easy to fully deal with party changes in that format (just as we do for the identical single-member electorate columns). The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:00, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

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User:Another Believer and User:OR drohowa

There is probably a fair bit of room for some work here, if anyone's interested. Category:LGBT history in Australia is horribly underpopulated: four kinda randomly-chosen organisations, Murder of George Duncan, Tasty nightclub raid, rainbow crossings and the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands is not exactly a queer political history! The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:17, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Historical party articles created but sources give conflicting start/finish years

After many years, stubs have finally been created for the predecessors of the SA Liberal Union - the National Defence League and Farmers and Producers Political Union! Please be encouraged to fact-check them (good luck!), build on them, link to them from other articles etc. The 1930s may be extremely spotty, at best, but there's no reason why the late 1800s/early 1900s can't have some info! The refs give conflicting info... the biggest example being some refs say the Liberal Union was formed before the 1910 election, while other refs say it was formed after the election! Then there's the other parties and their years. It's a headache, other editors would really be appreciated. Timeshift (talk) 01:18, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm short on time today, but a quick search through Trove confirms that it was definitely after the 1910 election: the election was on 2 April, and the agreement that the merger should happen was in August - I don't have the time right now to check when it actually came into effect. Glad to see these early articles getting some well overdue attention. This is, as I've said before, the downside of relying on secondary sources such as biographical articles for these dates: a lot of this history is poorly-documented in later coverage and academics writing thirty years ago didn't have Trove to pin down exact dates in two minutes. The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:12, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
That's how I understand it, but if that's the case, did UWA (the ref used in the election article) just add together raw results for South Australian state election, 1910 to make two parties? The ECSA claims LU was formed in 1909, as does this ref. I believe there's others I saw but it's always hard to re-locate all refs. Not saying anyone's right or wrong, just pointing out ref contradictions and wondering how do we choose who to go with? Our instinct/beliefs aren't "WP:RS"... Timeshift (talk) 03:24, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
The answer is that we don't know because UWA don't explain their data. UWA generally hasn't been a terribly useful resource for Wikipedia in my opinion: it frequently doesn't provide enough information and it wouldn't be the first time they've papered over party differences to make for a simpler dataset. Nonetheless, if the election was in April, and the agreement that the parties should come together and form a united party happened in August, there's no basis for a claim that the party existed prior to the election. This is another case of Trove as a new research tool showing up past shoddy research in modern secondary sources: detailed newspaper accounts from when it actually happened trump brief, in-passing mentions in later sources. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:26, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
I did a bit more research, because I expect UWA to stuff up but less so ECSA. The conservative parties were talking about merging in 1909, and there was media in September 1909 with conference support for a merger, but it didn't actually happen until after the 1910 election. There was some cooperation between the three parties at the 1910 election, running a combined "Liberal" ticket at least in the Legislative Council, which is where the confusion probably stems from, but the formation of the Liberal Union as a formal party to which the other organisations actually merged into was in 1910. The Drover's Wife (talk) 09:16, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
I'm not surprised they started talking about it at that point considering the CLP formed federally in 1909. Timeshift (talk) 11:24, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

SA electoral figures

I would love to do some work on historical South Australian by-elections. The National Library has a CD with PDF files of every South Australian election result ever, and I used to have copies of those files but they were lost in a computer crash some years ago. Any chance any of you have them and could forward them on? The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:56, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

In 2009 I did every SA by-election between 1992 and 1968 by sitting down at the North Terrace Library (State Library...?) and copying the results with pen and paper :P I got lazy and stopped at 1968. I'd love more to be done, but i've done my part! Timeshift (talk) 02:02, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
Haha, not really an option from Perth - but if I can get my hands on those PDF files I'll be set! The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:07, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
I dream of the day that it's legislated for Australian parliament websites to be required to have all election results and detailed (and proofchecked!) MP profiles online. That's my idea of patriotism :P Timeshift (talk) 02:18, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

What style of PM/Premier article design do you prefer?

Don Dunstan (FA) all-in-one or a Mike Rann/Rann Government seperated style article for Premiers/PMs? I come to this with an open mind. Just interested in seeing what others have to say. Both examples have their merits I think. Timeshift (talk) 06:47, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

I think we need both. A FA-quality treatment of a Premier involves talking in some detail about what their government achieved, but an article about their government will necessarily involve a lot more detail and a much broader remit. A hypothetical Dunstan Government article would tell me a lot more about what his ministers got up to than would be rational in Don Dunstan. The Drover's Wife (talk) 11:28, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

United Patriots Front

Presumably we don't need an article on any group that has ever organised a demo.--Grahame (talk) 02:46, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Interesting to see an article on this but not the Reclaim Australia lot. These guys have received some coverage, but I'd say they're just short so far. Frickeg (talk) 02:48, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
Yep. These guys don't come close. I'd sit on the fence about Reclaim Australia: it probably passes GNG but we don't have equivalent articles for many organisations of similar notability on the left. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:08, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Template:Australian by-elections

I just noticed, looking at this template, that we've got a bunch of missing pieces when it comes to covering by-elections and casual vacancies. We have lists of lower house by-elections for every state, but not for the Tasmanian Legislative Council or past upper houses in SA and Vic. The WA Legislative Council is at List of Western Australian Legislative Council by-elections as opposed to the lower house at List of Western Australian state by-elections.

For casual vacancies, we have a list for the Tasmanian House of Assembly and the Senate, but not for those in the upper houses in WA, Vic, NSW and SA, and a redlink for the ACT lower house.

1) I'm struggling with a logical way to organise that template that includes all of the above. Any suggestions would be great.
2) How do we deal with cases where houses have shifted from by-elections to casual vacancies, as in WA, SA and Vic? I am not a fan of the approach taken with WA here.
3) How, generally, should we name these articles? Having, for instance, List of New South Wales state by-elections and List of New South Wales Legislative Council casual vacancies seems a bit inconsistent but I can't think of a better idea. The Drover's Wife (talk) 17:00, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
I feel like the fact that so many Tasmanian and Victorian upper house by-elections have been held in conjunction with a regularly scheduled election is part of the issue here. I mean, even federally you could argue those awful Senate elections they used to have in House-only elections (like in 1966) were technically by-elections. Regarding each point:
1) Could we perhaps do a division by upper/lower houses? So instead of the current "Federal", "State" divisions you'd have "Lower house" and "Upper house". Alternatively it could be divided to separate by-elections and casual vacancies. I think both would work, but I lean towards the latter just for consistency.
2) Where there has been a shift, I would suggest two separate articles (i.e. List of Western Australian Legislative Council by-elections and List of Western Australian Legislative Council appointments), especially if we go with the by-elections/vacancies division suggested above.
3) I think the appointment ones should be called List of New South Wales Legislative Council appointments, in line with List of Australian Senate appointments. However, this raises the issue of what to do about countbacks, which do not really fit into either category. Perhaps a third division for those states (WA, Tas, ACT) that use countbacks, and separate lists for them (using the name List of Western Australian Legislative Council countbacks).
While we're looking at these articles, they could do with a bit more uniformity in structure, chiefly in whether we list them from the most recent or in simple chronological order. We picked up the most-recent thing from the UK, but I wouldn't necessarily be opposed if we thought that simple chronological was better. As long as we don't follow the "both" approach taken by Queensland, which lists them by decade with the decades in reverse order but within the decades in simple chronological! Frickeg (talk) 03:42, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for a really helpful response. I was already leaning towards going with #1 and #2 if I didn't get any feedback, and #3 is a better idea I hadn't thought of. Unless anyone else has any input, I'll organise them on that basis. Any ideas about how to organise that template on the basis of that article structure?
I'm in favour of listing them reverse chronologically for these articles, chiefly because they're usually bloody long and the more recent ones probably likely to be of more interest to more people. I'm definitely in favour of a uniform structure within those articles though, and that Queensland example is definitely very strange (and which I'm happy to deal with). The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:14, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
I've done a possible redesign on the template page; feel free to revert if people disagree. I'm sure I've left out some of the early stuff (I've no idea what happened with the Qld LC, for example). Fine with reverse chronological. Frickeg (talk) 04:22, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
I like that a lot, and it's much better than any ideas I'd come up with. Three things I'd change if people are okay with: piping "Commonwealth" onto the House of Representatives to make it clearer since the federal/state separation is removed, appending (historic) to the upper houses that no longer use by-elections, and changing "casual vacancies" to "appointments" since countbacks are also casual vacancies. Thoughts? The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:37, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
The appointments change and the "historic" stuff I definitely agree with. I don't know that we need Commonwealth on the House and the Senate (there's only one of each, at least until Fred Nile gets his way), but if we are going to do something like that I'd prefer "Federal". Frickeg (talk) 04:53, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
On the earlier suggestions, I think the idea would be good to have separate categories for upper house by-elections, appointments and countbacks. If the electorate was involved for voting in the new MLC, it should go in by-elections. If it was an appointment to fill a vacancy, perhaps it'd go in appointments (that could include the pre-1978 NSW upper house where they voted for their own replacements, as well as those appointed by the state Governors in the early days). Kirsdarke01 (talk) 05:13, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Early party systems, part 127

I'm making pretty good progress with tracing the early party history in South Australia, but I can see an issue coming that has ramifications for this period in all states. In South Australia, the Labor Party and the conservative National Defence League both date from 1891, with both parties formally nominating MPs for office in that decade. However, parties didn't become fundamental to who was actually in power until 1906: until that point, there was still a liberal bloc, a conservative bloc, and the Labor Party, with the NDL members presumably forming part of the informal conservative bloc. The list I'm drawing up for the 1896-1899 parliament looks quite strange with all the Labor and NDL members marked, but fundamental people like the liberal Premier, Charles Kingston, with an unmarked affiliation.

Does anyone have any good ideas about what to do with people like Kingston? This is something which quite a few sources have addressed by just treating the liberal bloc and the conservative bloc as parties even though they weren't. The best solution I've come up with is listing them as "Independent (Liberal)", thus showing that they weren't a member of a party but still showing what side of politics they were on. Anyone have any better ideas?

(I am really, really not a fan of some of the other ways this has been addressed. The table we have for the 1896 election, based off the UWA database, lists "Liberals" and "Independent Liberals" even though the Liberals weren't a party and had no organisation to endorse candidates, but rather were an informal group of people with vaguely similar views who propped up particular ministries. I'd love to know how the heck they're defining the difference between the two in the instance.)The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:54, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Riverina Movement

Does the Riverina Movement of the early 30s warrant an article? Just noticed it linked at Thomas Collins (Australian politician). Hack (talk) 09:04, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Google says probably, turning up a bunch of good sources on the first page. It doesn't seem to have been a real push for statehood, more of a spectacular regional flareup of the right-wing backlash against Jack Lang, but there's enough for it to pass WP:GNG off that first page alone. The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:25, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Independents creating political parties

In the Senate (and the House, to a lesser extent) we have a lot of the independents forming their own political parties, and I want to hash out how each one should be treated in articles (i.e. whether they are independents or members of their parties). Here are the main ones I can think of and whether they ever had representation:

Party Founder Reps in Senate? Reps in House? State reps?
Palmer United Clive Palmer Yes Yes Yes
Katter's Aus Bob Katter No No Yes
Nick Xenophon Team Nick Xenophon Yes No Yes
Jacqui Lambie Network Jacqui Lambie Yes No No
John Madigan Farming and Manufacturing Party John Madigan Yes No No
Glenn Lazarus Team Glenn Lazarus Yes No No
Brian Harradine Group Brian Harradine Yes No No
Janet Powell Independents Network Janet Powell Yes No No
Vallentine Peace Group Jo Vallentine Yes No No

If there's any I missed please add them to the table

The main one this applies to now is Nick Xenophon, as he has said he will run lower house candidates at the next election. Because it's effectively an extension of Nick Xenophon Group (and No Pokies), I'm more inclined to think he should be seen as NXT rather than Independent. On the other hand, Madigan, Lambie and Lazarus have barely achieved registration if anything, so they should be independents until proven otherwise. I can't think of a specific rule to explain how this distinction should be drawn, but I'm not so confident that using the APH distinction is worthwhile, given the status of Nick Xenophon. – Hshook (talk) 03:50, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

There is a long history of independents making varying degrees of getting other independents elected, and having a ballot line for that purpose. Peter Lewis in South Australia is another one beyond those mentioned on your talk page, and again, find me a source that didn't call him an independent. At no point were any of these people except Katter and Palmer considered to be minor party politicians beyond the technical fact that they had a registered political party as a line on the ballot paper. There was no party, period. There won't be a party if Nick Xenophon runs candidates in the lower house, just as there wasn't a party when he got Bressington and Darley elected. They'll be independents who got up under his banner.
This is not a difficult distinction. Palmer and Katter, and people like Meg Lees before them, had caucuses (where appropriate), party structures, policies, and all the usual things you'd expect of a minor party. All of the above are just ballot lines, and if we refer to them as being anything other than independents we'll be about the only source that does. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:46, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
Fair points, but I disagree that if NXT runs lower-house candidates then it isn't a party; if Palmer and Katter run caucuses and have structures etc., then Xenophon has (or at least, will have) the same. Bressington and Darley were elected under his banner, sure, but I don't see much distinction between the Nick Xenophon Group and say, the politicians who get up under the ALP, Liberal or Greens banners. The two are independents but are strongly linked to Xenophon and therefore the NXT. Perhaps this is an issue for after the next election. – Hshook (talk) 07:29, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
One other thing, would this be different if, instead of "Nick Xenophon Team", it was another name? Does the presence of the founder's name change its status? – Hshook (talk) 07:30, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
I can think of a few others - Irina Dunn, Mal Colston, and at state level people like Marie Bignold and Franca Arena. I tend to think if Xenophon actually runs candidates next election for the lower house as NXT then maybe we should consider him, but really the parliamentary website should be the go-to source here. All those folks are still listed as independents as far as I know. (Bressington/Darley is actually a different thing altogether as they were elected under an independent ticket; SA has the unique ability to put additional descriptors after "independent" on the ballot-paper. Better examples would be the various Moore/Osborne independents in the ACT Assembly, who were all considered independents during their terms.) Frickeg (talk) 08:23, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
(edit conflict) There would be some sign that there was any intention to create a structure, caucus, or anything besides than an independent trying to get like-minded independents elected. KAP, PUP, and the far bigger one that I forgot earlier - Pauline Hanson's One Nation - were individually branded but were very obviously parties in the same way that the Greens and Family First are parties. If you were an MP of any of those three and you voted against the direction of the party, you'd expect to get thrown out and to wind up an independent. When Ann Bressington and Nick Xenophon fell out spectacularly, there was nothing to expel her from because she'd been an independent from day one (as had been Helen Szuty and Dave Rugendyke elected as running mates on named independent tickets in the ACT). Xenophon has shown absolutely no sign of using NXT any differently than Michael Moore and Paul Osborne did in the ACT (and everyone else we've discussed but KAP, PUP AND PHON tried to do); if he did, or if he won and they didn't sit as independents, it'd be a different story. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:25, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikiconference Australia 2015 cancelled

Folks, just letting you know we will not be proceeding with Wikiconference Australia 2015 originally proposed for 3-5 October 2015. Thanks to those of you who expressed your support. You are free to attend the football finals instead :-) Kerry (talk) 07:48, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Navboxes

Hi guys, in cleaning up the navboxes used on the Australian political articles I found that we have the HoR members broken up by state:

which have been around since 2007 and we have

which lists all 76 senators which has been around since 2006.


We also have:

which calls up:

which were created by Tktru in August 2014

This template is currently appearing on five articles Tony Abbott, Bill Shorten, Bronwyn Bishop, Bob Katter and Cathy McGowan (politician)

So, the question is what you guys think we should do about this. Are we happy this existing state based templates, or do you prefer the party based templates?

I just want to register my displeasure at having navboxes removed over the past week. Just because an article isn't linked in the navbox, doesn't mean it necessarily shouldn't be there. Politics of Australia template applies to a lot more than just what's linked in it. My 2c. Timeshift (talk) 03:35, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
I've already said this, but I want to re-state my appreciation of Ian's work removing irrelevant templates over the last few weeks. WP:NAVBOX is pretty clear that the purpose of navboxes is to navigate between related pages, not as a catch-all "see also" at the bottom.
On the duplication point, let's keep the state-based ones and delete the party-based ones. The others are not only ugly, but also provide less information. The Senate one manages to squeeze the 76 senators in without being unthinkably huge (as the house one would be), so I think that's all fine as is (although I would not be opposed to a reorganisation of the way the Senate table is organised). Frickeg (talk) 04:36, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
Hi Timeshift, I removed the navbox from those articles as per WP:BIDIRECTIONAL and I also added it to articles that were listed in the navbox. As for the issue at hand, I agree with Frickeg that these navboxes should go. -- Ianblair23 (talk) 05:57, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
I want to second Frickeg's support for Ian's work removing irrelevant templates. Those templates were far too detached from the very specific subject matter of those articles to warrant being listed there, and had been on my own removal list for a very long time. I agree with everyone else that the longstanding boxes should stay and the new ones on the handful of articles should go. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:33, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
Great thanks guys. I have nominated them for deletion. (see discussion) -- Ianblair23 (talk) 08:54, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

SA United Labor Party name change - when?

I found this indicating the ULP became the ALP in 1910. Does anyone know if this happened before or after the election? Some articles need fixing up. Timeshift (talk) 06:25, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

  • My guess would be after. This article about the election results (held in April 1910) mention the United Labour Party, as does this ad from 1 April 1910, and this article from September 1910. I also found a page of bios, which may be useful to editors writing articles about SA politicians. ColonialGrid (talk) 08:40, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
    • I'm afraid, like with the Liberal Union, ECSA is just wrong about this one. (They're also wrong about the National Defence League, though you didn't bring that up.) My understanding was that the rename happened in 1917 (I assume in the wake of the 1917 split), and Trove makes clear that "United Labor Party" was in extremely regular usage until that point. I think it's a bit disturbing how often Trove is showing sources that we should to be able to assume to be reliable to have got their facts wrong in this area. Thanks for the bios, ColonialGrid! The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:44, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
  • I was just about to post that the name change was in 1917 based on this article, but you beat me to it The Drover's Wife. No problems, I hope the bios can be used; I'm often amazed at the brilliant things that are stumbled upon on trove. ColonialGrid (talk) 08:52, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for pinning down the exact day - well done! The Drover's Wife (talk) 09:03, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! Timeshift (talk) 10:18, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

What on earth is the Danig Party...?

