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Fraser Anning's Conservative National Party

There's currently an edit war on Fraser Anning's Conservative National Party over whether Anning's party is Neo-Nazi or not. The only elected official's political staffers have been identified as neo-nazis, the group attends neo-nazi rallies, the party seeks to maintain a European ethnic majority, and the only elected official has known links to neo-nazis and neo-nazi parties, calling for a Final Solution to immigration. These were all referenced with the inclusion of the ideology. I was wondering if other editors could input their two cents on the topic, as it's better to reach consensus on this divisive issue. Catiline52 (talk) 03:28, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

@Catiline52: The article is making a lot of claims that cannot be justified by the citations provided. I could not read citation 1 (as it is behind a paywall) but I have read citations 2, 3, and 4, and I see nothing there to support claims of neo-Nazism, deportation of immigrants, etc. Coming to this talk page and saying there is evidence about staff members identified (by whom?) as neo-nazis, attending neo-nazi rallies, etc is just innuendo unless you back it with citations to reliable sources. Trying to smear the party by labelling them as neo-nazis and using phrases like “final solution” out of context as above just tells me you don’t understand what Wikipedia is about. Tell the reader what the policies are to the extent of reliable citations. If there is evidence of Anning or other candidates or staffers involvement in other groups, attending other events, then provide that information with citations. But stick to telling the reader what is factual and verifiable and not add your interpretation or opinion by way of adjectives, innuendo, guilt by association of being in the same sentence. Give the reader verifiable facts and let them decide what they will. I won’t be voting for them, because I don’t agree with their policies, and not because you are throwing the Nazi word around here (4 times, 5 if you include the link to Finsl Solution]]. Didn’t anyone ever tell you about Godwin’s law? Kerry (talk) 08:24, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

My apologies, citation 4 did mention deportion of refugees, I missed it in the slew of advertisements. Kerry (talk) 08:45, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Godwin himself said it's okay to call people with similar views nazis. Source A describes how Anning attended a neo-nazi rally organised by neo-nazi groups True Blue Crew and United Patriots Front. The White Rose Society source describes his connections with white nationalists and neo-nazis, including his speech writer. The White Rose Society is not an inaccurate or unreliable source, they've worked with the ABC with uncovering neo-nazi infiltration in the Young Nationals and have been used as a source in academia. The source discusses how his speechwriter for the "Final Solution" speech was Frank Salter, a white nationalist. Another source goes in further of the political staffer's involvement in fascist university groups, as well as his current belief in eugenics. However, due to this dispute, I'll add these to the article in a history section instead of the ideology section. Catiline52 (talk) 01:38, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

A new newsletter directory is out!

A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.

– Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Talk:2019 Australian federal election#Infobox rows (Greens top row or not top row?)

I've re-opened the eternal question of infobox rows for the federal election article given the differing views and conflicting edits. Onetwothreeip (talk) 22:56, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Splitting out the double dissolution article for rotation of senators

Discussion taking place at Talk:Double dissolution AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 18:03, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Candidates pages - columns for minor parties

Discussion regarding whether UAP (and potentially others) should be separated from the "Other candidates" column here - input appreciated. Frickeg (talk) 04:22, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Again please regarding whether the three Centre Alliance candidates should have their own column in SA. Frickeg (talk) 02:32, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Advance Australia

I've created the page Advance Australia (lobby group) after reading a news story which mentioned them and realising they lacked an article on Wikipedia. If more experienced editors such as JarrahTree and Frickeg have time, I'd appreciate their running an eye over it for bias, errors and omissions, given that the Federal campaign is upon us. (I also created a disambiguation page for Advance Australia). Thanks, Meticulo (talk) 08:33, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Good on you for creating this - a great start on a much-needed topic. Looks good to me - my only question would be the "centre-right" designation: have they explicitly claimed this position? It probably needs sourcing. Frickeg (talk) 08:37, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

agree with all that F says JarrahTree 09:23, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks both for feedback. I've deleted the affiliation entirely from the infobox. There was no sourcing for that, and they hadn't explicitly claimed that position. Meticulo (talk) 12:11, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

colour check please

Could someone who knows about the party colour templates please check/fix {{Australian party shading/Centre Alliance}}? I made it last night but it looks like too intense a colour in Candidates of the 2019 Australian federal election#South Australia. I just noticed there is a list at {{Australian party shading}} but it looks incomplete too... Thanks. --Scott Davis ^Talk 23:10, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

OK, done, the shading colours are a lighter tint so I dialled it down to 60% (any further and it looks really yellow). --Canley (talk) 23:36, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

@Canley: Thank you. --Scott Davis ^Talk 11:01, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

Results of the 2019 Australian federal election (House of Representatives)

With the 2019 federal election almost upon us, I thought I would make a suggestion to reduce the triplication of effort in maintaining the results tables & to ensure we present consistent information. For example the 2016 results for the district of Adelaide are reproduced in Results of the 2016 Australian federal election in South Australia § Adelaide, Electoral results for the Division of Adelaide and Division of Adelaide § Election results. In that case the numbers are the same, but there are some subtle differences in formatting. What I am suggesting is that we create a main results page, eg Results of the 2019 Australian federal election in South Australia, with each division in a separate section, just as it is for 2016, but transclude the results for each division into the electoral results and division pages, using the code such as {{trim|{{#section-h:Results of the 2016 Australian federal election in South Australia|Adelaide}}}} The #section-h is what transcludes the section rather than the whole page. The {{trim| just gets rid of surplus line breaks above or below). You can also tag text that will only be included <includeonly></includeonly> & text that will not be included in the transclusion <noinclude></noinclude>. To give you an idea of how it works, I have set it up for the Electoral district of Newtown & Electoral results for the district of Newtown, the later of which is entirely transcluded.

Like anything there are advantages & disadvantages - the main advantage is that you get a single source of data & references. Update one page & it flows through to the other 2. The software automatically takes care of some issues, such as circular links. Moving the main page makes no difference, eg {{trim|{{#section-h: Australian federal election, 2016 (South Australia)|Adelaide}}}} gives the same results as the code above. If the district is abolished, accidentally transcluding it gives no result, eg {{trim|{{#section-h:Results of the 2016 Australian federal election in South Australia|Come By Chance}}}} results in {{trim|{{#section-h:Results of the 2016 Australian federal election in South Australia|Come By Chance}}}}. An incorrect article name gives the usual red-link.

The main disadvantage is that what will break the transclusion is if someone re-names the section, without leaving a trace - there is no warning on the result page and the results simply disappear from the page on which they are transcluded. I would suggest including a comment along the lines of <!-- The results from this page are transcluded onto the pages for each district and the electoral results for those districts, using the section headings. If you change any of the section headings, please update the other pages to match. -->

While it looks like a good idea to me, there may be some downside that I have missed & its a change that should only be implemented if there is consensus support. Find bruce (talk) 02:48, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Seems like a good suggestion. One advantage is that it would be much easier to globally change the results reference URL which often is moved from a VTR (virtual tally room) to a results archive at some point. As an editor who updates a lot of election results it will make thing a lot more easy and consistent. I generally wouldn't link to the division/district on a results page for that electorate, and I think that would happen here as it is a different page, but it doesn't really matter I suppose if there are multiple links. --Canley (talk) 03:20, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

I think it’s a good idea for the reasons you give. It might be possible to make some error checking in the template so broken ones provide an error message with a link to how to fix it. I say all this without being a great expert with the template system. Kerry (talk) 03:48, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea. It probably makes sense for a number of us to watchlist the central results pages so that we can quickly notice any changes to section headings. Frickeg (talk) 05:00, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

As there is consensus support, updated to 17 May this is where I am up to in implementing this

 Done

• set up the articles for Results of the 2016 Australian federal election in XXXX so they are suitable for transclusion
• Results of the 2016 Australian federal election (House of Representatives) transcludes the state & territory results from the pages above
• In WA, SA, Tas, Qld, Vic, NSW & territories the pages for "Division of XXXX" now transclude the results from the "Results of the 2016 Australian federal election in XXXX". When the state result page is ready, its a simple matter of changing 2016 to 2019
• In WA, SA, Tas, Qld, Vic, NSW & territories the "Electoral results for the Division of XXXX" transclude the results from 2010, 2013, 2016. The code is there for 2019 but commented out until its ready to go
• Created template:transcluded section2 to make entry simpler {{transcluded section2|source=SOURCE|section=SECTION}} which takes care of both the section hatnote with the edit & history links & transclusion. I have a few ideas to refine the template but it is fit for purpose now. Find bruce (talk) 06:51, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
• updated "Division of XXXX" & "Electoral results for the Division of XXXX" to transclude 2019 results

 Pending

• Create pages for Results of the XXXX Australian federal election in XXXX transcluding results from the "Electoral results for the Division of XXXX" articles like Results of the 2007 Australian federal election in Western Australia

 Not done

• In some states, such as Vic the "Electoral results for the Division of XXXX" does not transclude the list of members from "Division of XXXX". The list includes images & line breaks. Its no big deal in that whilst it is possible to code these elements as <noinclude>, eg Division of Aston & results it would be more effort than adding one line to the table.

