December 10, 2023
This is the first how-to-vote card I’ve seen for this year’s election: the ALP’s card for the NSW electorate of Cowper.
Cowper is a safe coalition electorate. Since 1901, it has only been held by the ALP once, between 1961 and 1963. The current Nationals member, Luke Hartsuyker, has held the seat since 2001.
Hartsuyker won the seat in 2013 with 53.05% of the primary vote. The ALP polled 25.37% and the Greens 12.37%.
This is the how-to-vote card issued by the National Party in Mallee at the 1993 federal election.
John Forrest won the election and became just the third member to hold the seat in 44 years.
Mallee, usually one of the safest coalition seats in the nation, had been represented by Peter Fisher since 1972. At its establishment in 1949, the seat was held by Winton Turnbull.
Because the Liberal/National coalition agreement allows both parties to contest a seat when a sitting member retires, Forrest faced a battle at the 1993 election. The National Party’s primary vote fell by 31.66% to 37.66%, with the Liberal candidate Adrian Kidd polling 32.48%. The ALP’s John Zigouras polled 26.52% and directed his preferences to Kidd. After preferences, Forrest won the seat by just 736 votes, or 50.50%.
At the next election in 1996, without a Liberal candidate, Forrest polled 69.45% of the primary vote and 73.70% of the two-party-preferred vote.
Forrest served for twenty years and retired in 2013.
Joan Child, the first female Labor member of the House of Representatives, and the first female Speaker, has died. She was 91.
Child was elected to the Melbourne electorate of Henty, centred around Oakleigh, in 1974. She had unsuccessfully contested the electorate in 1972.
She was defeated at the 1975 election and again in 1977. She returned to the House in 1980, securing re-election to Henty in 1983, 1984 and 1987.
Child became the first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives in February 1986. She relinquished the position in August 1989, ahead of her retirement at the 1990 election.
This is a leaflet produced during the 2007 Federal Election campaign, attacking the Liberal Party’s climate change policy.
The leaflet compares the party’s policy in the 1990 election when Andrew Peacock was leader with the policy under Prime Minister John Howard in 2007.
In 1990, Peacock’s Shadow Minister for the Environment and the Arts was Senator Chris Puplick, a prominent moderate in the party.
In 2007, Howard’s Minister for Environment and Water Resources was Malcolm Turnbull, also a prominent moderate.
This is an anti-Labor booklet produced by the Liberal Party during the 2004 Federal Election campaign.
The booklet is titled: Labor’s Record in Government.