ECSA SA register indicates a "Danig Party of Australia (SA Division)" is registered. Nothing on google or google news... at all. Keeps coming up with Danzig. What on earth is the Danig Party...? Timeshift (talk) 12:02, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

That's one I haven't heard before! I have no clue. The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:07, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
Nothing on Google? Well we can find out their ABN... so there! :P – Hshook (talk) 12:20, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
Yeah I saw that. Hardly useful :P FWIW Danig on wiktionary says Danig is a Dutch word for "considerable, serious". Timeshift (talk) 12:22, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
I saw that. Weird attempt at a joke party? The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:23, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
Both the Creditorwatch link above and the ABN lookup list main business location as "SA 5009", which covers the suburbs of Kilkenny, Beverley, Allenby Gardens. Even the Government Gazette doesn't give contact details. --Scott Davis Talk 01:15, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
  •  Comment: Given how little is known about this party, I fail to see how it meets WP:GNG. Unless something (anything) can be found out about them, it should probably be deleted. ColonialGrid (talk) 08:32, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
    • I would be supportive of PRODing this. I believe strongly in inherent notability for registered political parties, but this is the rare case where they just completely fail and I don't want it to be a test case for people challenging shit more broadly. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:35, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
One one hand live and let live, you know, but on the other, this could just be a very awkward clerical error on the part of ECSA, so I wouldn't have any objection to userfying this article for a while until/if anything of substance is available – Hshook (talk) 09:41, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
I'd also suggest deleting here - this is an unusual case, but we can't really justify an article on an organisation that has received no internet coverage whatsoever. Nick-D (talk) 10:36, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

What electoral maps are these...?

Adelaide, Angas,Bonython, Boothby, Grey, Hawker,Hindmarsh, Kingston. What kind of maps are these...? Grey for example. What the...? Some interesting maps on their open directories though... Hindmarsh BELOW Noarlunga? Timeshift (talk) 17:21, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Looks like they're maps of the South Australian Hundreds by county, see Lands administrative divisions of South Australia. The county names are the same as several of the electoral districts but I don't think they can be used as electoral maps. --Canley (talk) 01:40, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

List of elections in [state]

Would there be any interest in coming up with and rolling out a less uglier alternative to the index at List of elections in South Australia to tie all our election, results, members and candidates pages together? I find it a really helpful index to navigate between pages, but there doesn't really seem to be an equivalent in other states, and it's a little unsightly how it is. The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:30, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Oh god. That is hideous. But it looks very helpful, so I would support rollout. – Hshook (talk) 14:19, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
The Victorian list is the same. I would actually be tempted to reclassify these into the Wikipedia name space, as content-wise there is really no information other the year of the elections, and for navigation/redlink detection. There's more content in the list of federal elections and the by-election lists, maybe they could be used a template? --Canley (talk) 01:29, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

opinion wanted?

Lately I've seen some changes to politician articles, e.g. Gavin King where the lede has been changed to be:

Gavin King was an Australian politician ...

To me that implies that Gavin is dead, but I think the intent is to say that he is no longer an MP. Would it be better to say that

Gavin King is a former Australian politician

Your thoughts? Kerry (talk) 04:35, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

I think the latter is fine, but I remember a discussion about this form of wording (see Achive 6)—the reasoning appeared to be that the "former Australian politician" could be interpreted as meaning "formerly Australian" and one editor was changing it to "Australian former politician". The consensus was this form was clunky and the edits were reverted. --Canley (talk) 04:53, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
I think is an Australian politician is all that is necessary. Not least in the case of someone like King where he may not currently hold a political office but has made it very clear that he plans on being publicly politically active. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:00, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I think the "former" construction is overused. For people who are definitely out we could perhaps use "retired", but even that may be unnecessary. It's not as though we say people are "former lawyers" or "former authors" or "former cricketers". Also, being a politician and not being a member of any parliament are not mutually exclusive. Frickeg (talk) 08:20, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

List of recessions in Australia?

I notice there's List of recessions in the United Kingdom and List of recessions in the United States, what about a List of recessions in Australia...? Timeshift (talk) 12:04, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

The US article seems to be based off a main reliable source which I'm not sure would exist for Australia. I feel like this is maybe something that might be best started off on a case-by-case basis: like the well-documented economic crash of the 1890s comes to mind as something that would be an easy subject for an article, and would link in to tens if not hundreds of related articles (especially all the pollies that lost everything). But this broad approach would be mad hard to categorically define: I mean, as a small businesswoman I'd define our current economic climate as a recession, but have fun documenting that in an encyclopedic format. The Drover's Wife (talk) 16:43, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Australian Women's Party (1943)

Does anyone have any suggestions about what this article should be called? Someone is rightly going around disambiguating it from its 1990s-era equivalent, but while it contested the 1943 election, it was founded in 1937 and faded away through the late 1940s. Blast the days before the AEC published deregistration dates. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:52, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Access to an NLA resource? Anyone?

A Handbook of Australian Government and Politics 1890-1964, the source UWA uses for early SA elections. Pages 341 to 350 in particular which Google Books won't show. Timeshift (talk) 14:29, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I can access that book, I have used it for early Victorian elections. I'll try and get you some scans of those pages. --Canley (talk) 23:10, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks! Timeshift (talk) 23:15, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
By the way, Hughes & Graham also wrote another book Voting for the South Australian, Western Australian and Tasmanian lower houses, 1890–1964 (ISBN 0708113346)—would love to track that one down! --Canley (talk) 23:19, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Anyone interested in Australian Communism history enough to do a smallish amount of work?

Raised at Talk:South Australian state election, 1944#19% Communist vote in Adelaide. Timeshift (talk) 06:30, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Canning by-election, 2015

Probably the lamest edit war ever on this project, but Timeshift9 and I are arguing about the inclusion of a table about historical results. The problem was that the Canning seat as it presently exists has only been in its present location since 2001, and the results prior to that have nothing to do with the by-election or the present seat (this wasn't even a case of a conventional redistibution, the seat actually moved quite some distance south and west). Can someone not involved have a look? Orderinchaos 00:45, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

If you discussed it on talk first rather than force your disputed article version repeatedly, as policy says, then maybe things wouldn't escalate. Look at your own behaviour first. Personally I don't think there's anything lame at all about an admin acting in such a gung-ho manner, on the contrary it's quite concerning as admins should know better than to be so incendiary. I think the issue here is you're too proud to admit you shouldn't have dived in with an edit war and instead go through the talkpage. I hope someone on here, an admin would be nice, would have the balls to call out Orderinchaos (an admin) for his incendiary actions after reviewing the flow of events. Far from admin-like. Very far. Timeshift (talk) 01:10, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
(2xec) In broad terms, if something is non factual, it gets removed. The fact I have admin is irrelevant as at no time did I use admin tools, and "acting in a gung ho manner" here means "stripping out a table in one small part of the article that contains data which has nothing to do with the subject and is likely to mislead voters by comparing apples with oranges". It was also a fairly minor part of the overall article, and easy to deal with as a unit. After it became clear its resident manager was going to oppose to the death, I compromised and fixed the table to include only post-2001 results rather than removing entirely.
WP:V has a fairly strong bar to overcome. The black letter text at Trove link (which can be found at most state and uni libraries, and which I've read) explains the history which was basically that a new seat was created in eastern Perth, and then due to a lot of negative feedback, the name O'Connor was assigned to the old redistributed Canning, and the new Canning was a brand new seat with little correlation to the pre-1980 seat. The resulting seat also had no overlap with the present Canning - it was centred in Kalamunda. I'd get my hands on the 2001 redistribution report if I could be bothered (as what was then Canning became Hasluck and Canning moved south and west), but I've already spent far too much time on this one. Basically we have a duty to inform and not to inadvertently mislead. I have provided one source, and advised where another can be found. The 2PP information could be included on the Canning (parent) article along with a description of the 3 incarnations of the seat, but has no relation whatsoever to the present by-election.
There is nothing "incendiary" about enforcing WP:V. If we had to discuss every non-fact that has to be removed from an article, nothing would ever get done. Massive WP:OWN issues to overcome here too, being first does not mean first rights. Orderinchaos 01:25, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
How does overlooking redistributions make each division of canning election 2pp vote factually wrong? And why have you changed your mind and re-added only up to 2001? There was a pre-2007 redistribution so by your logic it's still factually wrong! Seriously, what are you smoking?? You're either having too much of it or not enough. Timeshift (talk) 01:29, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
The seat moved in 1980, then moved in 2001. (Neither of these were redistributions.) The 1979 source clearly states this and gives an extensive history of how it came about. Later in the week I'll look up 2001 to see what that redistribution report said. It is 90% the same as 2001 other than having added part of metropolitan Mandurah, so a compromise of a table which compares mostly like-for-like figures was my offer to settle the dispute. Anyway, oddly enough, I actually have to go and generate the actual current-boundary figures for someone else, so will leave it here and see what others have to say - I think we've both expressed our own opposing viewpoints to the extent that anyone needs. Orderinchaos 02:03, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
It would seem logical to me to only talk about the history for as long as it's been roughly in its current location, because times when it represented a totally different area are irrelevant to a by-election in the current location and are likely to be confusing to readers new to the topic. The old history needs to be saved for Division of Canning. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:56, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

The Country Party, the Country Party, and the Country Party

We seem to be getting to a Monty Pythonesque situation with our "country" parties (or perhaps a Communist Party of Nepal comparison would be more apt). What was previously the Australian Country Alliance (and before that just the Country Alliance) is now the Australian Country Party. We also have the Country Party of Australia (est. 2014), and the National Party wants to go back to being the National Country Party (but only in Victoria). Australian Country Party is currently a redirect – should we move the ex-Country Alliance page to that title, or disambiguate, or what?

If the Victorian National Party branch name change goes ahead, I suggest to refer to that as the National Country Party (Victoria) and either create a new page for its history in Victorian state politics (similar to the WA Nationals), or just redirect it to the current National Party page. As for the Country Alliance/Country Party, perhaps the Australian Country Party (2015) or Australian Country Party (Country Alliance) title or similar could be used. As for the last one, it currently looks like a microparty that isn't registered with any electoral commissions, but for the sake of disambiguation, it could be identified as being based on NSW as opposed to the former Country Alliance based in Victoria. But I don't think that the current Australian Country Party redirection page should be changed, as the Country Party was a significant part of Australian political history, and the amount of pages that would affect would be pretty enormous only to cater for modern microparties. Kirsdarke01 (talk) 13:34, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
Also speaking of the Country Party popping up in NSW, it seemed it has appeared in some previous elections already, as "The Country Party" in the 1995 and 1999 state elections. I wonder if this latest iteration is linked with that one? Kirsdarke01 (talk) 13:34, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
I would suggest putting the former Country Alliance at Australian Country Party, because that's a formation and acronym the Nationals never formally used to my knowledge. Country Party is already a disambiguation page capable of denoting between the two, and a hatnote at Australian Country Party would solve that problem.
Country Party of Australia (founded 2014) needs to be deleted, and hopefully we can get through AfD the next time: two random press release-based articles in farming papers does not make a party that still hasn't attained registration anywhere after two years. They remain a bunch of blokes in a shed, they are literally less organised than the Danig Party, of whom we can't even work out who they are, and it's so past time that that article died. Kirsdarke01: As has been raised every time this comes up, random different rural interests resurrect a new "Country Party" about once a year and it almost never goes anywhere. We've just been stuck with this one because of those two random articles back at their beginning. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:52, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Ugh. What a mess. I would think that locating the ex-CA at Australian Country Party would not be a good idea - I actually think the current Nationals did use that name formally (the Nationals claim that they did), and they certainly did informally as evidenced by the 27,000 Trove results it returns. This is not to mention the thousands of redirects. I would suggest the ex-CA go at Australian Country Party (current).

The Victorian branch should be moved to National Country Party (Victoria) if and when that change takes place, and the page become a broad history of the Victorian Country/Nationals. Good luck to whoever wants to tackle that particular challenge! The NSW 1990s Country Party was different to the current micro-party, but unlike the current microparty was probably notable and could be at The Country Party (New South Wales) or something similar should an article ever be written. I agree that the current micro-party is not notable at this stage, and presumably once they've wound up an AfD will pass. Frickeg (talk) 23:18, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

I picked a few random articles that link to Australian Country Party, then followed some references. Earl Page was leader of the parliamentary Country Party at a time when Billy Hughes and Stanley Bruce were leaders of the Nationalist Party. That Country party was a predecessor of the current Nationals, and that Nationalist party was a predecessor of today's Liberal Party. At least one link in Page's article is piped as Country Party, but not all of them are. I'd argue that the most notable claim to the name is for the party that has provided three Prime Ministers. Most of the articles I looked at currently have a mixture of piped and (sometimes several different) redirect links. When we work out "the right way" to deal with all the old parties, it should be documented somewhere in this wikiproject, and a batch of housekeeping done to harmonise these mixtures of links. --Scott Davis Talk 01:12, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Mackerras pendulum for the next Australian federal election

I notice this is back. If I remember correctly this was deleted previously because it is premature while redistributions are still underway.--Grahame (talk) 02:56, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Sigh. I mean, this is in good faith since there's no way that anyone could easily find that discussion, but it's obviously pretty meaningless pre-redistribution. Maybe just extract NSW and WA and write up a blurb? Frickeg (talk) 05:38, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
And the ACT as well. --Canley (talk) 03:31, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Category:Australian Labor Party

While I'm on the subject of things that have been in the too-hard basket forever, any chance anybody feels like/has ideas for tidying up this absolute mess? The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:50, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Template:Australian Labor Party is an ungodly abomination as well. These could so use a good reorganising. The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:38, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

1916 and 1931 Labor splits

I've created Australian Labor Party split of 1916 and Australian Labor Party split of 1931 as placeholder stubs to try and fill two large holes in our coverage that I'm surprised we hadn't filled by now considering their significance. I've got a bit of time on my hands and don't mind fleshing these out, but I'm much more interested in what happened at state level than federal level so I'd really appreciate any help if anyone is keen. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:45, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

And a big thanks to you for doing so. I too have been meaning to cover the splits as well but never got around to it. Hopefully your articles will give me impetus to fish some references and add to the articles. --Roisterer (talk) 01:04, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

State branches, round 24

I know we've discussed this a bunch of times and it's stalled, but I'm about to have a bunch of time on my hands and I'd really like to take on developing articles on the major party state branches, so it'd be really good to have some agreement on this point. We only have articles on two at present: Australian Labor Party (NSW Branch)] and Australian Labor Party (ACT Branch) - what do people think about that format for Liberal/Labor/National? The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:08, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

I think going with their official names as listed at the AEC is best, without worrying too much about consistency across parties/states. The ALP seems to use "branch" fairly consistently, whereas the Libs use "Division", so it seems a good idea to maintain that distinction. The Nats seem to forgo either term and just go with the state, which should be fine in the absence of any disambiguation messes there (along the lines of the Lang Labor stuff that makes Australian Labor Party (NSW) an unsuitable home for the current NSW party).
I'm really glad you're taking this on; it's been languishing in the project's collective too-hard basket for yonks now and is a really significant gap in our coverage. Frickeg (talk) 12:47, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
Kinda weird how the WA Libs and Nats and the SA Nats are Incorporated, though. We can probably leave that out of the titles? Frickeg (talk) 12:48, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
Seems like a good idea to me, I reckon following the AEC registered name is a good idea, but also think Party (Jurisdiction) is a fine convention. If there is a disagreement with names later, we can always rename them, it's not a huge deal. ColonialGrid (talk) 13:21, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
I am fine with rolling out the equivalents of "Australian Labor Party (New South Wales Branch)" and "Liberal Party of Australia (New South Wales Division)" if people are happy with that in those two cases - I hadn't realised that they were at least reasonably internally consistent in their official AEC names. They're the two most important ones, and if we could get consensus in that that would be great.
ColonialGrid: The problem with "Party (Jurisdiction)" is that there are some historic splinter parties following that naming convention - Australian Labor Party (NSW) being the most obvious one, so it can get a bit confusing.
In the case of the Nats - would people support moving National Party of Western Australia to National Party of Australia (Western Australia) and The Nationals South Australia to National Party of Australia (South Australia) if you want to go by their registered names? It's a little bit vaguer than I might like but we've gotten bogged down on the Nats before and as long as we pick something and stick with it I'll be stoked. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:45, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
Fair call. The renames you suggest make sense, and keep inline with party registrations at both Commonwealth and State levels ([1] [2]). ColonialGrid (talk) 15:51, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
This is a good idea - which reminds me of another "too-hard basket" issue, the 1970s-80s split in the WA Nats which we basically don't cover at all at the moment. My memory is that the splinter group called itself the "National Party of Western Australia", in which case it might take over that page while the current one moves to National Party of Australia (Western Australia). Frickeg (talk) 23:41, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
When I expanded the WA Nats' history we looked at this but it seemed too problematic to have a separate article. The party split over the Coalition in 1978 (carrying this split into federal elections) and had a staggered reunification in 1984-5 with the organisation unifying first (and I think there was a unified federal ticket in 1984) but separate state parliamentary parties carrying on into the following year. However the reunification was to a large extent the continuity party merging into the splinter and using the splinter's name making it tricky to split the article in two or decide which is the correct history before 1984.
I think "National Party of Western Australia" is more identified with the post 1984/5 party than with one side in the split so that article title should continue to take people to the current WA Nats article.
Oh and IIUC Australian Labor Party (NSW) wasn't actually a splinter in New South Wales - it was the Labor Party organisation and caucus carrying on at state level but expelled from the federal party. There's quite a few such cases where something is a federal split but a state continuation with a new federal party or vice versa and that risks duplication if it's not agreed which takes priority. Timrollpickering (talk) 09:28, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
I had similar thoughts to Timrollpickering about breaking out articles on the parties in the WA Nats split: I was thinking about it when I was responding to the point above about naming the Nats last night, and realised that it would be very hard to demarcate. I also agree that National Party of Western Australia should continue to point to the present party if moved. I disagree that it's a problem in those cases where there is a federal split but state continuation: to use the example of New South Wales, a history of that state branch will inevitably discuss that it was Lang-controlled and split from the federal party for a period of time as part of a natural chronology, but there will still be a place for discussing Australian Labor Party (NSW) as a separate party for the period that it was separate (at state and federal level). The Drover's Wife (talk)
At the very least there need to be separate subheadings that we can link to for the WA Nats splits in various pages; at the moment most of them link either to the federal Nats or the state branch, which tells the reader nothing about who was who. I still think separate pages are probably needed, but it's way beyond what I know to be able to help properly demarcate them and I fully understand how difficult this stuff can be! My reading of the situation is that perhaps we can utilise the old "National Country Party" name here. According to our page the current Nats are basically a 1978 foundation, with the previous Country Party eventually dissolving as the NCP. In this case we might cover the 1920s-80s party under National Country Party (Western Australia) and the 1978-present party at National Party of Australia (Western Australia).
With regards to NSW - Timrollpickering's point above about Lang Labor raises the question of how we should deal with Federal Labor in that period, especially as (in state elections especially) it basically functioned as a minor party in NSW during the early 30s and I believe may have even been founded as a separate party organisationally for electoral purposes (although I'm not sure about this). Most of the papers call Lang Labor "State Labor" at this point, which of course is horribly confusing for our purposes. Frickeg (talk) 13:52, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
Okay, of all the naming messes we're addressing at the moment, the Nats split case is the one that breaks my brain. I don't think the 1920s-80s/1978-present split works because the Nationals would (not unjustifiably) see themselves as having been one continuous party. One alternative might be to break out an article on the split itself and redirect any necessary links from articles on that period to the split article. I will usually advocate splitting out any splinter party where we have enough sources but this is the one case that I just don't see how to do it.
NSW is a bit easier - I agree about how to treat Federal Labor. The situation with "State Labor Party" is confusing, but since I don't think there's anything that doesn't fit in either Lang Labor or Australian Labor Party (New South Wales Branch) and so no need to break another article out, I think it's probably something that we can manage with hatnotes like we do now. The Drover's Wife (talk)
Precision in article naming is good, and having a justification for whatever precision and disambiguation you choose is good too. Hopefully you don't end up with too many similar and overlapping variants of "Australian Country Party" at state level too! Good luck, well done, and thank you. --Scott Davis Talk 14:24, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

SA Greens

Hey, does anyone know anything about the very early history of the SA Greens? According to Greens SA, they were founded in 1995 (which sounds about right to me), but our South Australian state election, 1993 article has a "Greens" and "Green Alliance" tickets, both of which were linked to that article even though they don't seem to be the same organisation.