If you come across any issues, ping me & we will figure it out. Find bruce (talk) 13:10, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this, from what I have seen it works really well. For example, I added the two-party vote for the NSW seat of Newtown and it transcluded properly to the other pages. Sorry, I have been meaning to help you but I've been busy setting up the election output for Saturday—looks like this will enable regular updates more easily. For instance, if I generate (and update) the seven state/territory pages with the summary and each division table, I gather the national summary and the results in each division article will update (if the transclusion code is there), which will save hours if not days of work. --Canley (talk) 13:22, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Glad you like it. You are correct, the way I have set it up is so that the summary and each division table from the seven state/territory pages are the key. The national table for the 2016 House of Representatives is more detailed than the table on the 2016 Australian federal election, but I think I have captured all the data that is duplicated. The other thing I need to do is figure out the AWB settings so I can quickly make the changes to the divisions & electoral results pages. If I did that Friday afternoon, we might have redlinks for a day or so if that is acceptable. Find bruce (talk) 14:21, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Think I have AWB sorted to run Friday night to change 2016 to 2019 in "Division of XXXX § Results" & remove comment marks from 2019 in "Electoral results for the Division of XXXX" so that they will show up as soon as the 2019 state result pages are created.

Great stuff. I'm quite excited about this, to be honest. Some may not agree but I think it will be incredible to have regularly and frequently updated results in over 300 article pages throughout the count (while actually only updating eight pages). I plan to include the usual notes for each division about the results not being final, seats in doubt and so on, and date last updated, so it should be clear the count is ongoing wherever you look. --Canley (talk) 02:25, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Great work. Doing something like this will help prevent potential errors in future elections. It's a pain editing multiple infoboxes to put in the exact same bit of information. Catiline52 (talk) 06:51, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind words. The AWB run went smoothly & I think it should now be good to go. @Catiline52: infoboxes can be transcluded, but because they are not a section they need to be done slightly differently. On the source page start the infobox with <section begin=infobox />{{Infobox ... and finish with }}<section end=infobox />. I have marked up the infobox on 2016 Australian federal election as an example. I removed the map from the transclusion using <noinclude></noinclude>. Where you want to include the infobox use {{#section:2016 Australian federal election|infobox}} I haven't done so on the 2016 pages because none of the infoboxes appear to be duplicates. <edit>I should have added that the easier way for an infobox is to to do it as a template, eg sidebar.</edit> @Canley: I am hoping it goes as smoothly as it seems in testing. I won't be around during the day but will log in after dinner, so ping me if anything odd crops up.Find bruce (talk) 13:28, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

? Were there any issues that arose ? As far as I can tell it has all gone swimmingly, with the only hiccup I have seen is 1 editor deciding to remove the results for Mallee because the result was still in doubt despite a 16.6% margin 24 days after the election. Let me know if there is anything you think we should do differently & if not I will do the same set up for the next elections - no hurry, unless Cth or Tas go early, the next elections won't be until NT, ACT and Qld in August & October 2020. Find bruce (talk) 21:45, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

RfC of possible interest

A request for comment regarding a rape allegation against Bill Shorten, an Australian politician, may be of interest to editors in this WikiProject. – Teratix ₵ 02:29, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Use of title Dr etc in lists of members of parliament

Thescrubbythug, Frickeg and I had a brief discussion at Talk:Division of Mallee about whether that list of MPs should include the title Dr. Given this has implications across Australian politics pages, we all thought it was best to discuss this with a broader range of editors. On wikipedia, with the exception of the title Sir or Dame we have mostly not used titles, whether Dr, Honourable or other on

• lists of members by electorate, eg Wentworth (Kerryn Phelps) and Bradfield (Brendan Nelson) or Phd, eg Fenner (Andrew Leigh) and Melbourne (Dennis Jensen)
• lists of candidates, eg Candidates of the 2019 Australian federal election
• election results, eg Results of the 2019 Australian federal election in Victoria
• lists of members of the Senate, eg Members of the Australian Senate, 2014–2016 (Brett Mason)

Being wikipedia, however there are exceptions. Leaving aside the changes recently introduced, the major ones I am aware of are the lists of members of the House of Reps, eg Members of the Australian House of Representatives, 2019–2022.

In terms of the manual of style, it would appear that MOS:DOCTOR is relevant.

The reliable sources take a mixed approach,

• parliament lists in Hansard (04 Jul 2019 House of Reps) and members lists generally include both title & post nominals. There are however exceptions, the ones that immediately lept out to me were Mr Adam Bandt and Senator Mehreen Faruqi, both of whom have doctorates.
• ABC election results list has just name
• Australian Electoral Commission results similarly have just the name.

I should calrify we are only talking about lists of politicians-

My view is that a professional title such as Dr, whether medical or academic, is not a qualification for parliament & for a person reading at a list of politicians it doesn't tell them anything useful. It also helps keep the list easier to follow. If we are going to include titles, shouldn't that also include post-nominals ? Find bruce (talk) 05:20, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

I agree with this. We have been inconsistent about this for a while, but the MOS is clear - national honours maybe, professional titles definitely not. I would support removing Hon. and Dr from all member lists, including the HoR ones (Hon. has been useful in the past for identifying ministers, but I think the movement towards more detailed lists will allow us to list that information more directly and usefully; use of Hon. is specifically prohibited by MOS:HON). (Sidenote: Thescrubbythug's work on member lists on electorate articles has been outstanding.) Frickeg (talk) 08:07, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

I've included "Dr" in MHR lists before, but only because it was done before (as with postnoms and the "Hon." prefix). Don't feel strongly about it either way but the MOS argument makes sense, and would make it more consistent overall as these lists are about the only place the Dr title appears. -- Canley (talk) 09:56, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

I don't see why we should have any nominals when using anybody's name, and I've seen many lists ruined by their overuse. They're about as relevant as a person's full legal name. Onetwothreeip (talk) 11:11, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

My personal view is that the title "Dr" should be added given that most parliamentary sources seem to include it in relation to the relevant members, including on Hansard (that said I do find it bizarre that the title seems to be omitted for Adam Bandt). Furthermore, there have been cases where you have members that are closely identified with this title - such as with H.V. Evatt (who people would refer to as "Doc") or John Hewson. I think it makes sense to include "Dr" on the relevant individuals, and it wouldn't be too much of a hassle to have these included - though at the same time if the majority thinks otherwise it wouldn't fuss me very much. Adding "Hon" or "Rt Hon" however I think is a bit much, especially given that these are titles which are used only on official occasions rather than everyday usage. Thescrubbythug (talk) 12:23, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

I won't pretend that I agree with the MoS on many issues including this one, but it seems that MOS:DOCTOR pretty clearly rules it out using Dr except (ironically) when it is the common pseudonym but not when it is the common name. Kerry (talk) 12:36, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Ideology in Australia sidebars

For the past week I've been working on a series of sidebars for Australian political ideologies, including Template:Liberalism in Australia, Template:Conservatism in Australia, Template:Far-right politics in Australia, and Template:Australian socialism. These were inspired by political infoboxes which are used for Canada, United Kingdoms and the United States (Such as Template:Conservatism US, Template:Toryism, and Template:Libertarianism in the United States sidebar). I'll attempt to work on sidebars for Nationalism and Social Democracy (as well as specific sub-ideologies such as Deakanite Liberalism), however, there have been a few issues which have been raised by other editors that need to be resolved before expanding the project.

I've based the additions to the infoboxes according to the corresponding main page for the ideology (eg Liberalism in Australia) as well as several parties pages. Although some organisations are relatively easy to put within a sidebar, such as the Liberal Party fitting within both Conservatism and Liberalism, some are relatively harder to categorise and could result in controversial categorisations. For example, the Labor Right faction page states it is socially and economically liberal, as well as aligning with the liberal Third Way movement. However, an editor stated that it would be contentious to add the faction under the umbrella of liberalism. What would be a good way of categorising parties and organisations that are edge cases (like Labor Right) into these infoboxes? Catiline52 (talk) 01:19, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

@Onetwothreeip: brought up that One Nation and the Greens are also issues which should be discussed. One Nation is a nationalist party, however, the page also describes it as far-right. The party would be relatively uncontroversially be included within a Nationalism sidebar, but would it fit within far-right as National Action does? The Greens are also ideologically diverse, ranging from Marxism (Lee Rhiannon, Adam Bandt, to social democracy, to Green Liberalism (Sarah Hanson-Young, who has been endorsed by both John Hewson and Malcolm Fraser).

The other issue with categorising the Greens is that ideologically it isn't ideologically relevant to liberalism, social democracy or socialism. It takes positions on issues that can be considered across a broad range of centre-left to left wing thinking.