I am especially confused because both of these 1993 tickets are strange: the lead "Green" candidate is now a hardcore anti-wind farm campaigner, and the "Green Alliance" seem like an obvious front for the DSP.

I feel like our articles should at least be able to explain the relationship of these parties to the current SA Greens (and especially should not be linking them without context) but this is beyond my knowledge. It does seem like the SA Greens had a bit of a weirder birth than I knew about. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:03, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Ick, the early Greens. For all that they are now an uncommonly straightforward party for us to deal with, they started so messily.
I don't know a whole lot more about this than you do. All that I can say is that there were Greens candidates as early as 1987 in NSW and SA, and that the Green Alliance ran federally in 1990 and 1993 in New South Wales but not in SA - I don't know if they're the same people or not. (There was also the ACT Green Democratic Alliance in 1990, which is listed as normal Greens at the moment.) Fricker ran as the lead Green for the Senate in 1987 and 1993, but not 1990. Possibly this was a different party altogether? Its formal name appears to have been "Green Party South Australia". The tricky thing is I'm not sure where the best place to find all this out would be. When I did the candidates pages for the 1987-93 period, I generally linked everything to the relevant state branch (NSW especially was a total mess early on, with about six different registered parties for different regions that later merged into the main party; my understanding had been that the "Green Alliance" thing was a registered name that allowed all of these to run a joint Senate ticket, but this is little more than an educated guess). This may not have been the best thing in all cases, and I knew a lot less then than I do now. Frickeg (talk) 13:42, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
Aha! This paper might be our ticket out of this mess. I'll have a read of what's online over the next few days and see what we can do. (My initial impression is that a big expansion of all our Greens state pages with history is needed, and also some sort of reorganisation of how we deal with the SWP/DSP (or at least a substantial rewrite of Democratic Socialist Perspective). Frickeg (talk) 13:59, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
A bit more here. Frickeg (talk) 14:15, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
Two edit conflicts later: oh, good find! That is a fascinating read and filled in a surprisingly large amount of things I didn't know. I think the easiest solution would be to go back and make sure that our candidates and results pages have exactly the name used on the ballot paper, and then we either break these out into their own articles where notable or clearly document it in our articles on the state branches. I think we should not be linking predecessor Green parties to current state branches unless that article explains their relationship to them. I agree on both counts that we need to expand all the Greens state pages, and write a real article in place of the unreferenced atrocious mess that is our Democratic Socialist Perspective article.
I can't believe I didn't know about that absolute clusterfuck over access to the "Greens" registration: for all my reading on Australian politics, I can't think of another case where (especially on this scale) one group effectively trademarked a word with the AEC and then licensed it out all over the place in this way. It also clarifies the SA situation a bit, though I'm not 100% clear on what Fricker's bloc actually ran as in 1987 federal and 1993 state (the page you linked explains that it was as the Green Party in 1990 federal). I think this is one of the most confusing party messes we've had to wrangle with in any case but at least we've got a much better idea of what to do with it now. The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:47, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
I think what was going on with Fricker is that her group (which I'll call the GPSA) was one of the many Green groups that independently started up, but that it was very tiny and then appears to have agreed to some kind of informal co-operation when the Greens SA formed properly (I think the Greens SA do definitely have a connection with the DSP/Green Alliance lot, probably more than the Fricker group). Although the GPSA appears to have initially refused attempts to affiliate with the Australian Greens, there's no mention of them that I can find anywhere after around 1995 so they presumably either faded away or folded into the Greens proper after all. This suggests that it was essentially gone by 1995, so the present-day Greens could accurately claim to be SA's green party. (That article is a bit more definite than I would be about the Green Alliance being a "DSP front", though - the NSW Greens proper were also riddled with DSP people at this point, which doesn't necessarily make them a "front".) This page suggests that Fricker's current preoccupation may not rule her out of being a fairly standard green in this period after all. Frickeg (talk) 14:59, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
I think you're right, and thanks for digging up these links - it's made for some really interesting reading and I hope we manage to get the details into the articles. The IPA article seems a bit dubious when it comes to SA: the Green Alliance candidates were DSP up to their ears but Fricker doesn't seem like any kind of Trot, and the article reckons both were DSP fronts which I doubt. But combined with everything else I think we're starting to get a lot clearer picture of what actually happened and there's a lot more to add than I'd realised. The Drover's Wife (talk) 15:19, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Andrew Hastie (politician)

We normally don't allow articles to be created for candidates without any other claim to notability. My guess is that he has a 75% chance of being elected and perhaps his military career is of significance.--Grahame (talk) 03:09, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

This shouldn't have been created. It wouldn't have a hope in hell of passing AfD if he lost, and he's not a safe enough bet to do it on the "getting in early" basis. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:13, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
I agree. May be worth an AfD now, definitely worth one if he loses. Frickeg (talk) 08:15, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
I've just tidied the article up (it read like it was written by someone involved in his campaign - by pure coincidence I'm sure). I agree that Hastie isn't notable in isolation - he's only known for his political candidacy, so WP:ONEEVENT isn't met. As he was a member of the SAS Regiment, his identity was protected, and there's no pre-election coverage of him. Should this be redirected to the Canning by-election, 2015 article for now? Nick-D (talk) 10:33, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
Given that this article seems to have been created to promote Hastie and contained a fair amount of editorialising (I just spotted and removed some more), I've just WP:BOLDly redirected it to the byelection article without prejudice to it being re-established if he's elected and/or there are other developments which are sufficient to meet WP:BIO. Nick-D (talk) 10:56, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
I think that's a good way of handling it, nicely done. IgnorantArmies (talk) 11:14, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
Hi all. I've reverted the bold redirect for the second time. Per BRD, you really shouldn't have made the last revert. Not saying I might not have made a mistake in passing it through AfC, But I don't believe that a contested redirect is the way to handle this. I understand the points made above, but based upon the breadth of coverage, he clearly meets WP:GNG. That's what AfD is for. I think Nick-D made some good edits on the article. But if you do not believe the article should exist, AfD is the process for removal, since the redirect is contested. Onel5969 TT me 03:32, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
I've started an AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Andrew Hastie (politician). Nick-D (talk) 03:54, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Historical trade unions

One little project I've been trying to do for a while is break some of the really significant historical trade unions, such as the Federated Clerks' Union and the Australian Railways Union, back out into their own articles, because they were incredibly significant organisations in their day that can't be well covered in the articles on the unions that replaced them (which in some cases are much less notable).

I'm running into a bit of a headache though because of the way labour history gets written about in Australia - there are tons of sources on both of these unions - books, journal articles, theses, and hundreds of thousands of Trove hits, but none of these seem to tie the story of the national union together as a coherent whole: they always seem to focus on different states at different times, and don't seem to explain the birds-eye view of how it all fit together very well. This gets very confusing when you've got different state leaderships with at times very different ideological persuasions. Does anyone have any ideas for how to go at this? (And even better, does anyone want to help?). The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:40, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

FYI - Newspoll archives are now dead

No update since July 2015? The trusty historical Newspoll archives are no longer being updated with polls. It was always great to have many years of data there to compare to current data for trends/records/etc. Now that job isn't as easy. Sad :( FYI - the last time a Liberal PM got a 55%+ Better PM rate was in 2006! Though it is very odd that despite a 55% BPM rating, Turnbull has an approval rate of just 42%. That's 13% saying Turnbull is the better PM but at the same time don't approve! Combine the 42% with the dissat of 24%, and you're left with a whopping 34% of undecided voters who are still trying to figure out which Turnbull we're getting. Timeshift (talk) 18:50, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Candidates of the next Australian federal election

Just letting everyone know I have created Candidates of the next Australian federal election as the preselection season is beginning. It uses a new design which I think is cleaner and clearer and includes the senate. I've filled it in as much as my sanity would allow. I've made some assumptions that every sitting member is going to run again, except when there's evidence they won't, and included the major 4 (ALP, Coalition, GRN and PUP) plus KAP in Qld and Xenophon Team in SA as he intends to run a slate of candidates. Cheers! – Hshook (talk) 12:24, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm not a big fan of your proposed new layout for these pages, and I've been watching it develop in your sandbox dreading this debate. I find the House table a bit garish, and the Senate table is far more vague than the present structure is. Having a column for the incumbent is a plus, but not so much that I want to have to redo hundreds of tables. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:02, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
A few things. Firstly, I think this page is premature. I'd been purposely holding off even creating a draft, because of the ongoing redistributions. Preselections have not occurred for WA or NSW yet for the major parties, because they just don't know what seats are going to be left and where they'll be. At the moment, the page lists a NSW seat that will not exist. At the very least the NSW and WA tables should be removed. I also strongly disagree with listing sitting members as a matter of course. They should only be included where it has been explicitly confirmed that they have been preselected as the candidate.
I very strongly disagree with the proposed Senate tables. The numbering was important and much clearer than the new layout. I also strongly oppose the "incumbent" column. These tables get huge - the last thing they need is an extra column when this can be easily conveyed through bold text.
Finally, this proposed new layout would affect the literally hundreds of candidates pages we have, and I do not see a significant reason for this change. I actually think the mass of colour makes it much less clear than the current version.
As such, while I appreciate the work that has gone into this, I oppose all of the changes to the format of these pages. Frickeg (talk) 13:30, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
I found the assumption that incumbents would stand again unless stated otherwise to be unhelpful. If this article is to be created well in advance of the election, it should only contain people with WP:RS intent to nominate (and stand for the stated party). Cited dates when parties will announce their candidates might be useful if the article is to remain this early. I also found the strong vertical rainbow streamers to be distracting. They do not add anything that would not be represented by a horizontal bar under the column headings, except under "others".--Scott Davis Talk 06:18, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
I agree with the views of others regarding the newer layout. I also find the older layout more visually pleasant, while conveying the same information, and would support reformatting the article to bring it in line with the others. I also share Scott Davis' concerns that including incumbents as contesting the next election without being pre-selected haste and not particularly useful. ColonialGrid (talk) 13:11, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
I've made changes based on the above, have a look, if you don't like it you can change it. – Hshook (talk) 14:03, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
I'm still not a fan, unfortunately. The Senate tables are a dealbreaker, and I'm 50-50% on the incumbent column - having seen the responses of Frickeg, ScottDavis and ColonialGrid I'm inclined to support ditching it entirely. The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:32, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
Yes. Although I really do appreciate the thought that's gone into this and the compromises you've made, I remain absolutely and implacably opposed to the incumbents column (I have about ten other reasons but don't necessarily see the need to go into them since I think what's above is enough), and the Senate columns are just unworkable for me. And again, a lot of work went into making all the current tables consistent - I'd want to see a pretty strong argument that there's something wrong before we attempted to implement something like this, which would take a gigantic amount of work for, as I see it, little to no reward. Frickeg (talk) 00:02, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
Okay thanks. I'm kind of over it, so you can make whatever changes you like with regards to formatting etc. All the candidates there are sourced so let that be my contribution :) – Hshook (talk) 08:03, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Chilla Bulbeck

I guess describing somebody as an "emeritus professor" is new way of claiming notability for an unsuccessful Greens candidate.--Grahame (talk) 02:47, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

This person is notable for the body of work they have produced and the references that are on the page. It's interesting to think that because she was a candidate, that's why she is seen to be non-notable. And that's putting the general Greens grumbles to one side... – Hshook (talk) 09:29, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
As a Wikipedia editor who tends to create and edit articles about geography, politics or culture (in roughly that order), I have found it to be surprisingly hard to demonstrate that scientists and academics meet the the Wikipedia notability guidelines. I recall one 30-year physicist article I encountered that the easiest way to demonstrate wiki-notability was that he played an AFL game while finishing his PhD in the 1980s. Football is a minor part of the article, and an even smaller part of his life's work. --Scott Davis Talk 12:52, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
Flies past the notability bar as an academic. It's one of the weirdest Australian deletion trends is that we have historically tended to see unsuccessful candidates targeted for deletion on that basis even when they're obviously notable for other reasons. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:00, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
It does not "fly past notability bar." It says nothing about her academic notability except that she was apparently made an emeritus professor, which in itself carries no notability. Perhaps you mean that she has written a lot of books, but then there would be some need to assess their significance.--Grahame (talk) 00:47, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
That we would not be having this conversation if she had not run as a candidate (exemplified by the discussion board at which this is taking place) demonstrates that this is another case of treating an unsuccessful minor party run for parliament as a reason to delete otherwise notable people. The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:30, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

What on earth is the Danig Party...?

Continuing from archived discussion here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian politics/Archive 8#What on earth is the Danig Party...?

I notice that they have created a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Danig-Party-of-South-Australia-711568162307166

Still not much information about them except they are "for the people of South Australia" Screech1616 (talk) 15:02, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

A whole three likes, wow lol :) Timeshift (talk) 15:07, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
This is a delightful mystery; I am genuinely deeply curious about these guys. It seems like such a backwards way to run a party: why do you go through all the effort of finding members for registration before you establish even the barest minimum of a media/internet presence? I mean, I know registration in SA is a joke, but still, they had to find 200 people, and between them those 200 people appear to have said not a word about this brand new party they're involved with to anyone publicly. Is it some kind of extended family business? Is it a religious thing? When the information does finally come out, we might have a really interesting article on our hands. Frickeg (talk) 14:19, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
Could have been a MP acting by themselves, which would've avoided the 200 member requirement. Hack (talk) 14:23, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
My money is on this being a religious thing - it's the most likely way to obtain 200 members without generating an internet presence. It seems unlikely that a sitting MP would start their own party with an obscure name and not mention it, though I suppose it could happen. It will be interesting to see what the story is when its reported. Nick-D (talk) 18:23, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Finally! Facebook page with link to their policies! The leading policy is for Australians "unwilling to work... should require compulsory military service". On page 2 of 2: "That all religions should be welcome to Australia provided that they do not interfere with or contradict Australian values. That immigrants are welcome and should be helped to integrate and be loyal to Australia above all other Nations. That people arriving in Australia unlawfully should be refused entry except in the event of extreme hardship." Feel free to read up on their policies, but i'll be damned if there's an overall theme, policy consistency, or meaning of "Danig"... though the party leader Gabor Gesti looks like a bit of a Danig :) Based on Wiktionary, Danig is an adjective for "considerable, serious". Perhaps loosely means/translates to Serious Party of Australia? So should we have an article for this party as in the past the notability bar for minor parties was registration, or failing that, had sufficient WP:RS? Timeshift (talk) 14:33, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

How do we know this is legit? In any case it still fails WP:GNG Hack (talk) 15:06, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
That is the most oddball grab-bag of policies: it reads like some old rural dude's collection of whinges at government over a lifetime, and kind of a Katter-Party-but-considerably-more-mad thing. The Drover's Wife (talk) 16:38, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
Indeed. Perhaps he is a relation of Mark Aldridge :) But seriously, nfi how he got 200 real people to join his Danig Party with that platform and successfully register it with the ECSA, with not so much as a website or Facebook page at the time. Very odd. Timeshift (talk) 16:56, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
I want some SA journo to run with the story already. The Drover's Wife (talk) 17:18, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
891 ABC Adelaide breakfast with Matthew Abraham and David Bevan should be able to make something out of it, even if they have to make Spence Denny camp on the doorstep for a while. It'd be a step up on whinging about cyclists running over little old ladies on footpaths at 60km/h and riding away because they weren't registered. --Scott Davis Talk 03:58, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
I stopped listening to ABC radio years ago. If i never hear about cyclists on radio again it'll be too soon. Timeshift (talk) 04:21, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Country Parties again

I noticed that the Australian Country Alliance page had been moved to Australian Country Party (2004). Reading the edit summaries and references, this is now the registered name of that party in Victoria,[3] and they have possibly applied to change the name federally as well. I added a new hat note to National Party of Australia, but there are way too many inbound links to Australian Country Party[4] to boldly turn that to a disambig page and run away, especially given the previous conversations.

My current preference would be a new Australian Country Party (1920) (year identified in the infobox) redirect to National Party of Australia, a disambiguation page at Australian Country Party, and a significant number of hours effort to sort out the resultant links to a disambig page. It's possible that there should be a number of state-based historic Country Party articles (eg WA 1913 from the Nationals' History section) started (or at least postulated) before the disambig page is created, so that articles on early politicians and elections only need to be fixed once. --Scott Davis Talk 01:35, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

I think that sounds like a good solution to me. I think the only state one that still needs creation would be Tasmania, since the state party carked it before the national name change and there is no current state National Party. South Australia has already been done with Country Party (South Australia), and that was a unique situation because of the Liberal and Country League merger. The Drover's Wife (talk) 07:35, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
I have made the extra redirect, and started Draft:Australian Country Party, trying to find all the articles that should be linked from it. I found Curtin Government#In Office lists four of the five parties in opposition in 1943 had "Country" in their names, but none are wikilinked, and I don't think I've got them all in the draft page yet. Any help? I am well out of my depth here, so will gratfully accept changes from the experts. --Scott Davis Talk 11:59, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
I think that's a good start, and may as well go live. I'd put the WA party (and the old SA party as well as the current SA Nats) underneath the federal party since they were state affiliates though. Another party unrelated to the modern Nats is Progressive Country Party, which currently is a redirect but will get its own one day. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:01, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
I've added three Victorian variants from the 1930s and 1940s—United Country Party (Australia) and Liberal Country Party—and the Country Progressive Party from the 1920s. --Canley (talk) 13:14, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
I notice the disambiguation page doesn't seem to be linked from anywhere? The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:37, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
I'd like to move it over the Australian Country Party redirect, then use popups to sort out the mess of links pointing to it, but I haven't felt like I have time to make a serious go of it, and it's rude to create 150 links to a disambig page if I don't make an attempt to fix them, so I haven't done it yet. There are probably other common names that should point to the disambig page too. --Scott Davis Talk 11:32, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
Fair enough. I should have time to help if you feel like making the move. The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:24, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. Page moved. --Scott Davis Talk 11:01, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
Just finished off the last few, for what it's worth. The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:31, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Heads up: the unregistered Country Party has just been renamed CountryMinded because Country Alliance got the jump on them and stole the name. The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:26, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Interesting - and their own web site is missing at least two facts from the news article: The name change and the "recent" special general meeting announcement and results. Their Facebook is a little more active, but not really a suitable source. --Scott Davis Talk 10:52, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Following on (and withholding any cricket jokes), Country Party of Australia is now a redirect to the disambiguation page at Australian Country Party, and a new set of 196 incoming ambiguous links exists... -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 09:08, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

I just noticed that. Ugh. I'll get started again as soon as dabsolver starts working again. The Drover's Wife (talk) 10:06, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
I have now done all of the extra incoming links, so this little project is finally done. Props to Scott for kicking it off. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:30, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
Thank you. And kudos for doing far more of the disambigs than I did. --Scott Davis Talk 04:22, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Unprecedented systemic vandalism to MP articles by IPs on a daily basis

I thought i'd flag on this talkpage, the discussion on this issue currently occurring here. Timeshift (talk) 11:43, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Anyone willing to call an MP's office for an MP image?

Please read/respond to my query here. I'm adding the link here to get more eyes on my request. Thanks. Timeshift (talk) 04:29, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Victorian Legislative Council

I've been having a great time (and learning a lot) writing stubs for Victorian state MPs, but I've just run across the unpleasant discovery that Assembly and Council elections were out of synch before 1961 (often in different years). This means that we will need separate pages for the LC elections. I'm thinking it will be best to call them Victorian Legislative Council election, 1958, etc., but wanted to run it by here in case anyone has any better ideas. Frickeg (talk) 21:58, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

That sounds like the best way in my book. Good catch on picking that up. The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:30, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Federal Two-Party-Preferred-Votes

I have discovered a new source on two-party-preferred figures, both before 1937 all the way up until 1980. I notice currently that all the figures detailed on Wikipedia are obtained solely from Malcolm Mackerras. This site here I notice details Mackerras' figures, but also compares them to other estimates, including those of Adam Carr, Joan Rydon and Colin Hughes. Now most of these figures, especially those immediately prior to 1980 are similar, differing only by 0.1% or so. However in earlier elections there is a considerable difference in the vote, significantly so. This would affect some of the stats and facts listed here on Wikipedia. Now I do not know whose figures are more accurate, however I do know that with no figures prior to 1937 here on Wikipedia and with such difference in the vote, an interesting question is raised about how best to approach this prospect. Thoughts? Lord Wreath (talk) 08:05, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

There's a previous discussion on this topic here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian politics/Archive 7#Two Party Preferred Results Before 1937. --Canley (talk) 08:19, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Notional gains

One of the kinds of edits I revert most frequently on election result pages are good-faith IPs changing "gains" to "holds" (or along those lines) after there has been a redistribution (i.e. Dickson and Herbert in 2010, example here). Although I am staunchly against showing these as straight "holds", I can see how it's confusing for a lot of people. As such I want to propose that we adapt the coding to allow "notional gain" and "notional hold" as options; they are generally referred to as such and this makes things clearer for readers. Ideally it would be good if there could be a link of some kind in there so that "notional" is explained for the uninitiated, but I am not sure of a suitable target page and so would appreciate input here.

Possibly "notional" could also be used on new seats, but I am less sure about this. I would love to come up with a way to also solve the long-running disagreement about whether defections come into party holding (i.e. was Dobell 2013 a Liberal gain from Independent or from Labor? Was Kennedy 2010 a KAP hold or KAP gain from Independent?) but am not sure of how to do so. Frickeg (talk) 06:22, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

I think the first paragraph is a great idea and if we can do that we totally should. I don't care enough about the second to wade into that particular minefield. ;) The Drover's Wife (talk) 07:32, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
For the first, Redistribution (Australia) (or some other suitable electoral article) could have a section added (say "Gains and Holds" or somesuch) that could be used to explain how gains and holds are determined in principle, then explain how those principles are applied for redistributions, and then for party swapping (surely if they are true principles, then it will all be obvious - famous last words). That section could be the target of the link. For example, Katter retains his seat but has changed party, could we distinguish between "individual hold" and "party hold" as clearly he's held as an individual but not as a party, so something like "individual hold/party gain". Demonstrating my ignorance of all of this, are gains/holds etc strictly relative to the previous election/by-election or does mid-term party-swapping come into it? And maybe there just need to be notes to accompany the "strange cases"? Sometimes a table just can't explain everything. Kerry (talk) 04:45, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Australian Labor Party (South Australian Branch)... should it be written as Labor or more obvious such as SA Labor et al?

Australian Labor Party (South Australian Branch) and Liberal Party of Australia (South Australian Division) have been created. I've done a vast amount of disambiguations already, however there are a few areas that still need updating that readily come to mind: Members of the South Australian [chamber], 1989–1993 articles and earlier, List of South Australian House of Assembly by-elections and the by-election articles, some current and all former electoral district articles, and articles of all state MPs who aren't current or weren't a major party leader. Additionally and preferably, new disambiguated template party codings need to be added for several types of templates, for example "| after_party = Australian Labor Party (SA)" for the "{{Infobox election" template. Does anyone have a bot/script they can use to speed all of this up? Timeshift (talk) 20:30, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

One thing with these articles - if you're disambiguating the MPs, can you not say "member of the South Australian division of the Liberal Party of Australia"? The "South Australian division" is completely obvious from the fact they're holding elected office for them in that state, and it's incredibly awkward wording. The Drover's Wife (talk) 22:35, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
The reason I did the above wording is so readers can clearly and obviously see the link is to a different article than just Liberal Party of Australia which unless they hover over or click, they won't know is different article? What about "member of the Liberal Party of Australia (SA Division)" or something else? Timeshift (talk) 23:47, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm with The Drover's Wife here, I don't think it's necessary. They don't need to know it's a different article, any more than they need to know that Democratic Labour Party in Australian articles is not linked to the Barbadian party. Frickeg (talk) 05:31, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
Not a fair comparison, the Barbadian DLP wouldn't contest the linked South Australian House of Assembly? Timeshift (talk) 06:13, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
I can see why you chose to highlight it, but I think it is probably a transient issue. The set of people for whom it is an important distinction are the readers who remember having already read Liberal Party of Australia and would be interested to read an article they did not previously know about for Liberal Party of Australia (South Australian Division). If they are interested but haven't read the former, they will click through anyway and just end up at the more local article. If they think they know enough not to read the party history to understand what they are looking at, they won't click in either case. Once readers have a clue that there might be both state and federal party articles, they will hover over party names to see which it is, just like they need to now if they care which incarnations of National Party or Australian Country Party is linked. --Scott Davis Talk 06:32, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
Agree with Scott. Timeshift: that was my point; no other Liberal party would contest the South Australian House of Assembly. Frickeg (talk) 06:47, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
But how would they know they are getting a different article to Liberal Party of Australia, which they wouldn't have for the past 15 years until now? Timeshift (talk) 06:50, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
Why do they care? They're being taken to the relevant article, which is all that matters. Frickeg (talk) 07:01, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
I disagree. Knowing the link will take you to a state-based article instead of presuming it would take you to the federal-based article would matter for a significant amount of readers. Timeshift (talk) 07:05, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
I doubt it. The entire point of piped links is to avoid the kind of awkward wording that "member of the South Australian division of the Liberal Party of Australia" undoubtedly is. To construct an example along lines we use all the time, would you have us say, in Joe Bloggs' bio, "Bloggs defeated sitting member Jane Doe of the South Australian division of the Liberal Party of Australia", or "Bloggs defeated sitting Liberal member Jane Doe"? Frickeg (talk) 07:16, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
Bloggs defeated sitting SA Liberal member Jane Doe? There's plenty of ways to shorten it. The point is, many would want to see the seperate state-based article, regardless of whether or not they've already seen the federal-based article, which would sometimes go un-noticed if both the state and federal articles are displayed with an identical name. Timeshift (talk) 07:25, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
No. "SA Liberal" sounds like a different party name altogether (i.e. NSW Labor, Victorian Liberal, NT Nationals). We're already saying that they're being elected or otherwise to the South Australian Parliament. This is the last I'll say here; I guess we'll have to see which way consensus leans. Frickeg (talk) 07:32, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
Last I'll say except this: you really have been very thorough with a pretty unpleasant job - great work. :) Frickeg (talk) 23:20, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

By the way (sorry just noticed this and not familiar with any precedents) why are words like Branch and Division capitalised in the new articles? Surely it should be Australian Labor Party (South Australian branch) and Liberal Party of Australia (South Australian division) or even simpler. Is there any evidence that "branch" and "division" are part of the legal name for either party? Donama (talk) 22:15, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, they're the official names. See for example here, showing the AEC registered names. Frickeg (talk) 23:20, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
That reference (or the detail page [5]) looks like it should be Liberal Party of Australia (S.A. Division) (with "S.A." instead of "South Australian"). I think the next line that says the party abbreviation is "Liberal" makes it suitable for us to do the same in most cases where that makes sense. The state branch articles will link to the federal party article in the first sentence, so it will be easy to click through if the reader knows they ended up in the "wrong place". I agree with the other comment - thank you for doing the work of separating them out. I found the new article quite interesting. --Scott Davis Talk 09:27, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
The abbreviated version is confusing and vague as shit for anyone not from Australia. We've got a perfectly good system (finally, after this issue stalling us for years about rolling out this badly needed set of articles) - please don't come along and bugger it up over semantics now. The Drover's Wife (talk) 09:56, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
Agree. Timeshift (talk) 11:09, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

In regards to my "SA Liberal" suggestion above, I note that at Australian Labor Party (New South Wales Branch) the article starts with "The Australian Labor Party (NSW Branch) also known as NSW Labor is the...", is that wrong...? Timeshift (talk) 17:07, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

No, but we also wouldn't use it to avoid confusion with Australian Labor Party (NSW). Frickeg (talk) 22:23, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
However, today's primary usage of the term "NSW Labor" is about the current party, not the former party. Just like the many links in articles to "Democratic Labor Party" which don't indicate if it's the current or former party, however if there's a current party of said name then it is the primary usage. Many articles don't go beyond the name only, and just in case, to clear any confusion with historical parties, we have articles starting off with italic headnotes, ie: This article is about the current branch of the Australian Labor Party. For the defunct right–wing Labor organisation that existed during the 1930s, see Australian Labor Party (NSW). and This article is about the modern-day Australian political party founded after the dissolution of the original party of the same name. For the earlier party, see Democratic Labor Party (historical). At what point did these headnotes stop acting as the main disambiguation indicator after the link hidden and contained within, say, Democratic Labor Party...? Timeshift (talk) 22:33, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
I think the consensus above is fairly clear on just using "Labor" in these instances. Frickeg (talk) 01:38, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
Hold on, I raised very valid points in my last post and you didn't respond to them... why not? And there is certainly no "consensus above" on this. Yourself aside, I only see just one other contributor, ScottDavis, advocating just Labor/Liberal. This discussion and consensus remains wide open, and should certainly be the case considering the points made in my previous post. At what point did headnotes (see the two above headnote examples above) cease party/article confusion and stop acting as the main disambiguation indicator and after the link hidden and contained within, say, Democratic Labor Party...? Timeshift (talk) 02:05, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
I again agree with Frickeg, for what it's worth. It doesn't need a disambiguation indicator (we pipe links all the time), is confusing (makes it look like they're members of some splinter party), and is generally unnecessary. The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:41, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
This is the first you've actually stated you agree with just Labor/Liberal (from how i've read your replies here anyway) so thanks for the clarification. Timeshift (talk) 02:50, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

I've come here from the notice at WP:AWNB. In my opinion, where the context is fairly obviously the SA branch/division, a piped link with just "Labor"/"Liberal" should suffice. If readers want the national articles, they can follow the links in the first sentence or infobox of each article. This also fits in with common usage of just "Labor"/"Liberal" to refer to the state parties (e.g. in the media, at least for local stories - for instance ABC 2014 election coverage). If the context isn't that obvious (perhaps a bio of someone who was involved in multiple states or also nationally), then some form of disambiguation in the text/link may make sense. For these cases, the wording The Drover's Wife near the top of this section would seem to be the best choice in most cases, rather than appending "(SA)" or the like (except perhaps in tables or spaces with limited width). - Evad37 [talk] 03:53, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

The thing is, countless decade-long existing links are to Australian Labor Party or Liberal Party of Australia rather than just Labor or Liberal, which incorrectly has national/federal connotations. How about this compromise? Timeshift (talk) 04:03, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
I have no problem with that edit to the main ALP article. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:48, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
I have no issues with that either. I do have a bit of an issue with this - section titles should not be refactored after so many comments have been made, especially not to such an obviously non-neutral (not to mention long) title. Frickeg (talk) 07:13, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Changes to list of Senators by period

I have started to create sublists for Senators in each Parliament by the date on which their respective term expires (see eg. Members of the Australian Senate, 1975–1978, since reverted by Frickeg). My rationale is that the sublists are more meaningful than merely an alphabetical list of all senators in a particular time period. Furthermore since 1975 these time periods have been stretched in the case of territory senators, as has the period following a double dissolution when senators' terms are backdated to a preceding 1 July. I understand that this change will have widespread implications in the style of related and similar articles, but one worthy of consideration. For example, it may be of greater user interest to know which senator's term expires at each election and which party they belong to. The next step would be to have a sublist of continuing senators (ie, those that did not need to stand for reelection). A straight list of senators merely repeats a list readily available off the official website. Enthusiast01 (talk) 00:29, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I think actually separating them into separate lists creates the impression that there is a greater distinction between different classes of senator than there actually is. It also means they aren't sortable as a whole, which is a dealbreaker for me - this is an absolutely vital function. On the other hand, I would not necessarily be opposed to a "term ending" column or something similar, which means that they could then be sorted easily within the existing table. This would negate the necessity for separate tables and I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) would cover all the functions outlined above. (My drafts page has some outlines of how I thought we might include more info in these lists, which include a similar idea.) Frickeg (talk) 00:38, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
A term expiry column may be a solution, as well as a possible colour coding. Enthusiast01 (talk) 00:58, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
A term expiry column solves this problem clearly and cleanly - it's what we currently do for the SA Legislative Council and it works. Enthusiast01's suggestion is a dealbreaker for me for the reasons Frickeg notes, and a colour coding is unnecessary. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:18, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
I agree that an extra column is the obvious solution.--Grahame (talk) 01:19, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

MP and WP:ACRONYM

I have been having a discussion with another editor at Talk:North Sydney by-election, 2015‎ over whether "MP" should be spelled out the first time it is used in an article. Here are the key points on both sides (edited from the original to focus on the issue):

  • "MP" is used to abbreviate Member of Parliament all over wikipedia, including the HoR article, election articles, individual MP biography articles, even previous by-election articles.... WP:ACRONYM also states "If there is an article about the subject of an acronym (i.e. NATO), then other articles referring to or using the acronym should use the same style (capitalisation and punctuation) that has been used within the main article" which would seem to support using MP.... However, i'm leaning toward it being something that would have to be raised more centrally, such as Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian politics considering how widespread the usage is. It couldn't just be changed here in isolation. Timeshift (talk) 11:19, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
  • "MP" is pretty well understood in Commonwealth countries to mean "Member of Parliament", but American readers are accustomed to Mp being used to refer to a Military Police office. Readers from other countries, especially those reading English as a second language, may not understand it at all. We can make those people click on the link in order to understand the acronym, or we could just spell it out for them. I am all in favour of brevity, but in this case it would cause many readers to lose comprehension.
What is gained gained here by not spelling it out?
I don't agree that the portion of WP:ACRONYM quoted supports not spelling it out as it specifies "spelling and punctuation". In fact, WP:ACRONYM says: "Unless specified in the "Exceptions" section below, an acronym should be written out in full the first time it is used on a page, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses, e.g. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)." "MP" is not one of the eight listed exceptions. This part of WP:ACRONYM clearly supports spelling out MP the first time it is used in an article. (To be clear, I am not suggesting that it be spelled out every time.)
The Australian_House_of_Representatives article spells out "Member of Parliament" in the very first paragraph. As far as other articles are concerned (no examples were provided), there is always room to improve Wikipedia articles to make them easier to understand. Ground Zero | t 13:46, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
The issue here is that "Member of Parliament" is just not used in the way Ground Zero used it in the North Sydney article. It would be like referring to a CEO as a "Chief Executive Officer" in a similar context. You'll never find a newspaper article saying "so-and-so is a Member of Parliament"; it'll say they're an MP or the "member for such-and-such". It's true that it's not listed in the exceptions at WP:ACRONYM (there are more than eight listed, by the way, there are just eight under the first subheading), but I think it's reasonable to suggest it should be. (CEO is also not listed, but surely you would not suggest "Chief Executive Officer (CEO)" in all the various articles that refer to the phrase.) Frickeg (talk) 14:49, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
The first line of his Wikipedia article says that he "was the Member of Parliament for North Sydney from 1996 until 2015". His website says “As your federal Member of Parliament, Joe can….”
Hockey uses the term himself. In the Canberra Times, Hockey says about Bronwyn Bishop’s travel expenses "When it is an excessive amount of money or for inappropriate use the individual member of parliament has to explain it and the court of the people will make a decision." He used the term several times in this interview with Andrew Bolt.
Australian media use it: sbs.com.au and news.com.au.
The Parliamentary Education Office uses “member of parliament”. Paul Fletcher, and other MPs, used it in speeches to the HOR on Hockey’s retirement.
From foreign media articles about Hockey: Canada’s CTV News; Thailand's The Nation; America’s C-Span
The question about whether Australian newspapers use the term is moot anyway: they are writing for an Australian audience. We are writing for an international audience.
Maybe the problem you're having is the capitalisation. Would "member of parliament (MP)" still be a problem? If so, I'd still like to know why, and why it is a bigger problem than not being clear for our international audience. I am getting the feeling that the argument is "Australians will understand it, so there is no need", which shouldn't be our priority in an international encyclopaedia. Ground Zero | t 17:16, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
Ground Zero, you're clearly cherry picking. Timeshift (talk) 17:18, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
Frickeg wrote: "You'll never find a newspaper article saying "so-and-so is a Member of Parliament"; it'll say they're an MP or the "member for such-and-such"." So I did find references. Lots of them - not just one or two. Ground Zero | t 17:21, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
I think we are skirmishing at least three different topics here and maybe if we decouple them a bit, we might see things more clearly:
  1. the use of imprecise terms (MP). Generally when talking about an individual, we can and should be more precise. Tony Abbot should be an MHR not an MP. Since we should always know the more precise term for an individual, we should use it. The use of the generic MP really only relates to a discussion of a non-specific member of parliament as in "An MP must report any gifts valued over $50".
  2. the use of abbreviations. When I was young (back in BC - before computers), we were always taught that if you had to write something long in full the first time, follow it with the abbreviation in parentheses and thereafter use the abbreviation. And if we were still living in BC, then that is what we should be doing. But in the world of web/wiki we have hyperlinking, I think it allows the alternative of writing MP (or whatever) the first time and then just MP after that. This allows the reader who doesn't know what MP means to click on it and find out . Having said that, I would not use the link-abbreviated form in that important first sentence/para of the lede if it is important to the definition or notability of the topic. If we were writing a lede, I would hope that we would say "Joe Bloggs is a Member of the Australian House of Representatives" rather than "Joe Blogg is an MHR." (Aside I see no reason why we would use the imprecise term MP in a lede normally). But I see no problem with using the link-abbreviated form in a casual reference e.g. in the Smallville article: "On 25 April 2012, Joe Bloggs MHR unveiled a plaque honouring Betty Brown's 50 years of service to the Smallville Country Women's Association."
  3. the relation of body text vs infobox. In principle, the infobox is a summary and therefore contains only a subset of the information of the main body text (which isn't strictly followed in Wikipedia but the exceptions are usually simple facts that would not make exciting prose). But I would argue that if an abbreviation has been introduced in the body text, we can continue to use it in the infobox. But, because we have the ability to do link-abbreviations, I would tend to lean to doing a link-abbreviation on at least first use of the abbreviation in an infobox box because the infobox is presented at the top of screen and may be read by the reader before or instead of the body text. Since there is no visual space cost to the use of linked-abbreviatons in the infobox, there is no reason not to do this.