As for the two Labor factions, the Right would be best categorised as social democratic, and the Left would be better described as democratic socialist. However, we should consider the utility of categorising the factions of Labor separately, and we can't avoid categorising the ALP itself. For that reason I would suggest we don't categorise either faction, but categorise Labor as social democratic and potentially democratic socialist also, if we were to distinguish between the Marxist socialist groups and the democratic socialist groups. We could probably use a sidebar for labour politics to encompass the aspects of the Labor Party. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:30, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Doing a generic 'Labour politics in Australia' template could work. It'd include all union-affiliated political parties I guess, like the Australian Workers Party, Labor, Democratic Labor, and other parties with definite union ties. Catiline52 (talk) 06:54, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

It would reasonably include this historic DLP, but not the modern party of the same name. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:02, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Attempting to sum up the highly inconsistent, disputable and historically complex ideologies of Australian political parties in a brief infobox field is a recipe for constant drama, which is why in the past we have generally agreed to leave them out. Infoboxes are useful for summarising basic information, but if the answer to a question is "Well, it depends if ...", it doesn't belong in the infobox. (In the above, for example, Labor is definitely not democratic socialist, but sections of it have been in the past; it is a matter of academic debate whether it is currently social democratic.) This is a problem that I see extending to these sidebars, and while I applaud the initiative, I am not entirely sure they are a good idea either. Frickeg (talk) 07:59, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

It's also contentious to say that the ALP is "definitely not" democratic socialist, given that it officially describes itself as such. I don't think there's any reliable source saying it isn't at least social democratic, so I don't know what academic debate you're alluding to. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:02, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

"I don't think there's any reliable source saying it isn't at least social democratic". There's a growing group of political historians (Elizabeth Humphrys and Geoffrey Robinson are the only ones I can think of at the moment) who argue that Labor shifted from social democratic philosophy. The exact dating is disputed; Humphrys argues this was during the Third Way push by Keating and Hawke in the 80s, while Robinson argues it was in the 90s and 00s where a few key events happened (Labor Left ally CPA collapsed, Labor Left shifted towards social issues over materialist issues conceding economics to the neoliberal Labor Right faction, and a few other things that are hard to summarise within a paragraph). But I agree that a social democratic sidebar would contain significant issues due to this contention, the Labor Party has changed significantly over time. A generic labour politics for labour movement related parties seems more relevant and less contentious. Catiline52 (talk) 11:14, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Unless there is a well-respected source (or set of sources) to support the inclusion of a political party in one of these ideologies (noting that many long-running parties have changed their views on things over time), this is original research and should not be here in Wikipedia. This will just descend into the same disputes that we have seen over adding the political alignment of newspapers like The Australian in their infobox. Politics is not simple, policies within a single party may be inconsistent, even when two political parties describe themselves with the same terminologies, they can still have wide variation in their policies (we have enough splits to demonstrate that). We are an encyclopedia; let's do our readers the service of describing the party's actual policies reliably cited and not try to distill them into a couple of simple words or sidebars. 12:19, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

All of the included parties were based on the inclusion of the ideology within their political party page, with many of the parties having sources for those ideologies. I do agree that some have been uncited, particular minor parties, and will attempt to find relevant sources for the sections which have been ignored by previous editors. I don't agree with your notion that the sidebars 'dumb down' content into a simple distillation. Navigation boxes (as well as infoboxes) do not replace the entirety of the text on the page which outlines the historical context and nuances which you describe. Navigation boxes are just there to allow for easier navigation between related content. Catiline52 (talk) 14:11, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Lead sentence of articles on federal elections

LloydStarkiller (talk · contribs) and I are edit warring over changes they keep making using their account and what appears to be them using an IP account to the first sentence of articles on federal elections - examples: [1], [2], [3]. My concern is that this construction is clunky - saying "The 2013 Australian federal election to determine the members of the 44th Parliament of Australia took place on 7 September 2013." isn't great, as it repeats 2013 twice in the same sentence. The construction which has been used in these articles for ages (for instance, "A federal election to determine the members of the 44th Parliament of Australia took place on 7 September 2013") is better as it also makes the topic of the article clear while avoiding this grammatical mistake. I'd be grateful for other editors' views though. Nick-D (talk) 08:37, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. This seems to be based on a misplaced conviction that the article title must be exactly replicated in the lead, which is not true per MOS:FIRST. Frickeg (talk) 21:20, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Current senators template

Please see recent discussion about changing the way the senators are arranged in the commonly-used footer template at Template talk:Australian Senators#Hard to read by party / view by voting blocs?. Any more input to this? I recently changed it from arrangement by state to arrangement by voting bloc without getting much feedback before or after. Frickeg suggested ditching colours as they're no longer needed plus some futher trimming to keep it lean which you can see in the discussion. Donama (talk) 02:50, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

#StopAdani movement, & GHD Group

I noticed there does not appear to be a wikipedia entry for the #StopAdani movement, even though it has been notable in Australian politics for several years and widely reported on across multiple reputable media sources.[4] [[5]] [[6]] [[7]] [[8]] [[9]] [[10]] [[11]] [[12]] [[13]] [[14]] [[15]] [[16]] [[17]] [[18]] [[19]] [[20]] [[21]] [[22]] The movement is referenced in 5 existing wikipedia entries, but has no page of its own.

I am not going to create this entry myself as I know several people in the movement and it skates too close to COI. Would someone else, without COI risks, be willing to create the page?

I have also had an acquaintance of an acquaintance, who is not a wikipedian, who is involved in the #StopAdani movement, request something be done on the GHD Group page. GHD is currently a target of the StopAdani movement (hence the potential COI) as the company works with Adani.

The GHD page reads as promotional, most of the references are to GHD communications. I have not edited the page for concerns it would be considered a COI. However (and I apologise if this is the wrong thing to have done, as I am a fairly inexperienced editor and struggle to understand some of the more complicated stuff) I posted my concerns on the talk page and added a WP:NCORP template in the hope this would prompt someone independent to fix the page up.

My acquaintance also requested that the GHD page be updated to reflect that they are involved with Adani and being targeted by the Stop Adani movement. Something neutral that sticks to the facts, along the lines of:

In July 2019, climate change activists launched a public campaign calling on GHD to abandon its involvement in Adani’s controversial Carmichael coal mine in the Galilee Basin in Central Queensland, Australia.[[23]] [[24]] GHD previously worked on Adani’s Carmichael coal mine in 2013, when the company prepared Adani's Environmental Impact Statement.[[25]] [[26]] [[27]] In its Economic Assessment[[28]], GHD claimed the mine would boost employment in Queensland by up to 10,871 direct and indirect full-time equivalent jobs.[[29]] [[30]] This figure was contradicted during hearings about the project in the Queensland Land Court, where a different economic consultant contracted by Adani gave evidence that the project would create, on average, 1,464 direct and indirect full-time equivalent jobs.[[31]] [[32]]

Much appreciation to you for considering any of these requests (creation of #StopAdani entry, cleanup of GHD Group entry, mention of stop adani campaign on GHD Group page). Also, as I am learning, I would appreciate advice on whether this has been the best way for me to go about raising the request or if I should have done something differently. Many thanks Powertothepeople (talk) 01:34, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

An interesting turn up

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_controversies_in_Australia - I am sure the lurkers here might be interested in the intepretations as to why this has to go - I leave it to the happy gang who inhabit this project - cheers. JarrahTree 10:47, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool

Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Swing & first past the post voting

I am working on the articles for NSW elections & am unsure how to deal with swing for elections up until 1907 which used first past the post voting. The election box style includes swing & suggests that the information should be included. The Australian swing calculations are intended for preferrential voting & don't work for FPP elections. It is straight forward to calculate swing using the UK Butler method where two parties contest both elections & meaningless when a party joins the contest or drops out. I note that Antony Green did not include swing in creating New South Wales Election Results 1856-2007 - even up to 2007. I have included a changing seats table for the 1907 NSW election which shows those results. I have set out the basis of the calculations Talk:Results of the 1907 New South Wales state election. As I see it there are two broad options and before I do too much work I am looking for feedback on which is preferable.

1. have a row that says something like "Liberal Reform hold" or "Labor gain from Liberal Reform" and do not include any reference to swing; or
2. calculate swing where practicable. If you have any comments or criticisms regarding the calculations or methods, I would appreciate it.

By the by I noticed that Election box hold AU party links swing to Swing (Australian politics) while Election box gain AU party links swing to Swing (politics). Any reason I shouldn't change the gain box to link to Australian politics ? --Find bruce (talk) 04:05, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

I'm not too bothered either way but I'm not sure there's a need to add a swing, particularly if other sources of the era don't use it. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:24, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Party names, styles & election boxes

You may have noticed I have made some changes to various templates. A quick explanation as to what & why.

When I started editing election articles, I struggled to figure out election boxes, particularly party names & styles. Now that I think I have it clear, I have added documentation to {{Australian politics/party colours}} and {{Australian politics/name}}. It includes a list of all the parties & their colours, which makes some anomalies easy to spot, such as the absence of socialist labor and democratic labor linking to the current party & not the historical. I have just noticed there are a bunch of acronyms, such as dhjp, that are a link for party colour but have no party name. I haven't added the documentation to {{Australian party style}} because I don't have template editor rights. If someone with those rights could add it, that would be great.

I have added documentation to the Australian specific election boxes {{Election box candidate AU party}}, {{Election box new seat win AU party}}, {{Election box hold AU party}} and {{Election box gain AU party}}.