That's my 10c worth. Kerry (talk) 22:13, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

My other highly pedantic 2c worth is that there is a difference between abbreviation (a short form) and acronyms (a coined word from a abbreviation). The ABC is an abbreviation because we say it as "A B C" whereas NATO is an acronym because we say it as "nato rhymes with potato". But the written principles presumably apply equally to both. Kerry (talk) 22:18, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
I still stand by finding "Member of Parliament (MP)" needlessly verbose, and I have no problems with simply linking the term MP. On the other hand, we might skirt the whole problem entirely by changing the wording. Either way, super minor issue and I don't think it's a huge disaster either way. Frickeg (talk) 23:56, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
I think it depends on context. "Joe Hockey was the MP for North Sydney" should be "Joe Hockey was the Member for North Sydney in the Australian House of Representatives." However, "The Hon. Joe Hockey MP..."[6] should have MP wikilinked but need not be expanded, the same as if he was "Joe Hockey AM" for example. --Scott Davis Talk 12:50, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
Scott's proposal is the most sensible. It:
  • reflects the spirit of WP:TECHNICAL: "Articles in Wikipedia should be understandable to the widest possible audience. For most articles, this means understandable to a general audience." and MOS:JARGON: "Some topics are intrinsically technical, but editors should try to make them understandable to as many readers as possible. Minimize jargon"
  • it is more precise than "MP", which is always good. Using the acronym "MHR" would ensure that you lose non-Australian Commonwealth readers, whereas "MP" loses only non-Commonwealth readers. Let's be inclusive instead.
  • seems to reflect Australian usage, as far as I can tell, although I confess to not being Australian
Is there any objection to following Scott's formula?
On other comments raised here, WP:ACRONYM allows an exception for post-nominals ("Joe Bloggs, MHR") which is consistent with Scott's "however": "Common exceptions to this rule are post-nominal initials because writing them out in full would cause clutter." I think the point is that a post-nominal acronym provides information that is incidental to the sentence, whereas using the acronym in the sentence to identify who a person is is information that is important tot he reader's understanding.
Some of the arguments here would be better raised on WP:ACRONYM, e.g., suggesting that it is okay to make people link through to understand acronyms instead of spelling them out. So I won't try to address that here. Ground Zero | t 15:01, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

As several people have pointed out, this is a pretty minor matter. I am not clear what Timeshift's objections are as s/he has not participated in the discussion since 22 December, and there has been no further discussion for five days. nonetheless, s/he quickly reverted my edit and accused me of "jumping the gun as it is still being discussed with no consensus formed". Let's make an edit to bring this in line with Wikipedia style and move on to other things. Ground Zero | t 03:30, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

A month has now passed without any objection to the change proposed above, and no further discussion. There has been ample time for anyone to bring forward any other arguments or compromise proposals. So I am not "jumping the gun". I will make the change, and if anyone wants to re-open the discussion, they can do so to obtain a consensus before changing it back. Ground Zero | t 13:10, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Western Australian biographical register

Just in case anyone else had missed it (I certainly had): after fifteen years of having our most useless website on MP history, the Parliament of Western Australia has quietly digitised basic profiles of everyone who's ever served, and have actually done an okay job at it.

This basically changes the entire game for writing articles on Western Australian politicians, and many, many of the most linked red links on Australian politics fall into that category: Wikipedia:WikiProject Australian politics/Missing topics. It would be so nice to see the new register get sourced all over the place because it's just made writing this subject ridiculously easy compared to in the past, and a lot of even the articles that exist are likely missing some of the basics for that reason. The Drover's Wife (talk) 00:06, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Fantastic! --Canley (talk) 05:59, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Early Victorian parties

As my ongoing "stubs for MPs" project continues and I draw closer to the pre-party period in Victoria, I'm realising we've got very little in the way of coverage of state parties at this time. At the moment most of our articles link pre-1917 "Liberals" to Commonwealth Liberal Party, but I believe this was a strictly federal organisation and the equivalent Victorian organisation was the United Liberal Party. There is also the Economy Party (I believe a country faction?) about which I know practically nothing. Online searches are not availing me much so I'm hoping someone may be more knowledgeable and/or know some good sources to get at least basic articles up for United Liberal Party (Victoria) and Economy Party (Victoria). Frickeg (talk) 11:59, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I know absolutely jackshit about this era in Victoria, but I have a ridiculous amount of time on my hands at the moment and I do love a good research project. I will see what I can find. You are correct about Commonwealth Liberal Party - that was a user error that got rolled out at the beginning which we've known about for years, but which never got fixed because no one wanted to answer these questions. The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:25, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Ugh, and I thought South Australia was challenging. So, first impressions digging through Trove:

In 1907 and 1908, it seems as if you've still got a "Ministerialist" versus "Labor" divide. There were various organisations running around endorsing candidates, but it broadly looks as if the ministry was broadly supporting candidates and they were mainly known as "Ministerialists" and I don't think I'd call any of the other groups parties by modern standards.

In 1911, you seem to have three anti-socialist organisations in the field, the Commonwealth Liberal Party (!), the People's Party, and the Australian Women's National League, broadly running as "Liberals".

You start to see talk of mergers after this, but in 1914 you seem to have the People's Liberal Party, People's Party, and AWNL. I'm not quite sure of what the deal was yet with the People's Liberal Party, but perhaps it was a semi-failed merger? There was definitely no United Liberal Party by that name in 1914 - every reference to this concerns a local alliance in Geelong that had successfully stood together for the federal seat of Corio. They seem to be more factions of a liberal movement that hadn't come together as a party but were capable of working together in parliament.

And in 1917, you've got the two competing Nationalist factions (the Liberals and the Economy Party), plus the addition of the VFU, and what seems to be a rump National Labor Party?

Which would make 1920 the first Victorian election at which the non-Labor forces seem to have formed an actually coherent party and not as confusing as buggery.

The obvious place to start would be to create an article on the state Nationalist Party, as tracing their history in depth would probably tell you whether it was worth having separate articles on the 1917 Liberals, Economy Party and rump National Labor. Also, tracing where the state Labor MPs went in the 1916 split for our article on that would probably help sort out that mess. For the parties in 1914 and earlier, I suspect it won't work to break down them beyond "Liberal" and "Ministerialist" for the election articles, but that it might be worth creating articles for the various groups as electoral leagues to help make sense of them. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:58, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Heavens above. What a mess. Thanks a ton for hunting it up though - you're the best.
I should have mentioned too that Adam Carr has some summaries up - that unfortunately contradict some of what you've said above. It's where I got the "United Liberal Party" name from - it was apparently adopted by Bent's group in 1907? Maybe? Examples of contradictions include the Bent and anti-Bent Liberals apparently forming a "united Liberal Party" shortly after Bent's death in 1909, and pretty consistent references to a "Liberal Party" after about 1907.
Some of the People's Liberal Party stuff may be to do with how we currently kind of skate over a lot of the history of the Commonwealth Liberal Party anyway - I seem to recall it went through a number of name changes and that "People's Liberal Party" was one of them. See, for example, our article on the Australian People's Party (a ghastly mess, but that's an issue for another time). Also here (referring to the merger of the "Liberal League" and the "People's Party", whatever they may be) and here.
Except for a whisper of an implication on James Weir McLachlan's parliamentary bio, the above is the first I've heard about a rump National Labor Party in Victoria. It isn't mentioned at all on Psephos, but I suspect that might be that site's usual frustrating propensity for over-simplifying party matters. Having looked, I've found some evidence for National Labor too. What this means for the 1917 federal election is anyone's guess (it has become increasingly clear to me that once our state coverage is sorted out there will need to be a near-complete overhaul of federal election and candidates pages, because we are oversimplifying something shocking right now). I also found this, which not only reinforces that National Labor was an ongoing thing, but suggests that it survived until 1920!!
The really frustrating thing is the fact that so many secondary sources have just skated over this stuff completely. I wonder if there is an old print source that would set all this out in at least somewhat coherent terms. In the short term, for the purposes of the MPs I think I'll press on for now, referring to them as unlinked Liberals or non-Labor as necessary (this seems hardly inaccurate at any rate). The elections for this period are mostly redlinks anyway - once I get back to that point I'll be creating those too, so hopefully those pages will also be useful for some of this information.
If anyone knows of any print sources, or finds any, I can make a trip to the National Library in a few weeks, so let me know. So far I have been largely thwarted by the difficulties of search terms ("Victorian Liberal" can mean a lot of things), but will keep looking over the next few weeks. Surely there must be some kind of general reference work on Victorian politics at this time - there certainly are federally and for NSW and Queensland. Frickeg (talk) 15:23, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
I think Adam's fallen for the unfortunate tendency to simplify the bejesus out of early party politics. There was pretty clearly a liberal bloc from about 1907 (known as the Ministerialists in 1907 and 1908 and the Liberals thereafter), when the non-Labor forces decided to stop primarily beating the snot out of each other and focus on Labor, but I can't see that it was an actual party in any kind of modern context: it seems to be much more analogous to the informal blocs of 1880s and 1890s SA politics than the nascent parties of 1900s SA. It's a bit like the Kidstonites in Western Australia, where you had a kind of coherent bloc of people but not one that had any kind of party structure. In 1907, it seems to have operated as a mix of the ministry doing its own organisation in conjunction with a loose organising alliance of associated groups, and later on been a kind of mash of the parliamentary MPs and the associated organisations campaigning for people they liked. (For instance, we can start to determine party affiliation in SA from about 1906, whereas I don't think you could really say that MPs in 1914 in Victoria were "members" of the organisations that campaigned for them - just part of the loose liberal grouping.) I suspect you could be right about the Commonwealth Liberal Party: it wouldn't surprise me in the least if that had been simplified as well.
I saw the first article about the Liberal League-People's Party merger - my assumption on reading that was that the "Liberal League" was the former Commonwealth Liberal Party, and the "People's Liberal Party" was the probable result of that. The second article supports that, albeit with a part of the People's Party continuing on in the aftermath. What I might do to contribute to this is actually write up a proper Australian Labor Party split of 1916 article over the rest of the break, and map where the heck they all went in the aftermath - going over the mergers that created them in detail should hopefully clarify who exactly they merged with: determining what state the PLP and PP were in when they merged with the Nationalists might guide us as to if they need articles. I also agree about the need for a broader overhaul in going back to check these pages.
I'm really not sure about book sources: one of the things I discovered in SA was just how sloppy academics tend to get with this period. Even Dean Jaensch has written a number of things about early SA party politics that are provably not just flat-out wrong but way off, and his association with ECSA meant that some of it even wound up on their site. I would tend to disbelieve a lot of broad modern book sources unless they're significantly detailed about this period or can be corroborated against newspaper coverage from the time. One thing you might prove useful (besides a National Library trip that would be great) is forgottenbooks.com - they have a significant but random collection of old Australian public domain books, and some of their histories might be more accurate as they'd be closer to the actual time. I know there's a few broad histories of Victorian politics, and I've got a few on my reading list, though I'm not sure how much they'll gloss over this period.
I don't think it's wrong to just go through and list them as Liberals (1911 and after) or Ministerialists before that until we bash out the details - it's still broadly what they were standing as even if there was no party at that stage. The Drover's Wife (talk) 16:27, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I've been invested in this topic for a few years and I've made some tentative steps towards untangling the early and pre-party system in Victoria. I'm in Melbourne, so if you need any refs from the State Library of Victoria or local archives let me know. --Canley (talk) 00:06, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I've got some material on the Liberal parties and Economy Party, so I'll try and set up stubs at least. --Canley (talk) 00:11, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
That would be terrific! The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:08, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
It certainly would - thanks heaps! Frickeg (talk) 01:22, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

I found some of my notes. There is a bit about the "Economy Party" (a faction of the Liberals) in the article on John Bowser. I had also noted a reference from Trove around this time which gave a summary of all the principal political parties in Victoria and their platforms in The Age as of June 1917: Political Parties: The Struggle for Supremacy. It helpfully gives the apparent official names of these parties: The National Federation, The People's Liberal Party, Australian Women's National League and the Australian Labor Party. --Canley (talk) 23:14, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

There are a lot of articles from around this time talking about a proposed merger between the three non-Labor parties above (National Federation, People's Liberal Party, AWNL), as well the People's Party (which at the time seems to be quite separate from the People's Liberal Party!). --Canley (talk) 23:29, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
People's Party and People's Liberal Party talking about merging in 1913. --Canley (talk) 23:41, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
Formation of People's Liberal Party from Commonwealth Liberal Party and People's Party in 1911. --Canley (talk) 23:46, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for that, that's extremely helpful! Being that the first link is from 1917, I'm gathering the "National Federation" was the name the Victorian Labor splitters initially went by, which is useful. The main missing piece of that puzzle is when they came together as the Nationalists and how that fit in with the 1917 state election. Those two articles about the PLP and PP are really useful too, basically confirming that they did merge but a rump PP existed for some years afterwards. I feel like we could probably comfortably create a "People's Liberal Party" article at this point. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:39, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
There is a summary of the party movements just before the 1917 Victorian election in Colin Hughes' Handbook of Australian Government and Politics, which if I remember correctly identifies the districts contested and won by the three "National" Labor dissidents and how the other parties formed. Hughes calls the Nationalist Party the "National Party" throughout the book by the way, and there are some other odd party naming protocols—as with some of the other academic works mentioned earlier, I don't generally take the party names in the Handbook as gospel. I don't have the book with me but I do have it at home and I will check tonight. --Canley (talk) 03:29, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
Actually I did have a scan of that page with me. Here is what it says:

The 'Economy' faction of the Liberal Party led by Bowser contested the election as an independent group, and Bowser delivered a separate policy statement. The Victorian Farmers' Union, formed in 1916, also contested the election as a separate group. The Liberal Party, which gradually became known as the National Party followed the formation of the federal National Party early in 1917 (although it did not absorb any dissident Labor members), was supported by its three organisations, together with the National Federation with which three breakaway Labor members were associated. The campaigns of these groups were co-ordinated by a State Campaign Council.

The parties listed as competing are National, National Labor, Victorian Farmers' Union, and Independents (including one Progressive Farmer, two Temperance, one Independent Nationalist, three Independent Labor and one Progressive Labor). The three National Labor seats were: Bendigo West (David Smith), Gippsland North (James McLachlan) and Maryborough (David Weir)—Gippsland North was uncontested. --Canley (talk) 06:23, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
That's fantastic. I'm a bit confused about the "was supported by its three organisations, plus the National Federation" - which three are we talking about at that point? Do you know if the National Federation and National Labor Party are the same group? The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:35, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
Shouldn't that be Alfred Richard Outtrim in Maryborough? David Weir represented the Queensland seat of the same name. Otherwise, this is great information. Frickeg (talk) 06:47, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, yep, I looked it up on WP, forgot it was the QLD one! --Canley (talk) 07:42, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

There appears to be at least one other, later, Liberal Party we haven't yet dealt with too. Psephos has them emerging in 1924 and says they "split with the Nationalists over electoral redistribution". They appear to have been led by Oswald Snowball initially, with Alfred Farthing, William Everard, Henry Angus and Alfred Billson comprising the rest of the party. By 1927 there are only two Liberals: Billson retires, Snowball, Everard and Angus are now running as independent Nationalists, while Farthing is again a Nationalist but now loses to another Liberal, Frederick Forrest. The other Liberal is also a newcomer, Burnett Gray. In 1929 there are also two Liberals, Forrest (described as "Progressive Liberal") and Gray (described as "Australian Liberal"). Forrest died in 1930 and Gray was defeated in 1932 as an "independent Liberal". This is what Psephos tells us.

Looking at the Parliament website, Forrest and Gray are both described as "Australian Liberals", while the Snowball group [7] are simply said to have been "not endorsed 1924 after voting against redistribution bill, rejoined Nats". So far it seems likely that we have two separate groups, the Snowball group and the Forrest-Gray group.

However, the plot thickens. Here we have the Progressive Liberal League (formation here) saying they will support the Snowball group, and we will see later they are the same organisation behind Forrest and Gray. These are also described as "Liberals" as some sort of coherent group.

Fast forward to 1927. There is a new Liberal Party. This is the Australian Liberal Party and runs quite a lot of candidates, including Forrest and Gray. Forrest and Gray are also described as Progressive Liberals. In a wrap-up the Argus calls them "Australian Liberals".

And so to 1929. This associates the two as "Liberals". This describes them as "the independent metropolitan members, Messrs Forrest (Prog. Lib., Caulfield) and Gray (Aus. Lib., St. Kilda)." Here Forrest declares himself "not an independent" and describes the "Liberals" as voting certain ways. Here is Gray outlining Liberal policy. Here they are described as in concert. They are definitely given distinct labels (Prog Lib, Aust Lib) though.

In 1932, Gray is still described as a Liberal candidate.

As I see it, the main points I take from all this are:

  • There are definitely two groups here, and one of them (Forrest-Gray) was definitely a party of some kind. The other probably was too, at least in a loose sense, and both warrant articles. Australian Liberal Party (Victoria) could be an appropriate name for Forrest-Gray. Not sure about the Snowball lot - possibly "Progressive Liberal Party"?
  • The "Progressive Liberal"/"Australian Liberal" thing is a real mystery. What to do?

Any further suggestions? Frickeg (talk) 06:45, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

The second link here, a 1970s PhD thesis, is very helpful. Apparently the People's Liberal Party and the People's Party were respectively the metropolitan and country branches of what formed the Liberal Party, and together with the AWNL they comprised at least a somewhat united group. It also has a good account of the Economy Party and all the 1920s stuff. I will try and get some party articles up on this stuff fairly soon. Frickeg (talk) 23:18, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
I've written an article on the Snowball group and called it, for the moment, Redistribution Liberals. I don't believe they were really a party in the strictest sense, but they were definitely notable and operated as a recognisable bloc. A better name for them would be great - they don't appear to have ever used "party" as part of their name, though, which limits our options. Frickeg (talk) 23:45, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
That thesis is an incredible find - thank you! I'm going to read it end to end before I comment further but it's very interesting and helpful so far. I'm good with the way you've approached this: I can't think of a better name at this point than Redistribution Liberals and I don't think there's any way to cover non-Labor Victorian politics of this era without articles on these significant, distinct but looser blocs. The Drover's Wife (talk) 09:49, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

ANU digitisation of Dean Jaensch works and others

I hadn't noticed, but the ANU have been digitising and making a freely available a massive bunch of past research materials, which includes most of Dean Jaensch's books on Northern Territory politics if anyone is interested. There is a lot else there so I'm guessing that's not the only gem in there. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:49, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Oireachtas template

I've nominated the template Template:S-par/ie/oi for deletion. It relates to the way that members of the Irish parliament are represented in a peculiar infobox. The discussion here may interest this project as the Australian Senate is cited in the rationale. Laurel Lodged (talk) 17:29, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Australian head of state

An RfC on this topic has been commenced at WikiProject Politics, where most of the participants seem to be non-Australian. Not that non-Australians are exempt from comment on Australian matters, just that their contributions are less informed. --Pete (talk) 16:20, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

The result of the discussion was "It is unarguable that the Australian head of state is currently Queen Elizabeth II....we're concerned with the identity of the titular head of state, and that is, unambiguously, the Queen, as the discussion clearly shows" AusLondonder (talk) 00:25, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Team up to bring an article to GA class

Eden George was a colourful character; he had a career as politician and businessman in New Zealand and New South Wales. I'm looking to team up with an Australian editor to bring the article to GA class; please comment on its talk page if you'd like to help. Schwede66 18:05, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

For no apparent reason, a great comment by Archie Cameron

I'm reading a biography of Arthur Fadden and came across this quote from Archie Cameron:

Fadden decided against moving into the Lodge after Archie Cameron said he would “scarcely have enough time to wear a track from the backdoor to the shithouse before you’ll be out.”

I'll add it to the relevant articles. --Roisterer (talk) 02:36, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Danig Party

I was just reading the just archived discussion re Danig. I did a search to see if anything new - apparently an AGM in Adelaide on 24 April. JennyOz (talk) 03:44, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Anyone willing to pop along? I notice they now have a few policy statements, looks like garden variety centre-right populism stuff. Lankiveil (speak to me) 05:37, 23 April 2016 (UTC).
With an interesting strain of environmentalism thrown in. Still no clue about the name though ... Frickeg (talk) 23:17, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Categories on Secretaries of Departments

I'm troubled about the lack of consistency in the above category names. Defence and Finance are fine, but they're the only two that are.

If it's Australian Department of Defence, why is it Australian Government Education Department and not simply Australian Department of Education? Why are the words Department and Education reversed, and why does Government need to be there at all? Same for Health, Immigration and Vets' Affairs.

Then there's Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, with no mention of Australia, even though the article is Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (Australia), to distinguish it from Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (New Zealand). Why?

Finally, we have Department of the Treasury of Australia, rather than Australian Department of the Treasury. Wtf?

Who dreamt up this schemozzle, and can we please make them all like the first two? -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 10:21, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Fairly straightforward requested move, people just need to agree on a place to put them all. [[:Secretaries of the Department of [Whatever] (Australia)]] would be my preference, matching the articles themselves. The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:29, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
I'd say at least the word 'Government' seems redundant. Some depts don't seem to have a Cat:Sec eg DFAT and A-Gs have theirs listed in a table on article page. Immigration now renamed. Sorry to be droll but as Jim Hacker asked, [[8]] "Can they all type?" JennyOz (talk) 07:24, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Australian Defence Veterans Party

On Candidates of the next Australian federal election article, I was going to change ADVP to VP re party article (recently changed name to Veterans Party) but..., on checking the AEC Amendment of 7 March 2016, it was only the Registered Abbreviation, not the Name of Party that was changed. The name of party is still full name (Australian Defence Veterans Party) but the Registered Abbreviation has changed from ADVP to Veterans Party (no apostrophe). Amendment to abbrev [9]. The previous abbrev here [10]. What should we call it, Veterans or stick to ADVP? JennyOz (talk) 08:22, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

You're right, it should be the full name. I started the ADVP article so I got the notice that it had been moved, which I was a bit perplexed about as I also subscribe to the AEC mailing list and had seen the notice about the abbreviation change but not a full name change. I forgot to follow it up though. I think Hshook (talk · contribs) might have misinterpreted the abbreviation notice. I will move it back. --Canley (talk) 08:37, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
Thanks Canley JennyOz (talk) 09:35, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Jason Falinski

Is Falinski notable yet per WP:NPOL? I notice that the article has been created by a single purpose account that seems to have it in for Bronwyn Bishop. Lankiveil (speak to me) 05:55, 23 April 2016 (UTC).

It's one of those cases where I wouldn't have created it yet, but since there's a 100% chance that he'll be a federal MP in three months the argument over whether to delete it is a bit pointless. He's a reasonably prominent figure anyway as a result of having been a public political figure within the Liberals and in local government since the 1990s, and excluding his entire candidacy for Mackellar there are still more sources about him than about many, many BLPs Wikipedia has - and with his candidacy there are tons, probably more than we have for some current MPs. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:38, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
After long experience of these, and many years as a hardliner against these kinds of cases, I've come around to the conclusion that we should WP:IAR these cases. Technically, no, he shouldn't have an article yet, but it's simply not worth going through all the drama of an AfD when chances are it won't be necessary. In the event of some sort of unseen boilover it can be deleted/debated then - and as TDW says, in this case there is an argument for notability anyway, especially from his presidency of the Young Libs. I wouldn't necessarily roll out the wikilinks just yet, but I wouldn't bother reverting people who did. Frickeg (talk) 10:07, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
This is all pretty rhetorical but here goes... When the Falinski article went up, I was surprised/confused re the template, firstly as it says the author is familiar with guidelines (but has no previous edits) and secondly, the template Note says not to be used for BLPs. (Crikey - the template has just been removed whilst I wrote this.) Endorsements of endorsements... Falinski said (on ABC) after the preselection that he wouldn't say much yet because state executive had to confirm the preselection. The Telegraph [11] this week also reported he was under a gag til officially endorsed. So Falinski is already on Candidates of the next Australian federal election article but he is not yet 'official'. Sudmalis (Gilmore) has been in the news in trouble with a possible threat to her re-endorsement, which is due on 1 May, but she appears on Candidates. Yet we don't have Hendy there for Eden-Monaro. (Saw on telly, J Bishop was down on cusp of their seats with them both the during week.) Is 1 May for all NSW Lib official endorsements or are they done piecemeal? Also, on Tim Wilson article he is even already in a politicians category. Is a candidate or a HR commissioner a politician? (And according to Wilson's article he is 'still' resigned from Lib party. Presumably, he rejoined after leaving AHRC but where can we find a ref for such?) And who knows, maybe Bronwyn will have the preselection overturned or she might even run as an independent for Mackellar or maybe the Senate and we will have to add her to Candidates page. JennyOz (talk) 08:08, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
I do find myself agreeing that it's probably best to turn a blind eye to this, but at the same time User:Aurevoirbronny who created the article and linked it in various places is clearly not a new user, despite only editing these pages. But if they don't continue to edit I don't see any point on losing sleep over it. If Falinski loses his endorsement or is not elected we can always have a look at this article later. Lankiveil (speak to me) 01:58, 25 April 2016 (UTC).

Bridget McKenzie

Can we have some eyes on the Bridget McKenzie article? It's being targeted with some COI edits from someone stating to be acting on McKenzie's behalf. -The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:53, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

44th Australian Parliament

Is this article 44th Australian Parliament worth retaining? It seems to have been abandoned. It has death of Randall but not Hastie's election, still Abbott as PM, Hockey as treasurer, etc. Does it serve any purpose not available elsewhere? Also there seems no precedent 43rd, 42nd. JennyOz (talk) 09:29, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm all for deleting. It's an out of date mushing together of things already covered better elsewhere. The Drover's Wife (talk) 10:09, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
Hmm, yeah. I'd not be opposed to some sort of similar page, adapted from 110th United States Congress or something, but for it to be useful it would take a lot of work and really does need to be regularly updated to be of any use at all. Frickeg (talk) 13:13, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
But that series of US pages are just their version of our Members of the Australian House of Representatives pages - the separate ones serve absolutely no purpose. The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:36, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
Yes, but they also include things like a summary of the events of the parliament (which we have nowhere), a summary of legislation passed (ditto), and a mini-timeline of party switches (which I've actually played with for us but never figured out where to put). I wouldn't suggest actually duplicating the members lists, just linking to them. But as I said, a really huge project and one I'm certainly not ready to take on right now, and the Australian page in its current state is utterly useless. If it were a work in progress it would be one thing, but it seems to be abandoned, as Jenny said. Frickeg (talk) 14:57, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
How would the summary of events of the parliament and the summary of legislation passed differ from Abbott Government and Turnbull Government? It isn't, as in the US, as if the minority can get things through without the government's support, so either they introduced it and it passed or they introduced it and failed and either way it fits in those articles. The Drover's Wife (talk) 15:56, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
Wow. I haven't looked at those pages in ages, and they are looking pretty great. Huge kudos to those who've been maintaining them. At the same time, I do think there's a difference between the history of the parliament and the history of the government. There is little place in those articles for the activities of the opposition or the minor parties, or for providing a simple chronological account of the events of the parliament. Obviously ours would differ a lot from the US ones based on how our system works, but if our coverage of actual legislation ever expands beyond "practically non-existent", similar pages would be a good hub. There would inevitably be some crossover, but nothing serious. Frickeg (talk) 22:47, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

NSW Election Archive

I'm just wondering if anyone knows what happened to the New South Wales Electoral History Archive that had all NSW election results online from 1856-2003? It seems to have been taken down, along with the NSW Electoral Atlas. I'd be very disappointed if it was a deliberate move and not a mistake. Those were vital pieces of Australian electoral history. Kirsdarke01 (talk) 08:09, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Yikes, you're right! Let us be optimistic, however: Antony may have taken the recent website redesign as an opportunity to update the archive to include 2011 and 2015 (it already had 2007). I know there were plans to include the LC some time ago, but who knows about that. It might be worth shooting Antony an email to see what the situation is? Frickeg (talk) 08:14, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
Okay, hopefully it's only a temporary thing and not some ridiculous cost-cutting measure or something of the like. Also I seem to be able to access it through the Internet Archive, so that should be able to provide the results for now (I'll move on to NSW results along with Qld and WA just in case). I also have access to Colin Hughes' book on the matter for results back to 1890. Kirsdarke01 (talk) 08:19, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Salim Mehajer

Can we please have some more eyes on the Selim Mehajer article? There is an anon editor who insists on reverting in obsessive detail about past traffic accidents and every random shell company he's a director of. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:56, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

I just reverted for an entirely different reason, WP:WEIGHT - the first thing that I noticed was the expansion of this article from 14,987 characters to 34,195 characters on something that doesn't deserve anywhere near over half the total content. Timeshift (talk) 09:03, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Australian Liberty Alliance

Anyone willing to take a stab at creating a full article for the Australian Liberty Alliance? I was semi-surprised to see that at the moment it's just a redirect to the Q Society of Australia article, which doesn't even mention the party. (I'll probably chip in at some point.) IgnorantArmies (talk) 14:33, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

I did this a few days ago. I was getting into a bit of an edit war with someone who was adding external links to the ALA candidates on the candidate list, but I was reverting them in favour of the wikilink, which I hadn't realised was just a redirect to Q Society. --Canley (talk) 13:48, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
Cheers, I'd completely forgotten about this. IgnorantArmies (talk) 15:46, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Division of Fenner

I see that this the Division of Fraser has been moved to this title. My understanding is that it is generally preferred to have separate articles. In due course a Division of Fraser in Victoria may also need to be created as well.--Grahame (talk) 02:32, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Agreed, I have restored the content from Division of Fenner to the redirect at Division of Fraser. --Canley (talk) 02:57, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Nickolas Varvaris being whitewashed, WP:COI, attention appreciated

Please see here for msg I left at Talk:202.14.81.51 (Australian Parliamentary Library). Eyes at Nickolas Varvaris needed. Thanks. Timeshift (talk) 07:40, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Good catch. Added to watchlist. Many contributions by same IP address, including some sparring with Drovers Wife. Is there a pattern in the contributions? --Pete (talk) 07:48, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, it's used to whitewash MP articles! Timeshift (talk) 08:06, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

I've just blocked this account, and I'd suggest that similar issues be reported at WP:AIV, WP:AN3 or an admin who you believe is online for a quick and controversy-minimising response. Nick-D (talk) 08:27, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

202.14.81.51 has been blocked for two weeks. If we're going down the block route already, i'd go the whole way and along with 202.14.81.49 (the other APH IP) block them until July 3... I don't see any reason against such a temporary block apart from it being sorta-kinda-but-not-really preemptive. Timeshift (talk) 08:28, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

I don't see any problematic editing in 202.14.81.49 (talk · contribs)'s recent history, so there are no grounds to block it. Admins are strongly discouraged from making pre-emptive blocks. Nick-D (talk) 08:32, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
202.14.81.49 is edit warring at the Nickolas Varvaris article now. Timeshift (talk) 23:46, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Continued IP attempts to remove content from Nickolas Varvaris are still occurring. Can we get an article semiprot please? Anyone? Timeshift (talk) 12:44, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata

I have been working on Wikidata a lot recently, and while I don't think it's at a point where it can be an election results archive yet, I have been doing what I can to set up as much information and consistency as possible on federal and state electorates, and will move on to putting in MP lists and so on. I am working on cleaning up all Australian locality data as well, with a view to being able to query the suburbs/localities/postcodes in a division, district, or LGA eventually.

I just imported the AEC enrolment figures released yesterday, here is a query which lists all current divisions, their state/territory, and the enrolment as of the close of rolls on 23 May 2016:

Some other queries:

--Canley (talk) 12:58, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Neat! I had been trying to work out what Wikidata is useful for :-) I've also seen discussion somewhere about being able to populate the Wikidata, then have the infobox largely generated from it, but it seemed to only be meaningful for two or three fields, which seemed like more bother than help. Well done. --Scott Davis Talk 07:34, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
Thanks! I haven't yet tackled calling Wikidata items in infoboxes, but will try and work it out soon. I think my main driver behind this initiative is the upcoming 2016 census, and the thought of updating ~8,000 Australian place articles with the population field (and there are still many 2006 census references)—if the inbox can just pull the latest population figure, be it census or estimate, from Wikidata then these wouldn't have to be updated every five years, as long as the dataset is imported when released. Same with electoral redistributions, basic election info, and recent local council mergers in NSW—probably not possible to have a fully automatic system yet, but having the data in a structured format that can be queried to produce worklists and so on should save a lot of time and effort. I have seen a lot of requests around the web and on Wikipedia for electorate/suburb or LGA/postcode lookups, and while querying Wikidata is quite difficult at the moment, templates of this sort of query can be worked out and saved or adapted. You can also work out interesting trivia like youngest Australian Senator, or things named after someone and so on. --Canley (talk) 03:05, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I would be very reluctant to use Wikidata for ABS population data because of the "state suburb" messes. I think the 2016 census would be a great opportunity to go back and do what we should have done back in the day (and which Cowdy001 has been doing fabulous work on in South Australia) and actually footnoting each population figure to explain the difference between the place-the-ABS-is-getting-population-figures-from and the place-that-actually-exists. I know this would be a hideous amount of work but our articles would be enormously more accurate for it. I can see the benefit for things like postcodes and electoral boundaries though, since these are heinous to keep updated and don't need further explanation. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:27, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
Yes, that "State Suburb" saga did cause me to rethink that aspect of using the ABS data, but I thought what was coming out of that discussion was that the population census data was fine (or close enough given the distribution of people outside the main urban centre)—the issue was the nomenclature of the locality type (as suburb or otherwise) and more importantly the area using the ABS SSC boundaries. I would suggest with Wikidata we could probably use qualifiers to distinguish between bounded locality population/State Suburb (SSC) and the Urban Centre/Locality (UC/L) population for the same location entity, and footnote them accordingly? It's a lot of work one way or another, and the data won't be released for many months yet, so it's a discussion for another time and place. --Canley (talk) 05:49, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Auto-assessment of article classes

Following a recent discussion at WP:VPR, there is consensus for an opt-in bot task that automatically assesses the class of articles based on classes listed for other project templates on the same page. In other words, if WikiProject A has evaluated an article to be C-class and WikiProject B hasn't evaluated the article at all, such a bot task would automatically evaluate the article as C-class for WikiProject B.