It annoyed me when editing pages that span eras, such as Electoral results for the district of Parramatta, that {{Election box begin no party no change}} looked different to the AU templates so I created {{Election box begin no party no change AU}}, {{Election box candidate no party no change}}, {{Election box formal no party no change AU}}, {{Election box informal no party no change AU}} and {{Election box turnout no party no change AU}} to give the results the same look. --Find bruce (talk) 23:15, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Great work on all this—a lot of things I've been meaning to get around to but never did! I can add the documentation to the party style template. --Canley (talk) 01:05, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for all your work on these templates - it's really helpful. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:24, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

On the topic of election boxes, does anyone know why minor parties aren't gaining their colour/names in election boxes despite appearing in this list? I was checking the 2002 South Australian state election, and I am confused about why HEMP, Grey Power, and Voluntary Euthanasia aren't showing up properly. Catiline52 (talk) 01:16, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

For some reason {{Australian elections/Party summary}} requires party_id to trigger the colour, as you will see from this fix. --Find bruce (talk) 03:27, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Use of the UWA election database

I noticed on my watchlist just now that Catiline had fixed one set of figures for the 1903 election because a minor party was recorded in the wrong figures. I was horrified when I checked and noticed that the article is sourced to, and appears to have always been sourced to, the UWA election database. I was sure we'd cleansed this source from Australian politics topics because it's always been completely unreliable when looked at it in any depth - it's the sloppiest dataset we've ever encountered, it has massive problems almost across the board and it regularly differs from datasets that actually care about accuracy instead of throwing something together randomly for the sake of pretty figures. It's likely that the sorts of errors Catiline picked up in that one article are in basically every single article that uses it as a source. I'm just not around enough these days to do it, but is there any chance someone would be willing to check any UWA figures in federal election articles against reliable sources and replace them where they're wrong? The Drover's Wife (talk) 07:58, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Royal Commission article promotion to B class?

Not sure how to recommend an article for B class - but I think this one would meet the criteria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_into_Institutional_Responses_to_Child_Sexual_Abuse What do you think? Fugitivedave (talk) 12:46, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Article names of state/territory branches of major parties

First of all, I want to thank @The Drover's Wife: for suggesting raising the topic in the Wikiproject. I am proposing to rename Canberra Liberals to Liberal Party of Australia (A.C.T Division) or Liberal Party of Australia (Australian Capital Territory Division), to be consistent with other Liberal Party state divisions articles (see discussion). Currently, only Canberra Liberals have been named based on WP:COMMONNAME while the other state divisions are their respective full names. The branches and divisions of the Australian Labor Party and National Party of Australia are also named with their full names. Now the question is, should all party branch names be named using WP:COMMONNAME, or by their official names as per status quo? Marcnut1996 (talk) 06:08, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Just to add on, the NSW Liberals article name is Liberal Party of Australia (New South Wales Division), but on the bottom of the state party home page, its official name is "Liberal Party of Australia, NSW Division". So the other question is, if official names to be used, will the names stated on the websites/AEC be followed or keep the current article names as they are now? Marcnut1996 (talk) 23:10, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Is that actually the "official name" or just the mailing address? I suspect a lot of branches have used manner of variations for both campaigning and simplicity of mailing addresses over the years.

I also suspect that most state & territory branches don't have obvious common names that address this - within state/territory politics it's generally not necessary to include the state/territory name and when talking about a branch in another state or federal/state relations it's easier to talk about "the party's STATENAME branch" than to use a formal name. Timrollpickering (Talk) 20:15, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Previous names of parties

Currently, as of today 27th November 2019, there are three merge proposals relating to previous and recent names of Liberal Party divisions:

• 15 Nov 2019 (WA Libs): Liberal and Country League (Western Australia) into Liberal Party of Australia (Western Australian Division) (discussion)
• 15 Nov 2019 (SA Libs): Liberal and Country League into Liberal Party of Australia (South Australian Division) (discussion)
• 27 Nov 2019 (Qld Libs): Queensland People's Party into Liberal Party of Australia (Queensland Division) (discussion)

These merge proposals were on the principle that the "old name" and "new name" are the same organisation or entity. I have attempted to merge Queensland People's Party into Liberal Party of Australia (Queensland Division), but The Drover's Wife disagreed with the merge as there was no clear consensus on such a move (merging the article of the "old name" into the article of the "recent name" of the same entity). Marcnut1996 (talk) 00:00, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

I will also ping all users that participated in any of these merge proposals. @Ivar the Boneful:, @Timrollpickering:, @Kirsdarke01:, @The Drover's Wife:. Marcnut1996 (talk) 00:02, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

I think they're all fairly uncontroversial as to whether the mergers should happen. The issue with the QPP was the lack of sourcing for the contention that they were in fact the same organisation, which really needed some discussion about sourcing before proceeding either way, but Marcnut1996 has come up with an unambiguous answer to that so it's as clear as the others. The practical problem is going to be that the two LCL articles are much more detailed than their respective state branch articles, so a merger is going to have to integrate that content in a way that doesn't make the resulting articles look very strange and will probably take a fair bit of work to do so in a way that doesn't look a bit of a mess. (Not a problem that applies with the QPP because that article is a stub.) The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:07, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree with merging articles where the party has changed names but continued in the same form, such as what I understand occured with LCL WA. I am opposed however to merging where the parties were created through mergers and splits, such as LCL SA. As I understand it LCL SA was created by the merger of the state division of the UAP and the Country Party in 1932, remaining as a single party until 1962 with the formation of a separate country party. The formation of the South Australian Liberals in 1974 was the formation of a new party in the same way as the federal Liberal Party was not merely a continuation of the UAP, nor the numerous other conservative parties that preceeded them. --Find bruce (talk) 09:54, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

These are the conversations we need to have with these kind of article mergers rather than racing into things. My interpretation of the situation, like Marcnut1996's is that the current party is effectively the same one that formed with the 1932 merger, and that the dropping of the "and Country League" in 1974 was just a rename as opposed to a new party, with the formation of a new Country Party being unrelated. Can someone come up with a source that clarifies that if there's argument about it? We're really hampered in this period by Trove only having the Victor Harbor Times and it's something that doesn't seem to have made the Sydney Morning Herald on newspapers.com.

The clearest source I can find is Robert Martin's "Responsible Government in South Australia, Volume 2", which states "Guided by its Executive Director, Mr John Vial, the LCL had begun restructuring its organisational wing to become more streamlined and dynamic. In July 1974 the Liberal and Country League changed its name to the Liberal Party of Australia (South Australian Division). By doing this it was facing up to the reality that there had been a separate Country Party in the state since 1943." Happy to hear it if anyone's got sources for the formation of a new party. [33] The Drover's Wife (talk) 10:39, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Just did the same search as The Drover's Wife about the LCL and I agree with the above. Happy to be proven wrong, but the small selection of sources we have all seem to suggest just a name change. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 11:00, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Re the Queensland People's Party, my understanding is that the party was involved in the conferences around the formation of the federal Liberal Party and later affiliated with the party under the QPP name for several years. Did a quick Trove search - lots more sources - and I'm included to conclude this was also just a name change. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 11:05, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

I also think it needs to be made really clear when these mergers happen that some of these parties, though functionally the same organisation, pre-date the Liberal Party of Australia itself (particularly the LCL) and subsequently became state divisions of the LCL, as opposed to spawning as state divisions of the federal party. The Drover's Wife (talk) 11:28, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

WA Liberals

I merged LCL WA into WA Liberals as per the discussion above and in Talk:Liberal and Country League (Western Australia). However, I realised afterwards that one of the UWA sources, stating that Liberals were renamed LCL in 1949 was wrong, as I found many archived newspaper articles suggesting the Liberals merged into the LCL instead. The other UWA source was about LCL renaming back to Liberals in 1968, and I don't feel confident about its reliability after how wrong the first source was. However, I could not find any archived newspaper articles about the LCL in the 1960s to support or disprove the UWA source.