If you think auto-assessment might benefit this project, consider discussing it with other members here. For more information or to request an auto-assessment run, please visit User:BU RoBOT/autoassess. This is a one-time message to alert projects with over 1,000 unassessed articles to this possibility. ~ RobTalk 22:18, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

2016 election candidates of questionable notability

Alexandra Kaur Bhathal in Division of Batman has been created... noteable or not? Timeshift (talk) 20:27, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

I don't think so... it's been nominated for deletion. StAnselm (talk) 23:50, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Julian Leeser, Jason Falinski, and particularly Duncan McGauchie for AfD? All recently created with a clear orientation to their election candidacies. Timeshift (talk) 08:25, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Also I just came across Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jason Falinski, and I found the keep result rationale of 'almost certain to be elected, see recent UK examples' rather disturbing and a dangerous new precedent. Anyone up for challenging it? Timeshift (talk) 08:34, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Falinski, in my opinion, probably passes regardless of his candidacy. McGauchie and Leeser almost certainly don't, but I would urge against AfDs at this stage. I have come to the firm view (after many years on the opposite side) that AfDs for shoo-ins are a waste of everyone's time. I would probably still !vote delete on them, and certainly wouldn't encourage the creation of articles on candidates, but I think having big worked-up discussions about these things when the whole thing will be cut-and-dried in less than a month now (very possibly the AfD could run almost that long anyway!) is a less-than-ideal use of our time. Frickeg (talk) 11:29, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
The use of single purpose throw-away accounts to create the similar-looking Leeser, Falinski and McGauchie articles is worrying. The edit pattern of the accounts used to create the Leeser and Falinski articles is basically identical, and I've blocked both accounts in the hope of stopping this by catching a common underlying IP. Nick-D (talk) 11:45, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Falinski was a rare case where he was at least borderline notable in his own right and absolutely certain of election. I wouldn't have created it until afterwards to save the predictable drama, but there was no point deleting it. As Frickeg says, deleting shoo-in candidates is a waste of everybody's time in insisting on having a big fight to delete an article on someone there is absolutely zero doubt you're going to have to undelete in a month. Leeser is a similar case to Falinski - he's been a conservative intellectual in public life forever and is absolutely guaranteed of election. McGauchie, on the other hand, is absolutely not, and should be nominated for deletion like Alex Bhathal was - he's a 50-50 case, and we can undelete if he actually beats Damian Drum.

This said, there has definitely been an upshot in vanity articles this election, especially from (but not limited to) the Greens, and I am all for deleting any and all articles on people that are a) only notable for running for office, and b) are in unwinnable or marginal seats. I've nominated quite a few for deletion myself, and they've all basically been WP:SNOW cases - I think McGauchie would fall into that category as well (although it's starting to cut it a bit fine to bother). The Drover's Wife (talk) 11:51, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Electorate maps

I've been thinking for a while now about the locator maps of federal electoral divisions (and state/territory districts). We currently have four generations of maps in the federal division articles:

  • Barrylb (talk · contribs) produced maps for every federal division in 2010
  • Canley (talk · contribs) (me) produced maps of the redistributions in South Australia and Victoria in 2013
  • PhilipTerryGraham (talk · contribs) has just produced maps of the redistribution in New South Wales, and redone Tasmania
  • Adam Carr's freely-licenced maps from Psephos are used in some of the summary lists
  • Barrylb map of Perth (2010)
    Barrylb map of Perth (2010)
  • Canley map of Melbourne (2013)
    Canley map of Melbourne (2013)
  • PhilipTerryGraham map of Bennelong, NSW (2016)
    PhilipTerryGraham map of Bennelong, NSW (2016)
  • Adam Carr map of seat outcome in NSW (2013)
    Adam Carr map of seat outcome in NSW (2013)

Without any prejudice or preference, I'm sure we would all agree it would be ideal if the maps were consistent in terms of style, colours, typography, resolution and image format. All boundary data is now easily available and has an open licence which makes things a lot easier. Philip's maps are quite different in colour scheme to the previous ones, but I quite like it. Note that Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps has a suggested map style template which we should consider for consistency over the whole project.

I know it's a big ask to change the style and reproduce dozens of these maps, so I would be interested to know what GIS software/setup Barry and Philip used for their maps, so that myself and others can reproduce the maps if needed and can share data and style sheets if required. The maps I did were made using Mapbox's TileMill software, in which you could import a Shapefile and use CartoCSS to style the map. Mapbox recently deprecated TileMill, and replaced it with Mapbox Studio, which should be able to do the same thing but I am having some difficulties getting my head around it.

The other matter I was thinking of was the possibility of adding richer detail to the maps using freely-licenced PSMA, Wikidata and OpenStreetMap data—depending on the size/zoom level, these could potentially contain street- or major road-level detail as well as names of towns/suburbs in the electorate.

Anyway, I just wanted to start a discussion and get some consensus on a consistent style and approach so please comment below on what you would like for electorate maps going forward.

--Canley (talk) 04:41, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

You might be incredibly surprised at this, but I literally just used MS paint to create my maps. I took each map of the electoral boundaries from the Australian Electoral Commission website, stitched them together in a single image, and just drew over them. Probably the most inefficient and annoying way to make a map, but hey, i made it work! XD Sorry about the delay on making maps for Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland, though. I promise I'll have them done before the election! I generally oppose the idea of adding detalis such as roads or city names to political maps; if any sensible voter wanted to see the details, they'd go to the AEC website, not Wikipedia. It's important for political maps on Wikipedia to locate the electorate/county/riding/district, but not so important to locate landmarks or details within those political boundaries. My maps were based on the same attitudes and graphical style of political maps of counties and states in the United States - solid colours, with white or transparent backgrounds and lines; the only details are the boundaries themselves. That's my opinion on the core style; other things like what colors we should use is something I'll let you guys discuss. Philip Terry Graham 05:09, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Ha ha, MS Paint, no way! I would never have guessed that! I'm even more impressed! If you need any help I can reproduce the style for other states, let me know if there's some you want me to do. We can redo them later depending on what the consensus is for the style/detail here. --Canley (talk) 05:14, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
I think the first three are all pretty good: Philip's colour scheme is a bit garish but otherwise looks very smart, Canley's is great as well (although the dot on Melbourne at a spot within the electorate is a bit odd?), and I kind of like having the names of the surrounding electorates for context [I would struggle to pick that as a map of Melbourne] but think it looks a little bit ugly as done in the first one. The Drover's Wife (talk) 11:59, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
I used some custom PHP scripts (and a Postgres database if I recall correctly) that I wrote to generate the maps somewhat automatically. I didn't produce any more maps after the 2010 because the map data was not available with suitable licenses (due to some quirk they were available in 2010 on data.gov.au with a suitable license) but if I can confirm that licenses are now compatible with Wikipedia I could see if I could dig out my old scripts, and make them publicly available. Barrylb (talk) 04:51, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
Cool, that would be great! I have a Postgres/PHP setup as well so I could probably duplicate the set up. The geodata on the AEC site looks to be under a fairly restrictive NC licence, but the PSMA Administrative Boundaries dataset contains all federal and state electoral divisions and is under a CCBY 4.0 licence. --Canley (talk) 06:56, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
I've just about finished regenerating all the federal maps. I am intending to upload all 150 maps shortly. It will take me a few more days to document the process and setup and make everything available. Barrylb (talk) 09:49, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
Wow, thank you so much, I see you have started rolling them out. I look forward to seeing your process, but take your time... --Canley (talk) 13:58, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
No worries. You can follow along at https://github.com/barrylb/mapping where I've started with the setup instructions. Barrylb (talk) 02:42, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
Significant upload of rendering scripts just now. Includes rendering of Queensland state divisions as well as federal. Barrylb (talk) 12:17, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Royal Commission article naming

One thing I've wanted to do for a while is put a bit of effort into articles on past Royal Commissions, but one problem is working out what to call the damn articles in any vaguely consistent sense. In recent times, at least the federal government has made this a bit easier (e.g. Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse), but historically and particularly at the state level, some of these are a bit more unwieldy (e.g. "Royal Commission on alleged improper practices and improper refusal to co-operate with the Victoria Police Force on the part of persons employed in the Postmaster-General's Department in Victoria in relation to illegal gambling", "Royal Commission into whether there has been any corrupt or criminal Conduct by any Western Australian Police officer" or things like "Royal Commission appointed to inquire into and report upon the suitability of present laws relating to racing and trotting in Western Australia in their application to the allocation of surplus TAB monies as provided in the Totalisator Agency Betting Board Act 1960-70 in particular and other related acts and issues". Does anyone have any suggestions for naming articles on these sorts of ones? The Drover's Wife (talk) 07:51, 2 July 2016 (UTC)R

I'd probably go with a format like [State] [Year] "Royal Commission on/into..." [Issue summed up in no more than 10 words]. For example, that one in Victoria it could be "Victorian [Year] Royal Commission on Illegal Gambling", perhaps? Although I guess the wording has to be careful so that they're not directly accusatory or not NPOV. Kirsdarke01 (talk) 08:16, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Ferguson Left

Can someone please look at a whole bunch of edits placed by an IP here? [12] See also edit summary [13] The editor has a blatant COI (and posted about it triumphantly on a private group on Facebook), but some of the extra content may be salvageable. As a Labor member myself I'd rather not get involved. Orderinchaos 03:17, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Senate terms

Do we have an authoritative reference for the terms of senators around a double dissolution? I have found at least one Wikipedia article for a senator who did not retain his seat that had his term end on 2 July. I have changed that to 9 May (the date on which the Governor-General dissolved parliament), but don't have a reference to explicitly confirm that we did not have anyone who could be correctly addressed as "Senator" in the period 10 May–30 June. Then there is the question of whether new senators' terms began on 1 July (or are only backdated to then for the purpose of determining their expiry), 2 July (election day) or some future date such as when the writs are returned or they are sworn in. --Scott Davis Talk 02:12, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Antony Green's article on the Senate terms confirms new senators' term start will be backdated (but only by a day) to 1 July 2016. For guidance on the end of terms, have a look at the Parliamentary Handbook, where there are several senators whose terms ended at the 1987 double dissolution, such as Sir John Carrick, Ruth Coleman and Stan Collard (who all retired); also John Siddons and David Vigor (who were defeated)—they are all listed as ending on 5 June 1987 which is the date of the dissolution. Also note that the Parliamentary Handbook does list the election date as the term start at a double dissolution, with a note about the backdating to 1 July.--Canley (talk) 02:36, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
Thank you. I had looked at the APH website, but I got to Odgers' Australian Senate Practice which says "The terms of senators elected following a dissolution of the Senate commence on 1 July preceding the date of the general election." Which would have meant we could have had two sets of senators simultaneously for 10 months without realising it if the election had been a week earlier. Term starting on election day is consistent with when the lower house terms start. --Scott Davis Talk 04:10, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Australian party colour templates

Hello, I have edited some templates for party colours in Australia, taking colours from official party logos, websites and branding for greater accuracy. This can be most clearly seen on the Australian House of Representatives article.

I also edited templates named 'Australian politics/party colours...', Template:Australian politics/party colours/Greens, for example, I did this to change the colour codes there to the same colour codes used in the templates mentioned above, for consistency across the wiki. The current colours being used for these templates are wildly inaccurate in some places (a solid red rather than the red used in the Labor logo). However, these were reverted and I was asked to seek consensus for these edits, despite my protests about WP:DRNC.

What do people think about these edits? Can consensus be formed? JackWilfred (talk) 02:00, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

The problem with fiddling with these is that there are so many of them that they can easily wind up clashing with another party. For instance, the Greens and the Nationals both use the colour green, and need to be differentiated more than we need to be pedantic about which particular hue of Green they most use - and that's not even getting into the abundance of micro and historical parties.
Can you demonstrate (in colour, not in text) your proposed changes here so they can be easily checked against other parties that might plausibly clash? The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:49, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
The whole name/colour template system needs a cleanup, I agree. I'm slightly colour blind so won't be much help with opinion on colours matching logos I'm afraid, but I have dabbled in all the electoral templates enough to advise on the technical aspects of it all. I agree with The Drover's Wife, I think we need to see a table of all the current colours, and proposed colours with the rationale to change (such as logo colour or main website colour). I can try to generate one tonight with all the name and colour templates in the Australian politics namespace, and will put a link to it here. --Canley (talk) 06:00, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Thanks Canley - that would be very useful as a reference, as it's not the first time we've had to have this discussion and would be much easier than cross-checking against random results tables. The Drover's Wife (talk) 07:05, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
It is years and years since we've had a proper discussion about this, so it would be great to do so and having them in front of us would be great. While we're talking about this - is there a way to unify them a bit more? Currently we have the [[:Template:Australian politics/party colours]] covering everything (for automated use, i.e. election results boxes), and then the individual ones like Template:Australian politics/party colours/Labor because for some reason the first template doesn't work when you try to use it on, say, member lists. It would be really nice to get it all together into the first, multi-party template. Anyone know a way to do that? Frickeg (talk) 13:25, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Colours clashing was one thing I was sure to avoid.   The Greens and   the Nationals have colours that are more different, and   Labor and   Katter's are sufficiently different. The only place I could see that could run into trouble are the CLP and NXT, but both of those use orange as their official colour and I haven't edited either of them.
Another thing I was proposing which I ran into trouble with is my proposal to ensure both types of templates I'm talking about are the same. Look at Template:Australian politics/party colours/Nationals and Template:National_Party_of_Australia/meta/color. The former one uses   #008000 and the latter one uses   #156144. The latter one is preferred because it's taken directly from the website. I'm proposing that for each party we replace the colour code in the former template to a link to the latter template, so that both templates always refer to the same colour.
Unfortunately, what we can't do is use only one type of template, as they work in slightly different ways. One is used for the background of table cells, while the other one is used on pages and in colour boxes for pages such as Australian House of Representatives. JackWilfred (talk) 16:01, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
This generally sounds reasonable to me, but there are still potential historical clashes - like, every Labor splinter party over the years and the Communist Party and a few other parties all use shades of red, so it'd be good to check your proposed alternatives against all the usual suspects there to make sure we're not, like, giving Labor and the Communists the same party shading. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:00, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
Lack of consensus alert: There doesn't seem to be a consensus yet as we are still in the middle of 'a good discussion we haven't had in years' so I'm reverting JackWilfred's change of colours made 12 hours ago. Alex Sims (talk) 11:13, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Apologies for jumping ahead there. I just thought that as conversation has gone pretty quickly here we could move on. JackWilfred (talk) 13:06, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
How does "this topic is worth revisiting but we need to compare the old and proposed side-by-side to check for potential clashes" by multiple editors equal "you're right mate, just go do it"? The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:34, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
I'll be honest, this is the first time I've really had to get proper consensus for changes like this, so I'm unsure of when consensus is actually attained, as it were. My usual method of working is to do stuff, and then solve any problems that come up as they come up. As I said, apologies. JackWilfred (talk) 20:45, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Maps

I have been separately playing around with colours for "divisions by party" maps (not yet finished). Perhaps see what you think of the colours I've used below.

Barrylb (talk) 03:51, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Nice but garish. Is it possible to alter the alpha channel to reduce the intensity of the shading? Well done and thanks. --Scott Davis Talk 04:21, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
I've reduced intensity for the Melbourne map (right most image). Not sure if it is quite right just yet... has a bit of a "washed out" feeling. Barrylb (talk) 11:12, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Belinda Neal

Anyone feel like doing some cleaning up at Belinda Neal? Someone has managed to turn it into quite the puff piece (!). The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:37, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Moving pages to align with new ministry names

I'm going to move the various Defence Ministries to align with the Second Turnbull Ministry. This is consistent with previous renamings of these Ministries.
WAS -> IS

  • Minister for Defence Material (Australia) -> Minister for Defence Industry (Australia)
  • Minister for Defence Personnel (Australia) - redirects to Minister for Defence (Australia) -> Minister for Defence Personnel (Australia)
  • Minister for Defence Science and Personnel (Australia) -> Minister for Defence Personnel (Australia)

Unfortunately Minister for Defence Personnel (Australia) already exists as a redirect to Minister for Defence (Australia). Are there any administrators about who can delete Minister for Defence Personnel (Australia) to enable the re-naming of Minister for Defence Science and Personnel (Australia)?

Cheers haydn_likes_carpet (talk) 01:06, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

 Done --Scott Davis Talk 14:14, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
Thanks! haydn_likes_carpet (talk) 04:19, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Newish party did not field candidates, article disappeared

Do we have a policy/opinion about the article for a registered party that did not field candidates this month? I was rather surprised to find that the article for The Australian Mental Health Party became a redirect to a list of parties [14] with no AFD. The party logo has a fair use rationale to be used in the party article, but is now tagged for speedy deletion. I am on holidays with limited available bandwidth to do much about it. --Scott Davis Talk 14:19, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

This is why Frickeg's argument that registered parties should only be considered intrinsically notable after an election swayed me: the modern microparty fad is invariably seeing at least one of these cases where the party gets registered but falls over before even contesting an election, with no media to otherwise establish notability and no candidates to direct preferences to warrant trying to keep articles in order to explain election results. I'm all for deleting this class of article. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:01, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Notice to participants at this page about adminship

Many participants here create a lot of content, have to evaluate whether or not a subject is notable, decide if content complies with BLP policy, and much more. Well, these are just some of the skills considered at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship.

So, please consider taking a look at and watchlisting this page:

You could be very helpful in evaluating potential candidates, and even finding out if you would be a suitable RfA candidate.

Many thanks and best wishes,

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:47, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Safe Schools Coalition Australia

This article is being consistently targeted by a couple of hard right folks from the ACL. Can we have a few more neutral eyes on it? The Drover's Wife (talk) 15:09, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia currently looking for new admins - apart from Canley do we have any other active ozpol admins? Nominate?

Apart from User:Canley who while good can't do it all, is there an easy way to see if there are any other active WikiProject Australian politics article watchers/contributors who are also admins? We could sure do with another admin! Wikipedia is currently accepting admin nominations at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. A user can nominate themselves or a user can nominate another user. To anyone interested, make sure you read Wikipedia:Requests for adminship in full. If in doubt, ask familiar users and/or start an RfA candidate poll. Go for it! Timeshift (talk) 18:13, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm semi-active in this topic area, but would strongly endorse the need for more active Australian admins - the numbers are getting a bit low. RfAs aren't as scary as they look, with experienced editors who have a good track record in AfDs and/or other unglamorous aspects of Wikipedia having a good chance of success. Nick-D (talk) 22:18, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
one small problem is we have a group of oz admins (not specifically interested in politics by their edit history) who are on the books as admins but who have very limited editing and admin activity, for whatever reason... JarrahTree 00:34, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
Well, I would certainly never want to be an admin, but this seems like a good place to mention that we may not have many admins working in this area, but those we do have are pretty damn great. I agree we could use some more, and there are some that aren't so active these days. Frickeg (talk) 02:41, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Prime Minister of Australia infobox

On the page Prime Minister of Australia (about the office of), the "Seat" parameter name in the 'offical post infobox' links to Seat (legal entity), but there is also a Seat of government article which seems a better fit for the link. Is this worth discussing on the Template:Infobox_official_post talk page (or maybe has been already)?

(Neither Prime Minister of Canada nor Prime Minister of New Zealand actually use the seat parameter.)

Also, on the template's page it gives examples of Seats: 1) Pres Euro Comm has the Berlaymont building, Brussels, Belgium, and 2) Secretary Defense, USA has The Pentagon, Arlington County, Virginia - so should PM Aust include Parliament House, Capital Hill? JennyOz (talk) 11:05, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Merging party articles

I have initiated a discussion at Talk:Liberal Democratic Party (Australia)#Merged articles about different parties about the recent merge of the articles about Liberal Democratic Party (Australia), Smokers' Rights Party and Outdoor Recreation Party despite them having separate party registration and membership. If you are interested, please join the discussion. --Scott Davis Talk 05:26, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

List of Australian heads of government by time in office

This article isn't necessarily a bad idea, but it seems to be bizarrely incomplete: it currently claims the total amount of Australian federal, state and territory heads of government is barely more than the actual amount of historical Premiers of Victoria.