I believe the year 1968 was correct though, regardless if it is a rename or not, as the LCL name was no longer mentioned in archived newspapers after the 1960s, and it is also backed up with this list from the State Library WA. Marcnut1996 (talk) 05:20, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Which UWA sources are you using? This is once again a reminder that as long, demonstrated history on Wikipedia has shown us, the UWA Election Database is a completely error-riddled source that should only be used by editors who would also like their work to be completely error-ridden. It is, without a doubt, the worst large-scale source we've ever come across on this WikiProject and people relying on its work when it's then turned out to be sloppy and wrong has happened so many times I'd lost count years ago. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:45, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

I wasn't using new UWA sources, I was using existing UWA sources in the Liberal and Country League WA article and was fact checking them. [34][35] Marcnut1996 (talk) 06:01, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, that database should ideally never be used as a source and if you ever see references to it it's a really good idea to at a minimum fact-check the content but preferably just trash the reference for a better source altogether. Latest of many, many times it's led to incorrect content being on Wikipedia. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:33, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Having been in Perth at that time and interested in the subject, I know there is a lot more material available than what has been mentioned above, I do think that https://trove.nla.gov.au/people/611526?q=lcl&c=people - is an interesting avenue. SLWA on-line is not particular reliable as a definite answer. JarrahTree 05:39, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

I think we're a bit light on AusPol editors in WA these days and the WA Liberal Party article is atrocious with basically no content apart from that just merged in from the LCL article, so if you ever feel like heading down there and adding some stuff we'd be much obliged. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:45, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

We used to have a veritable army of 3 from memory - all gone - I have commitments that prevent on site examination of what I consider real sources until early months of 2020 at this stage. To think I never did keep newspapers from the late 1960's, it would be amazing to re-visit some of the people, (those who havent been buried already that is), usually only met at funerals these days... The current inside Liberal person that I went to school with, at the last funeral that we crossed paths bemoans the general level of cluelessnes of candidates that he has to deal with if thats any consolation. JarrahTree 05:52, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Victoria Liberals

I have also found quite a few archived newspapers that the Liberal and Country Party started as a NEW party to replace the Liberal Party. [36] [37] [38] [39] The question is, should the article be worded (infobox, lead etc) similar to the WA Liberals page, where the old Liberal Party ceased to exist and was replaced by a new party, which changed its name to Liberal Party 20 years later. Good news is though, the change of name is definitely true and the LCP is the same organisation as the current Victoria Liberals. [40] [41] Marcnut1996 (talk) 06:09, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Yep. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:31, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

I'd be interested to see how histories and political studies handle this. Were the newspaper articles reporting on a full process of a new party (the old one holding a properly convened conference to pass a formal resolution to dissolve in line with the constitution and then a new meeting, perhaps held back to back, formally approving the creation) or were they just regurgitating party press releases keen to stress the change elements and talk up the defections of ex Country members rather than a strictly accurate statement that the party had simply changed its name to park its tanks on the Country Party's lawn? Timrollpickering (Talk) 20:26, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

I think it's largely the former given the construction of entirely new executive structures and such in the above sources. The problem with a lot of general histories is that too many of them have a tendency to be extremely sloppy about this stuff: they're details that they're uninterested in and so they skim over it. This has always been a problem with documenting times of transition in Australian politics - I remember once that I had to go back to Trove to find out who the South Australian Labor leader was during the 1931 Labor split because most contemporary histories just forgot him. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:14, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

On a slightly different topic about Victoria Liberals, I found this 1944 article that says "Victorian Nationalists To Join Liberal Party". I thought the Nationalist name was gone in Victoria like the most of Australia in 1931, and the main conservative party in 1944 would be the UAP. Or could this Nationalist party be a different party? Marcnut1996 (talk) 23:20, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Interesting find. It looks like that Nationalist Party was the renamed Young Nationalist Organisation (founded by Menzies), which was named after the old Nationalist Party and kept its name when the Nationalists became the UAP. Party "formation" (worth reading the whole article) and (two months later) merge into the Liberals. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 10:02, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

LNP & CLP in federal politics

I am just wondering if it is still necessary to separate and differentiate LNP and CLP composition in pages such as:

• Australian Senate - all composition numbers throughout the article
• House of Representatives (Australia) - all composition numbers throughout the article
• List of Australian Senate appointments - recent LNP senate appointments since 2013
• Parliament of Australia - same as senate and HoR
• Members of the Australian House of Representatives and Members of the Australian Senate pages
• Federal election pages

The problem is that LNP and CLP federal members are never referred to as LNP and CLP by media sources, instead they are either Liberal or Nationals members; they do not have a separate party room. The separate numbers also do not help in determining how many members are in the Liberal and Nationals party rooms for each house. Though, I understand the actual party (LNP or CLP) are stated explicitly in each LNP/CLP MP and Senator page in the Australian Parliament website.

Australian Senate
Structure
Political groups	Government (35) Coalition   Liberal (30)   National (5)

I was thinking, for example in the composition numbers in the infobox in Australian Senate, could look like this (only Government numbers are shown):

{{Infobox legislature
|name= Australian Senate
|political_groups1 = '''[[Government of Australia|Government]] (35)''' <br />
[[Coalition (Australia)|Coalition]] <br>
{{Color box|{{Australian politics/party colours|Liberal}}|border=darkgray}} [[Liberal Party of Australia|Liberal]] (30) {{efn|Including four [[Liberal National Party of Queensland]] (LNP) senators who sit in the [[Liberal Party of Australia|Liberals]] party room}}<br>
{{Color box|{{Australian politics/party colours|National}}|border=darkgray}} [[National Party of Australia|National]] (5) {{efn|Including two [[Liberal National Party of Queensland]] (LNP) senators and one [[Country Liberal Party]] (CLP) senator who sit in the [[National Party of Australia|Nationals]] party room}}
}}

Notes

It is very clear from this in the Senate, there are 30 Liberals and 5 Nationals in the 35 Coaliton senate seats. I feel like this is more informative and useful that what is shown currently. Effectively, LNP and CLP are treated as if they are state divisions of the Liberals or Nationals parties and not separate parties. The infobox in the Liberal Party of Australia article already does something similar, showing the total number of its MPs and senators in the federal parliament with notes about LNP.

For List of Australian Senate appointments, all LNP appointments should be replaced with the actual party rooms they are sitting with.

If things are to change, priority should be on any summary tables that show total number of party members, so that a more useful number can be shown for decent summary. Marcnut1996 (talk) 05:23, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

I like that approach for the main Senate article. I disagree with the suggests approach for the Senate appointments list, though: I think it gets confusing if you call LNP senators Liberals or Nationals in a general list like that (the practice of merged parties sitting in different party rooms is one IIRC that did not originate with the CLP as well). The Drover's Wife (talk) 07:19, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree with The Drover's Wife that one-size-fits-all is not the way to go here. I don't mind the proposed idea for the main Senate/HoR/Parliament pages, but would oppose it anywhere else, most strongly on election pages where it would be complete original research that would require us to calculate separate totals from what is presented in AEC/ABC. Electorally, the LNP is not two separate parties, and we must maintain that. For what it's worth, the CLP is not a state branch of either the Libs or the Nats (unlike the LNP, which the AEC lists as the state branch of the Libs) but a separate, affiliated party. Frickeg (talk) 07:29, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Historically this affects a lot more due to various mergers and splits, complicated by ballot papers not using party labels and candidates using different labels in their divisions and Canberra. There were a number of splits in state Country Parties that weren't always mirrored directly in federal party rooms and these can cause confusion. Basically you could get merged state parties sending members to either federal party, parties split in the state but members sitting in the same federal party room, members trying to sit in the party room but out of the Coalition only to find this was a package deal plus various cases of sitting members being challenged by someone on their own side with various degrees of official endorsement. I think we need to nail down firstly whether the federal parliament or the local election label should be determinative when the two clash. Timrollpickering (Talk) 09:00, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

I think these sorts of distinctions are, in principle, best left to prose explanations in individual MP articles. Getting into which MPs who sat as part of a federal caucus were loyal to which party administration and trying to document that in a concise way for election articles is an editorial nightmare that probably doesn't have a lot of payoff. The CLP and LNP are cases where it's extremely well documented that they're elected as members of their state parties but sit with either federal coalition partner (and who sits where), and so it's useful to explain to readers who might be confused where their MP sits, and so some limited recognition (such as the Australian Senate suggestion in the OP makes sense. The more that I think about the practicalities of it (and hell, I'm our resident pedant about this stuff), the less I want to try and touch historical cases of these kinds of situations with a bargepole unless they're functionally analogous to the LNP/CLP situation and exactly as clear. The Drover's Wife (talk) 10:38, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for raising this. This comes up a lot, so hopefully we can come up with a policy / consensus here that we can reference. In my view the only field in federal politics where the LNP and CLP should be mentioned is election results. Casual vacancies would be the only other area where they're relevant. Neither is a parliamentary party, so when we're talking about seats in parliament, etc., we should be talking about either the Liberals or the Nationals. Unfortunately the distinction between membership of an organisational wing and membership of a parliamentary party has been blurred on numerous pages. This produces some pretty absurd situations. Currently the infobox at Barnaby Joyce states that he stopped being a National in 2010, joined the LNP, but then rejoined the Nationals in 2013, yet was still Senate leader of the Nationals from 2010 to 2013. Apparently at some point it was also decided that LNP membership for federal politicians would be deemed to start from the 2010 election, even though the merger occurred in 2008. I would suggest the following:

• In articles that contain lists of seats - e.g. Parliament of Australia, Australian House of Representatives, Australian Senate - CLP and LNP affiliations are footnoted (and not shown separately in diagrams). They are not separate parties to the Liberals and Nationals.
• In articles about federal MPs, membership of the LNP/CLP is given equal prominence to Liberal/National affiliation, in prose and in the infobox. However, when talking about federal politics care must be taken not to imply that the LNP/CLP is a separate party to the Liberals/Nationals, or that an individual switched parties.
• In articles about federal election results, there is no choice other than to display LNP/CLP as candidates do not preemptively declare which party they will sit with (at least not publicly). However, some consideration should be given to showing the breakdown of how LNP/CLP MPs are distributed between the two parliamentary parties.
• In articles about federal electorates, membership of the CLP and LNP is footnoted or bracketed (other than in election results tables). Post-2008 LNP MPs should be listed first and foremost as either Liberals or Nationals. This maintains consistency and prevents absurdities like with Joyce above where it appears that a member has switched parties.