Any volunteers to fix this? Otherwise it probably ought to go to AfD. The Drover's Wife (talk) 15:21, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Could it just be that the list has a five-year threshold for inclusion? If so, that isn't mentioned or explained at all which would need to be fixed, but I think it's a reasonable threshold for making the table more manageable. --Canley (talk) 22:56, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
The article would need renaming in that case (to List of Australian heads of government who have served for more than five years, etc.). I think it would be a better move to complete it, but would prefer an incomplete tag to deletion at this stage. Frickeg (talk) 23:00, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
I agree, it's a big job though (combining and sorting eight different lists). I am working on putting all this political data (heads of government, electorates and MPs) into Wikidata so these lists could potentially be queried, generated or at least checked more easily—not quite there yet though. --Canley (talk) 23:36, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
The article name should be 'state premiers' rather than HsoG, seeing it doesn't list chief ministers and PMs? JennyOz (talk) 00:25, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
Hmm, true. It would probably be better to include chief ministers and PMs, though - I see no reason not to and could even see merging the PM list into this one. Frickeg (talk) 00:41, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
It should include PMs/Premiers/Chief Minister; there's no reason to exclude any of them - it'd be terrific if it could actually be completed.
I don't get the comment about merging the PMs list though. We have the separate lists per office for a reason. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:45, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
Wait, I didn't realise we had separate lists for each of these. That should make completing this list comparatively simple. But if this list were to be completed, I'm not convinced that would be entirely necessary, especially given the table is sortable. It's just duplicating information. Frickeg (talk) 04:03, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Template:Australian_politics/name (colours)

There is a proposal to delete a number of mainly political colours templates. These templates are still listed as appropriate templates at WP:Australian politics.--Grahame (talk) 00:53, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Category:Chiefs of Staff to the Australian Government

Shouldn't this be Chiefs of Staff to the Prime Minister of Australia? I mean, in a general sense they serve the entire government, but on a practical level they're appointed by, serve, and are entirely at the call of the PM, not of any other minister. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 05:07, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Yep. Someone screwed up there. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:40, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. I've moved it accordingly. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 07:01, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
Resolved

Federal MPs

One thing I've been noticing lately is that a lot of our articles on federal MPs could do with quite a bit of work, and a lot of them are generally worse than our coverage of state politics. We've done so much writing of new articles over the years that as standards have generally gotten higher, and a lot of our state coverage is terrific for this reason, but a great deal of our federal MP articles are substantially unchanged from when they were first written about 10 years ago, and are extremely stubby. It might be useful if we made a bit of a group effort on this one day - any thoughts? The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:44, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

I definitely agree with this, and would be keen to contribute a bit, although my time is more limited than it was when a lot of these stubs were rolled out! I feel like we could divide these up without too much difficulty (probably by state and era), and that we have enough editors with the necessary expertise to be able to create some great content in these areas. Frickeg (talk) 04:06, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
That's not a bad idea. Anyone else down for dividing this up and having a crack at it? The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:30, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
I might make a start on making some sort of to-do list here in userspace - I'll add a link here when it's in some sort of usable state. I'll include senators too, because there are a few underdone ones of them too. Frickeg (talk) 04:42, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
Actually, even just looking at designing a list makes me realise it would be better to just throw a general category at people and go, because there really are a lot of these. I'll suggest the following divisions: each state for the House by party (Labor/Coalition), a tiny Other category including Indies/minor parties/territories that shouldn't take long, and each state for the Senate. This would involve going through each Division page (or, for the Senate, my Senate list might help) and working through each article that needs help, which is quite a lot of them. By my count that's nineteen categories to divvy up, bearing in mind that the House ones will vary in size by state. Alternatively we might like to all descend on a particular category at once, but dividing it like this makes the whole thing a bit less daunting (at least to me!). Frickeg (talk) 04:55, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, me too. Dividing by state and party sounds like a plan. Anyone else keen? The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:03, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
Yep, count me in. I would prefer to do Vic and/or Tas if possible, but any state/territory/party is fine. --Canley (talk) 06:33, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
I'll start with the Laborites in SA. @IgnorantArmies:, @ScottDavis:, @Timeshift9:, @Rocketrod1960:, @Roisterer:, @Orderinchaos:, @JennyOz: - if any of you are interested, this is something that could definitely use your talents. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:51, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
Ha, was just about to add my 2 cents...
I had been thinking of tidying up some soon after the July election - was going to start on those who'd lost seats - but was too confused by dates. Just from memory, some outgoing have finish date as the May dissolution date, others have 1 or 2 July. Some new senators have incoming date as 2 July but others have 1 July (ie deemed date after a double dissolution). A checklist would help (besides infobox and other obvious) as to what standard info to check for eg ext links, party bio, aph bio, theyvoteforyou? First speech - can we only mention contents if an RS has reported on, ie not just via aph site? JennyOz (talk) 07:07, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
A checklist, style guide and page of resource links would be useful, I can start that. With the term dates it was ending 9 May where the MP retired (chose not to contest), 2 July if they contested and were defeated. With the start dates for new MPs, 2 July for elected House of Reps members and Territory senators, 1 July for new state senators. --Canley (talk) 07:34, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
1 July is backdated, but no one should have that as their term starting date since it was the day before the election! Frickeg (talk) 08:41, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
So what is the point of backdating the term starting date if it's just ignored? It is of course confusing and there is likely widespread discrepancy due to this confusion: e.g. Brian Archer says 13 December 1975, Brian Harradine says 1 July 1975 with a reference to Odger's Senate Practice about the backdating practice. With Archer, his parliamentary bio says "term deemed to have begun 1.7.75". I think it should be the 1 July date with a note about the backdating. --Canley (talk) 09:32, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
By the way, I should note that I did the infobox in Brian Archer with the December date! I have also many years ago "corrected" the Harradine article to December. So clearly I changed my mind on this when I became aware of the backdating of double dissolution terms! --Canley (talk) 09:37, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
I've just seen this. I posted a message to your user talk page about this issue. The backdating is done for one purpose only, viz. the rotation of seats. It does not apply in general contexts. At a DD, the start date of a senator's term is the date of the election, in this case 2 July. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 09:58, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
See Australian Constitution, Section 13:
  • 13 Rotation of senators
  • As soon as may be after the Senate first meets, and after each first meeting of the Senate following a dissolution thereof, the Senate shall divide the senators chosen for each State into two classes, as nearly equal in number as practicable; and the places of the senators of the first class shall become vacant at the expiration of three years, and the places of those of the second class at the expiration of six years, from the beginning of their term of service; and afterwards the places of senators shall become vacant at the expiration of six years from the beginning of their term of service. The election to fill vacant places shall be made within one year before the places are to become vacant.
  • For the purposes of this section the term of service of a senator shall be taken to begin on the first day of July following the day of his election, except in the cases of the first election and of the election next after any dissolution of the Senate, when it shall be taken to begin on the first day of July preceding the day of his election.
This means that the backdating applies only for this purpose. It could not possibly apply in general. Consider the case of a person who was a member of the Reps, then resigned in order to contest a Senate seat at a forthcoming DD election, and was elected. It's quite possible he was a member of the Reps on that previous 1 July, so how could he also be a member of the Senate on the same day? Answer: He can't. The Constitution prevents anyone being a member of both houses simultaneously. Clear? -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 10:21, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
Yes, it just doesn't make sense otherwise. It's only for seat rotation. Their terms can't have begun weeks, sometimes months before the election was actually held. It's like that with appointments too - they're talking about the terms as distinct from the senators. To look at 1975, I've just changed Harradine because if his term started on 1 July then he was serving while there were already ten other people representing Tasmania in the Senate. Frickeg (talk) 10:33, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
OK, thanks Jack and Frickeg for the great explanation, I stand corrected. I'll check all the DD senators. --Canley (talk) 10:57, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Happy to have a go at this, probably would focus on WA MPs first and foremost. If I can make a suggestion, I think it would be good if we sort of informally prioritise/concentrate on certain articles – e.g. current MPs over former MPs, frontbenchers over backbenchers. Improving high(er)-traffic articles (which I'm assuming those are) will benefit readers more than improving more obscure ones (although I'm probably not alone in finding the more obscure ones easier to write. IgnorantArmies (talk) 11:32, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm happy to assist where possible too. It is a privilege to be counted with the others pinged above, as politicians are not something I think is a strong point of mine. --Scott Davis Talk 11:31, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Just a bit of an update on this, I have been going through each federal (and eventually state and territory) MP article to check their place of birth and parliament membership details are in Wikidata to enable later querying and maintenance. As such I can note down some low-hanging fruit as it were (and query Wikidata later when it's all done), but I was thinking a good start to identify priorities is to determine where the article is a stub from Psephos but there is a full Australian Dictionary of Biography article about the subject. There are also some other useful sources I have found such as a biography of all federal MPs who fought in World War I. I will add these to a resources page I'm working on, and generate lists of all MPs for each house so we can monitor progress. --Canley (talk) 02:44, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

That sounds like a great idea. I've rewritten a handful of SA MPs so far but have been a bit busy the last couple of weeks. The Drover's Wife (talk) 09:17, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Georgist

I notice that the ledes of Andrew Fisher and Alfred Deakin have been recently modified to say they were Georgist (with citations, but not online so I cannot check them). I removed both of them on the grounds that this was not something mentioned in the rest of the article, nor something that I could find said about either of them in the digitised newspapers during their political era nor ADB entries etc. I note from the contributor's past contributions and user talk page that there is some past track record in relation to Georgist edits, so I am wondering if this is POV-pushing. I don't claim any expertise in the matter of Georgism or either of the prime ministers above, so thought I'd mention it here where there may be greater expertise than mine. Feel free to revert me if you think I have it wrong. Kerry (talk) 00:15, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

South Australian boundaries

The final report of the Electoral District Boundaries Commission has been released. There are some name changes and lots of boundary moves. As the next election is not until March 2018, it is too soon to start "correcting" suburb and town articles to have the new districts in the prose or infoboxes (as there could still be by-elections on the current boundaries). Should we be writing articles for the new names yet, noting that the first election in them will be in 2018? Are there precedent activity lists and timelines to follow? --Scott Davis Talk 04:12, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up/reminder. They should not have caved in to Rachel Sanderson's Walkerville stunt... what a couple of awful precedents. Such childish and immature behavior should not be rewarded, unless the commission perversely gets off on getting a record number of carbon-copy submissions and wants the tactic to become the norm at future redistributions. Timeshift (talk) 04:56, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
Creating the articles for new districts is fine. I'd be inclined to leave updating the locality articles/infoboxes until the dissolution of parliament in 2018—it doesn't leave a lot of time but I think we will have it down to a semi-automated fine art by then. My intention is to set up all the South Australian districts and localities in Wikidata (and eventually all other states and federal divisions)—I've already trialled this for the NSW federal and ACT redistributions and it works really well to generate a list of articles which need to be updated or even locality/suburb lists for the articles themselves. I'll also do the maps as soon as possible in the next few weeks. --Canley (talk) 05:18, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
Nice... your knowledge/skills and going the extra mile is always very much appreciated. Timeshift (talk) 05:21, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Not sure if anyone has noticed, but in the final redistribution, two additional seats had their margin changed from Labor to notionally Liberal - Newland and (bellwether) Colton. These further changes now notionally provide the Liberals with 27 seats and Labor with 20 seats. Timeshift (talk) 05:40, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Next Australian federal election-related RFDs

I have just started two discussions at RfD about redirects related to the next Australian federal election, Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2017 January 11#Current pendulum for the next Australian federal election and Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2017 January 11#Candidates of the next Australian federal election. The discussions would benefit from input from those knowledgeable about Australian politics and elections. Thryduulf (talk) 00:35, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Queensland state election, 1904

Back in December, an edit introduced the idea that a Liberal goverment (linked to the current Liberal Party of Australia) was elected. Various edits since have partially replaced Liberal with Ministerial but left Liberal in other places. I don't pretend to be an expert in politics but I don't think we had a Liberal party in 1904 in Queensland. Is there anyone more expert than me who can take a look at the various references to Liberal, Ministerial, Conservative and other "party" names that appear in this article and maybe untangle them. There is mention of the Labour Party which I assume is OK as I think they existed at that time. Thanks Kerry (talk) 06:32, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Early Queensland isn't my best subject, but as I recall Queensland was one of the later states to formalise parties on the non-Labor side. My take on that is that "liberal" (as opposed to Philp's "conservative") is just how they're defining his informal governing bloc (the ADB merely says of his ideology that he "formed a composite group from farming representatives, liberal progressives and the Labor Party"), and the "ministerialist" is merely in the sense of "people currently in government". I'm currently away in Sydney but will do a bit more research when I get back to Melbourne. The Drover's Wife (talk) 21:21, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
I had a look last night. I've been thinking for a while we might need an article (or maybe just an essay/explainer on the project for editors) on the whole Ministerialist/Oppositionist system in early Australian politics as it seems to have been common in most colonies/states before the emergence of the party system, and it seems to lead to confusion and association with parties which did not exist at the time. There's the Continuous Ministry (Queensland) which was over by then, but that's a start on explaining how Queensland politics worked in those days. With the 1904 article, it needs some more background on the downfall of the Philp government after they won a division on taxation reform by "only" two votes. I'd also like to replace the results table as apart from the party names, it needs a bit more clarity on Morgan's ministerialist grouping, and the two-member districts of the time. --Canley (talk) 23:04, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
I quite like User:Kirsdarke01's idea that they've adopted for their election tables in Western Australia: redlinking a Ministerialists and Oppositionists (Western Australia) article that could explain these political identities (even if it hasn't been written yet). I wonder if he could help with the election table issue as well - he's only about three Qld elections from catching up to this point. The Drover's Wife (talk) 11:40, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
That was actually IgnorantArmies came up with that, not me (and I have to extend my thanks to them for doing seat-level results for early WA elections). However, I can certainly fix up the 1904 table, with redlinking the Ministerialists and Oppositionist rows. I have the voting totals at hand and will work on that shortly. Kirsdarke01 (talk) 23:04, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
EDIT: I have now added a results table with the totals. Hopefully it works alright. EDIT 2: I think all of the elections from 1902 to 1909 need to have their results double checked as well as the parties being fixed up. The numbers on Wikipedia are different from the numbers in the UWA elections database. I don't blame anyone for the confusion though, Kidston's breakaway party pretty much messed up all the results in the mid-1900's. Also, the Ministerialist and Oppositionist system seemed to be retained until the 1912 election, which seemed to be the first one in which the non-Labor parties ran as the Commonwealth Liberals. Kirsdarke01 (talk) 23:31, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
Thanks heaps for that, I'll double check 1902 to 1909 against what data I have. I'll also write the background sections for these elections which will hopefully give the results a bit more context. --Canley (talk) 05:49, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Redlinking as we go will definitely save us some time in the future. I've basically been using Ministerialists and Oppositionists (Western Australia) as a placeholder – if/when I get around to creating an article on the topic, I would probably title it Early political factions in Western Australia or something similar. Although, I've just been thinking that one possibility is that we end up with a mega-article on Early political factions in Australia, organised along the lines of Colonial forces of Australia (i.e. with an overview and then subsections for each state). It does seem like it would be helpful to the reader to be able to easily compare different states/colonies. IgnorantArmies (talk) 14:56, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I really like this idea: they're so muddy and complex that they're not easily properly explained anywhere within our current article structure and that seems like a great solution. The Drover's Wife (talk) 10:01, 5 March 2017 (UTC)
I've added some background as to how the election came about, which has clarified the parties and groupings somewhat... however I am somewhat confused about who the Labour leader was at this election – see Talk:Queensland state election, 1904 for the details. --Canley (talk) 07:22, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
Just a FYI I have briefly chatted with Drovers Wife and Ingnorant Armies before seeing this page, as I am concerned that from what I have learnt with nose down in WAPD/Hansards looking for completely different research topics - that the alignments and allegiances in the 1900 -1911 era seemed to be more of something like bar-room charades than what we experience of political ellegiances in the current era. They were slippery and quite fluid in their allegiances, and mysteriously from the way I look at it - they do not necessarily self identify with the labels - it seems more the press which tries to find labels for the various alignments. Oh and I wouldnt call it factions, they were so short I'd say alignments... also some historians have said that the WA situation was the upshot of the post Forrest government alignments - the irony being it was Forrest who tried to organise formation of the 1911 establishment of the WA Libs party... but then as for using the term minsterialists into the 20s and 30s, not sure what is happening there JarrahTree 16:24, 5 March 2017 (UTC)
With regard to the Ministerialists and Opposition story in Queensland, I found this CC-BY source material from the Qld Govt which gives a history of events. I thought this might be a useful basis for an article History of Political Parties in Queensland (or somesuch) to which articles using the term Ministerialist and Opposition in that period could be linked. One problem is that the source material doesn't actually say what a Ministerialist is though, it assumes you know :-) I also note there is an article Continuous Ministry (Queensland) which touches on this topic area too, which might need to be merged in somewhere. Personally I have never heard of the term Continuous Ministry but I don't claim to be an expert in this topic. Kerry (talk) 00:44, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

The A-L, M-Z thing

Something that's become somewhat of a thing here (which was mostly my fault) is the thing in state election results where it's become practice to divide state seat results into 2 separate pages for the particularly numerous seat-by-seat results for state elections. I admit that the thing that made me begin this habit was when I attempted to put the Queensland 2009 state election results on the same page, which resulted in a big warning of "excessive parsing", hence the habit afterward of election results being put into 2 separate pages.

However, I've noticed in these times that election results of this size can all be fitted into one page, such as here and here with no worries.

I'm just wondering if because of an upgrade in Wikipedia's system or something to that degree, we can possibly merge the results pages of A-K and L-Z into single results pages somehow? I'd be happy to help out with that if that was possible. Kirsdarke01 (talk) 10:46, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

I remember the "excessive parsing" thing! It gave me trouble on Electoral results for the Division of Werriwa years ago (fun fact: Werriwa has been contested more than any other federal electorate due to its five by-elections!). Good to hear that it appears to be a thing of the past. My only concern would be whether such big pages might be slow to load on some devices. Also a long-term goal of mine has been to supplement some of these with explanatory paragraphs on background etc., but I suppose it's the tables that are going to be a problem if length is an issue. Frickeg (talk) 10:53, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
I think they're both fine: the 2015 and 2017 results linked do load fine, but I can see how they could be a pain in the arse on slow connections or slow devices - just depends which you prefer really (as the one creating them!). The Drover's Wife (talk) 11:31, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
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