It's a confusing situation, and the official parliamentary website hasn't even figured it out. Their list of senators (and individual Senate bios) contains no reference to the LNP, but McMahon is listed as belonging to the CLP. However, the corresponding list of MHRs lists the LNP members separately to the "other" Liberals and Nationals. The media seems to have the same problem with different sources using different approaches. I think it's up to us to make a judgment call and find a way of displaying this information that doesn't mislead the reader. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 13:24, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

And then there's the Liberal Party list of senators which includes all LNP and CLP senators whether or not they are sitting with Liberals or Nationals. Marcnut1996 (talk) 19:13, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

I think it's good we're trying to work out a comprehensive solution to this. I think I agree with most of Ivar's suggestions apart from the last one re: electorates. In an electorate context, we'd usually talk about the party (not the caucus) that holds the seat, and most sources (e.g. Antony Green) do that. Acknowledging that someone was in a party and then was a member of a successor party, even if they sat in the same caucus, is just a necessity of being clear, and the merger can be addressed in prose if need be (which it should be anyway) so that no one can read it as a defection. The Joyce situation should probably be addressed by systematically going through these cases and making sure they're explained sensibly in prose, and probably using only caucus (not formal party) in biographical infoboxes because they're just not a good place for trying to convey complexities, possibly with a footnote if it's technically possible. The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:26, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

I just saw the table in the infobox in Results of the 2019 Australian federal election (House of Representatives). It lists LNP as a separate party and its leader is Deb Frecklington, but this is very misleading as Frecklington is not involved and/or does not participate in federal elections. Strictly speaking, there is no federal LNP leader because it is a not separate party. I think the leader for LNP should be left as none like Central Alliance, while maintaining seat counts and %. Marcnut1996 (talk) 23:29, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. The Drover's Wife (talk) 10:51, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Member citations on NSW electorate pages

Firstly hats off to @Find bruce: for their excellent and continuing work organising the consolidation and transclusion of election results across electorate and election pages, which is now progressing through NSW state elections.

I regret that I'm only noticing this now that Find bruce is getting to W, but it seems references are simultaneously being added to members lists for each individual member (e.g. Electoral district of Albury). This seems like a very clunky way of doing this, and I've never seen this kind of citation on comparable member lists anywhere else. I also don't know how they would fit in with @Thescrubbythug:'s redesigned member lists when they reach state level (e.g. Division of Wentworth). Even if these are technically necessary (although I'm not at all sure they qualify as "likely to be challenged"), there must be a more efficient way of including them, ideally a single cite at the top of the list to a source that covers all of them. I have never liked citing after names in any case, since the citation is meant to support the whole row; if line-by-line is to be used, there should be a separate citation column at the far right. Frickeg (talk) 10:37, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Frickeg - the main reasons I had added them were that (1) some pages were tagged by {{more footnotes}} {{one source}} etc - I don't think much of fly-by tagging, but its generally easier to add references than to argue, at least until someone adds {{too many citations}}. (2) as the pages referenced the old url for the parliamentary members list. As well as the URL being changed, I don't think its useful to simply refer to a list of every person who has ever been an MLA or MLC. THe NSW election database district list, eg Parramatta, is good, but you get issues with people with the same name - I have come across a few errors with these & made a couple myself. While I have all but finished the current electorates, I haven't done much on the long list of former electorates.

I am always happy to discuss ways of doing things better, especially as I am not overly happy with the member lists as they are currently, or previously. It is ok for short lived electorates such as Barwon & it would be easy to add the reference as a separate column, but it doesn't look good with the complexity of the longer lived districts with multiple changes of the number of members, such as Newcastle which has variously returned 1, 2, 3 and 5 members. While I like the federal member lists, federal elections don't have this issue as they have only ever returned 1 member per division. I can't see how that table format will work well for multi-member electorates.

I will stop adding the member citations while we discuss - there are plenty of other things to get on with - results for the former districts are very patchy & missing results for elections prior to 1910. If anyone has any comments on the format of Results of the 1910 New South Wales state election, including the notes and references, now would be a good time to make them. I have assumed Labor in NSW was Labour until 1912, same as at a Federal level. --Find bruce (talk) 00:28, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

I did not realise the election database was back out of Wayback Machine limbo - that's terrific news all round.

You make an excellent point about multi-member seats - I hadn't thought of that. I think I prefer a single cite to the NSW database, which could be appended with clarifying links to the parliament site if confusion is possible. This seems much easier to deal with than individual citations, and de-clutters the table nicely. It's not perfect, but to me it works better - happy to hear other opinions though.

The 1910 page looks great - very thorough. The intro text is very helpful and I think the notes to results about Former Progressives, etc., are a very good idea. This is the kind of thing that I think would, in a perfect world, be managed with a prose history of each contest accompanying each table, but since there's no prospect of that in the foreseeable future the notes are an excellent solution. Frickeg (talk) 00:46, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

I hadd the same initial response as Frickeg to the member lists but I'm not entirely opposed - it's just a problem I think we haven't quite found the best solution for yet. I don't have really strong opinions either way. As for the 1910 list - love the intro text, don't like the notes about "Former Progressive" because it's unclear. Is it saying that the winner beat an ex-Progressive candidate running under some other banner? Is the text saying that the winner won a seat that had been held at the previous election by the now-defunct Progressives? If it's the latter, something like "from Progressive Party (defunct)" would be a lot clearer than "Former Progressive Party" and if it's the former that's something that just needs to be explained in prose. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:09, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments & suggestions. Election result pages I think 1910 current version clarifies the issues around the defunct progressive party & the large number of members changing parties. I took a similar approach to 1907 which had a similarly large number of members changing parties. I am currently working on 1904, a major complication for which is the reduction in members from 125 to 90 which saw significant change in every district. I think the prose gives a simple explanation for each seat, but if you have any comments, they are always appreciated.

Member tables I managed to find where they have hidden the parliamentary record page [42] which is a reliable source of members by district. The downside however is that it doesn't help confirm which John Perry held which seat. I have tried some changes for Balranald. The former has different width columns for one and two member lists. Version 1 forces the columns to be consistent widths & has individual references as a separate column. Version 2 is similar to version 1 but without individual references. --Find bruce (talk) 23:39, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

I like the revised 1910 page a lot: the Progressive Party fix works and the acknowledgment in the results table that the member changed parties and did not win the seat from himself is excellent and needs to get spread everywhere. The only issue is that there's no point having a swing column if there's no workable figures going to be added because the situation was too chaotic. I don't have strong opinions on Version 1 versus Version 2 but it does look a bit less cluttered without the individual references, and the individual ones add no value thanks to that source (we're capable of working out which John Perry was which, and sourcing it to Trove in a prose explanation if need be). Incidentally, where did you find that PDF on their website? Now that you mention it, I vaguely recall the NSW Parliamentary Record as a thing that existed and remember it being fairly useful so wouldn't mind having adccess to the rest of it. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:58, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

They hid the parliamentary record well - the rest of it is here. Which John Perry is a pedantic point about the need to cite reliable sources rather than accuracy. Glad you like the 1910 page. I agree with you about swing & my thoughts are to change the election box template so you can remove swing with something like "swing=no" but I need to work through the coding. --Find bruce (talk) 10:55, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

xxth Parliament articles

Thoughts on if articles like 45th Parliament of Australia and 46th Parliament of Australia are useful/necessary? It seems like we already cover the content of those across various other articles (election articles, lists of MPs, "XYZ Government", etc.). I think the numbering of a parliaments is unlikely to be known outside political buffs and isn't a likely search term; possibly they could be redirected to the relevant election article. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 13:30, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Nope. The only reason those articles exist elsewhere is to house exactly the same content as our "Members of the Australian House of Representatives, 1901-1903" series of member lists, and that format is vastly more helpful: I'm the most uber-nerd of uber-nerd when it comes to Auspol, and I couldn't tell what parliament was what by their numerical order, and our format tells the reader exactly which parliament it is without having to trawl through the series to find what they're looking for. The "XYZ Government" series of articles is for stuff-that-happens-during-the-term-of-government, there's not much that happens in parliament that doesn't have anything to do with the government, and anything that does happen is either a) already referenced in our list (e.g. party changes) or better placed somewhere else (like, say, Pauline Hanson doing Pauline Hanson shenanigans). Given that our lists are separated by house, I'd maybe turn them into disambiguation pages listing the election, House list, Senate list and government article so people can find what they're after: if I'm going to an article title for a specific parliament I don't think an election is the most likely thing I'm really after. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:20, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Issues with Victorian elections

Three issues with Victorian elections:

1) We've never gotten to the bottom of pre-WWI Victorian political parties, even as we've done it for other states. This is causing a few problems: e.g. 1902 Victorian state election had the Premier as representing the Commonwealth Liberal Party, which wasn't founded until a decade later, and the infobox and prose of 1908 Victorian state election contradict each other - the infobox and table (based on the always-questionable UWA database) have the Premier as representing the "Reform League", but our prose talks about the non-Labor forces being the Ministerialists and explains who they were. It'd be really good to tidy this up a bit because it's all a bit of a mess.

2) Does anyone know how to turn off the party infobox linking? The 1902 election article now links to the word "Liberal"; the 1908 article always linked to the word "Reform".

3) We've got no articles whatsoever on Victorian colonial elections. I hate doing election articles because I'm really not a numbers girl - anyone want to throw some basic articles together on a few of these? The Drover's Wife (talk) 00:24, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

On the topic of fixing up Victorian elections, should the Electoral regions of Victoria have their electoral result histories listed like other electorates? Also semi-related, there doesn't seem to be standardised listing of members for these regions. Northern Metropolitan Region has a different system than the Southern Metropolitan Region. Catiline52 (talk) 00:33, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Good catches. It'd be great if we could get their result histories included (and shouldn't be too hard to transclude from the state election pages as is happening with the lower house?). I'm not sure what's gone on with the different regions, but that's definitely something to clean up too: Northern Metropolitan Region looks bloody awful and is harder to read but Southern Metropolitan Region is too long for the page considering the infobox and leads to an enormous amount of white space. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:28, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

I was working backwards through these a few years ago, I think I got to 1921 and then gave up as I was getting confused about the parties (Liberal as you mention, the various Country/VFU offshoots and it was starting to get to the Ministerialist/Oppositionist pre-party stage). Looks like I then tried to create some articles on the parties of the time like Victorian Farmers' Union and Victorian Liberal Party to try and get my head around it, and then moved on to other things. I was using the Colin Hughes book A Handbook of Australian Government and Politics 1890–1964 as the primary reference for the overall results—as I recall I didn't actually use the UWA database as I found it confusing and inaccurate, but I listed it as a reference anyway. The Handbook only had the overall election results—however the SLV does have another Hughes & Graham book with the seat level results for Victoria from 1890 onwards. I can have another go at doing the pre-1901 colonial elections from the Handbook, and then use the district level listings and Voting for the Victoria Legislative Assembly 1890–1964 to fill out the other results. --Canley (talk) 04:40, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

That'd be fantastic. Any idea where we might get a bit of clarity on the party situation? (Odds on Hughes & Graham dodge the whole situation by just using "Liberal"). I remembered that I had Peter Loveday's "The Emergence of the Australian party system" on my shelves, which settled a few things:

• the reason Victoria is so confusing is that the whole party system came together much later than anywhere else and had Ministerialist "parties" with arguably more cohesion than elsewhere - they endorsed candidates at elections and stuck together a bit more closely, but had no single extraparliamentary organisation nor definitive caucus - the election endorsements seem to basically be just supporting the next generation of old-school Ministerialists
• the Reform League designation we adopted from UWA for the mid-00s is probably incorrect: they were essentially a powerful pressure group who worked with the Ministerialist leadership in endorsing candidates for an election or two, so I think referring to the Premier as representing the League is a stretch
• there's no formal non-Labor party system whatsoever before fusion in 1909
• the People's Party was a country party while the People's Liberal Party (which seems to have been very closely affiliated with the federal CLP - Loveday basically says it was them adopting a different name for state purposes) was a city party; they felt one party couldn't win elections statewide
• unfortunately Loveday cuts out at this time: he doesn't make clear exactly when and how the PP and PLP formed nor to what extent they existed between elections: it's still not clear to me if they were two parties in coalition or basically two campaign organisations endorsing Ministerialists right through until the Nationalists come along in 1917. I also vaguely remember that there might have been a country-city split around WWI and I dunno where that fits into things.

I've also got Denis Murphy's book on the formation of pre-WWI state Labor parties so I'll see if he has anything to say about the competition, but I don't think I've got anything else in my library that might shed light. I'd love to clarify this once and for all if anyone else has anything. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:25, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

I have scans of Colin Hughes's book covering election results from 1890 onward. I've also been using Adam Carr's Psephos website for the seat-by-seat results, which has all of them back to 1843 here: http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/states/vic/historic/vichistoricelections.shtml . That could help with some information, since Carr seems like a fairly reliable source that's freely available. Kirsdarke01 (talk) 06:42, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Fantastic. Adam's sa much better source than UWA, to be sure. The Drover's Wife (talk) 07:53, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) We also say in several places that George Prendergast was the first leader of the parliamentary Labour Party in Victoria and at the 1904 election, but according to Hughes & Graham, Psephos, UWA, several articles in Trove, and the bio of Prendergast in ADB, it was Frederick Bromley (redlink!) but he resigned due to ill health six days after the election. This article even says that William Trenwith was Labour leader before Bromley. Would you be able to have at your Murphy book to verify as I can't find anything that says Prendergast was the first Labour leader, although it is stated several times on Wikipedia. --Canley (talk) 06:51, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Murphy's biographical index lists Trenwith as leader from 1892-1900, Bromley as leader from 1900-04 and Prendergast 1904-13 and 1918-26, with George Elmslie 1913-18. I feel like I'd read today that Prendergast was first leader too but I double-checked all of his pages in Loveday about three times and couldn't find a reference to it. I was a bit confused by something in Loveday about the Trenwith-Bromley transition, so I checked Trove - 3 December 1900. Murphy's index is probably enough to cross-check anything against Trove. Murphy is quite in-depth and it takes me a couple of days to even get through one of his state chapters so I'll add some more detail from that when I get to it - I'm currently still on NSW and have a ton of changes to make about early NSW Labor. Also - Murphy's book is digitised and free thanks to Text Queensland if you ever want to check it - it's utterly invaluable for state Labor anything pre-1920. The Drover's Wife (talk) 07:53, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a great reference! I have started an article on Frederick Bromley. --Canley (talk) 03:44, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Re the Prendergast first leader issue - @Kirsdarke01: has changed the leaders section on the state article to mark Trenwith and Bromley as "unofficial" Labor leaders. I'm not sure about that: Trenwith and Bromley were both the official leaders of the parliamentary Labor caucus, the only thing changing in 1904 is that an extraparliamentary Labor Party in the same sense as the other states actually had become a thing. Is the thing that makes a leader "official" there being an extraparliamentary organisation to recognise them? I'm not sure it is. The Drover's Wife (talk) 07:57, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I was unsure what term to use for that, so settled on "unofficial" for the time being, but double-checking Colin Hughes's results book, Labour was referenced as a party for the 1892 election, so if that's what the references say, I'll change them back to official leaders. I just got a little confused at the status of it back then. Kirsdarke01 (talk) 08:34, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

While I was looking at Hughes's results book, I counted up the votes listed, and the "Progressive Political League" (listed simply as "Labor" in the book) obtained 39,014 votes and 11 seats at the 1892 election, and the "United Liberal and Labor Party" (listed as "Liberal and Labor" in the book) obtained 32,424 votes and 18 seats at the 1894 election. However, on Adam Carr's website, he puts the Liberal and Labour candidates seperately, so I might hold off on adding those to the "Election results for Legislative Assembly" on the Australian Labor Party (Victorian Branch) page until that's sorted out. Kirsdarke01 (talk) 09:06, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Early Victorian Labor history seems to be generally confusing to most people, so no need to apologise for being equally confused: this is drawing out a couple of issues I hadn't even thought of. Thinking about it, I think what I would maybe do is create articles for the PPL and the ULLP (because they were not contiguous organisations with the later Labor Party) to try to explain that period, and put the results in those articles. Then we treat [Australian Labor Party (Victorian Branch)]] as beginning c. 1904 (whenever the exact date was, I'd have to check) with a clear origins section explaining that there'd been a parliamentary caucus for a decade already, and split the leaders section into two, noting Trenwith and Bromley as "pre-party" or something to that extent. The Drover's Wife (talk) 09:54, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

I've now found another issue while thinking about Kirsdarke01's issue: our party sections in our member lists are a bit of a mess. Firstly, we've got no parties whatsoever pre-1904, which is a completely arbitrary cut-off: it dodges how to deal with the non-Labor people during that period but means the Labor members aren't marked. Members of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, 1904–1907 is really random: there wasn't a state Anti-Socialist Party during this period, the Premier and only the Premier is marked as leaving the non-existent Anti-Socialist Party for "Reform", whatever that is, and James Boyd (whose article marks him as a Conservative) is randomly marked as "non-Labor" with a bunch of people blank. Members of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, 1908–1911 has the "Anti-Socialist Party" continuing past fusion with a token Commonwealth Liberal Party candidate being elected at a by-election, which makes absolutely no sense. Members of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, 1911–1914 is the first list that remotely resembles other sources but has about five MPs still marked as "Ministerialists" who then joined the Commonwealth Liberals for no clear reason. Every single list up until 1917 has "????" issues of some sort. I think the way to go might be to probably use whatever Re-Member says for anyone pre-1910 and to just use Liberal Party (unlinked) until we get to the bottom of whatever the deal was with the People's Party-People's Liberal Party and can link it to something. Anyone feel like doing a bit of tidying? The Drover's Wife (talk) 09:54, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Describing political party ideologies, part infinity

I think most people here have long agreed with the consensus that we leave party infobox ideology fields blank because for years we had incessant revert-warring from randoms who'd come in and keep changing them. We're now seeing a new round of discussions where people are arguing (citing the infobox precedent) that any reference to where parties sit on the political spectrum should be removed, most recently with the Greens.

We're now seeing the same discussion at Talk:Australian Labor Party, and I think it's probably worth trying to come to some sort of wider consensus (as with infoboxes) about what to do in these situations because it's an argument that keeps coming up and it'd be good to work out a consistent approach.

I've always felt that removing any explicit mention of ideology from lead sections results in them awkwardly dancing around the party's ideology in ways that make articles initially very unclear to unfamiliar readers and result in the sorts of awkward summaries of parties that you'd never see in another publication that didn't have to deal with people collectively going "fuck it" to avoid having to ever the discussion again. That said, I did support the infobox removals because I felt it wasn't worth having the consistent arguments over an infobox field and I'm kinda not surprised that people are now going "well, we did that then, why not the same for lead sections?"

Whatever your take (keep, remove, find some other way to word it, some other solution), it'd be useful if people could chip in at Talk:Australian Labor Party and try to agree on some kind of standard so we don't have to have this argument for every single political party. The Drover's Wife (talk) 07:05, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Peter Gutwein

Anyone wanna give this an expansion? I think this might be the worst modern Premier article I've seen yet. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:00, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

I started a draft rewrite but am struggling to find much material. His bio on the cabinet website is almost deliberately vague (e.g. "Peter also spent two years as an adviser to a senior Federal coalition cabinet Minister during the 1990s" but doesn't say which one)... I'll keep plugging away though.--Canley (talk) 05:20, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Found it in his first speech, it was Jocelyn Newman. --Canley (talk) 05:25, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for giving it a shot anyway! Already better than it was. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:58, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Australian Sex Party / Reason Party

I'd like to request other editors opinion on a recurrent issue on a page. On the page for the Reason Party, any content in the history section which describes it as originally being the Sex Party or a merger of any other party gets removed. This is despite sourcing that states that the Australian Cyclist Party and the Sex Party merged into Reason, and that Reason is specifically a successor to the Sex Party. Comments that the Voluntary Euthanasia Party (NSW) became the NSW Reason branch also got removed. Should this content be included on the page, or should it be removed? Catiline52 (talk) 01:28, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

The editor in question has confirmed they are the secretary of the party on the talk page. This is a potential WP:COI that they haven't announced until now, despite editing the page for a year. There is sufficient independent sourcing from both news and the VEC that the Sex Party became the Reason Party. Catiline52 (talk) 01:43, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up. This is a particularly silly round of minor party COI editing: every couple of months we get some minor party insisting on trying to write their own article, but I can't think of an example of it in all the times it's happened that's so comprehensively explicitly contrary to all reliable sources. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:37, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Cory Bernardi's party membership in 2019

I was editing Members of the Australian Senate, 2016–2019 and Members of the Australian Senate, 2019–2022 to reflect Bernardi's resignation from Senate, when I noticed a peculiarity in his party membership. I believe the cut-off dates in the articles are 1 July of the stated years. Bernardi's Australian Conservatives was disbanded in June 2019, which means until 1 July 2019 (albeit only a mere few days), he was an Independent. Should the 2016-2019 article and its 2019 composition figure be updated to reflect this? Marcnut1996 (talk) 23:03, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Only saw this because of the below post about Reason, but good catch - yes. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:38, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Numbering of Prime Ministers

(Previously posted on Talk:Edmund Barton). Wondering if a discussion has already occurred on another talk page about the numbering of Prime Ministers in infoboxes. If not, can we try to reach some kind of consensus here?

I propose that the officeholders need not be numbered. Perhaps the first for historical importance and the current Prime Minsiter for reference, but otherwise the numbering is completely useless. It is common in American political infoboxes to number offices. Although the Australian system draws from the American one, the executive division of Australian government is more similar to the United Kingdom, where offices are not numbered. No other offices in Australian infoboxes are consistently numbered, except for the Prime Minister, Governor-General and Chief Justice, among other inconsistent ones. SpaceFox99 (talk) 09:21, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

It's not surprising that those three offices would be numbered, because they're the most likely to be numbered in other sources as well. I don't see an issue with it. The Drover's Wife (talk) 10:19, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

I would agree that prime ministers etc. don't really need to be numbered in infoboxes. Their numbering will presumably be stated in prose and a list of PMs (with numbers) is a few clicks away. I was actually meaning to raise this issue with the numbering of the deputy prime ministers, where John McEwen is treated as "the first" deputy PM despite the title de facto existing since the 1920s. I understand why we've done it that way (dating from the official creation of the office) but I think it's a bit misleading. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 10:31, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

I've got no objection to their removal for deputy PMs only, because there is (as you rightly note) a reason for not doing it in that case alone. The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:42, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your contributions, I agree over the Deputy PM statement. Is there a reason why Prime Ministers are numbered though? It is not a significant thing here; you’ll here people refer to US presidents as the “XXth President”, but that is rare for us. As all other ministerial offices in Westminster systems aren’t numbered, a leader’s number can be found in their article, and list articles exist with numbers for that purpose, what is the point of having it in the infobox?SpaceFox99 (talk) 13:26, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Ivar the Boneful, I also think that “de facto” Deputy Prime Ministers should be listed further back in time; one search on trove (eg https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/102669821?searchTerm=%22Deputy%20Prime%20Ministers%22&searchLimits=l-australian=y%7C%7C%7Cl-decade=193#) reveals that the term has been in use since the late 1920s.SpaceFox99 (talk) 13:34, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

We number the prime ministers, as it's informative. The UK prime ministers are the only ones 'not' numbered, among the commonwealth realms. I've no objections to removing the numberings from the deputy prime ministers & certainly the party leaders & deputy leaders. GoodDay (talk) 13:38, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Shouldn’t all offices be numbered because they’re informative then? SpaceFox99 (talk) 12:43, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Actually it isn't informative. It is frankly mere trivia to know exactly what number the current Foreign Minister is under whatever arbitrary scheme that has to make a number of judgements to determine the count - for example does the post date from 1993 (when it last changed title, dropping "Trade"), 1970 (when the post was renamed "Foreign" from "External"), 1921 (when it was recreated, having been absorbed into the PM's job for some years) or 1901? Deakin, Batchelor and Hughes all held the post more than once - how many times do they count? Does putting a number on Payne actually tell us anything? How often is Payne even called the 7th/15th/30th/31st/39th/43rd Foreign Minister? And the Foreign Minister is one of the clearer cases - some of the other posts seem a convoluted mix due to different combinations over the years (e.g. Transport and Communications were once a single post but are in separate packages today). Timrollpickering (Talk) 13:41, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Just the governors-general & prime ministers need to be numbered. Cabinet ministers, party leaders & deputy leaders need not be. GoodDay (talk) 16:10, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

@Timrollpickering, yep, I agree, that’s my point. GoodDay, why do only those offices need to be numbered? SpaceFox99 (talk) 22:43, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Because they're the offices that are generally numbered in other sources. The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:24, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

I prefer that they remain numbered. Note the UK prime ministers are (I believe) the only ones 'not' numbered, among the prime ministers of all the Commonwealth realms. GoodDay (talk) 12:40, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Note - We also number the governors-general of all the Commonwealth realms, exception being the UK as they don't have a governor general. GoodDay (talk) 12:51, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello again, as can be seen I've removed all numbering from DPMs. As I was going through them, I noticed National Party Leaders still have the old style formatting of listing elections they contested. Is there another talk page where this was agreed upon or have their infoboxes simply been left behind? Should the elections contested be removed?SpaceFox99 (talk) 23:33, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Previous names of parties (part 2 - Liberal and Country League SA)

Continuing on the discussion last year, I found this August 1974 article that said:

It (Liberal and Country League) has revised its archaic constitution, adopted & new platform, appointed new young Party officials and organisers and now changed its name from the "LCL" to the Liberal Party. The new platform has been modelled on that of the Victorian Liberal Party, in the hope that the formula which worked there will do the trick in SA, too.

Seems to suggest LCL SA changed its constitution and renamed to Liberal Party SA, but still the same entity, after seeing LCP Victoria rename to Liberal Party Victoria in 1965. It also implies this happened before 15 August 1974. This is consistent with the link provided by The Drover's Wife on 27 November 2019, which says the rename happened in July 1974.

Additionally, the NSW Liberal Party constitution in August 1945 states that the SA division was known as LCL, implying LCL was the SA division of the Liberal Party since the beginning. Marcnut1996 (talk) 00:36, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

To add on, this link from NLA shows there is a hard copy of the address given by Billy Snedden at the LCL state council on 22 July 1974. Considering that the Liberal Party Victoria was renamed during its 1965 state council, I am inclined to think that LCL was renamed at this state council on 22 July 1974. Marcnut1996 (talk) 06:47, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

I think we've got enough to settle this particular issue - good finds. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:33, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

LNP & CLP in federal politics (part 2)

Australian Senate
Structure
Political groups	Government (36) Coalition   Liberal (31)   National (5)

To continue the discussion last month, it seems that the consensus for the following pages:

• Australian Senate
• House of Representatives (Australia)
• Parliament of Australia,

is to list the Coalition composition figure and numbers listed as either Liberals or Nationals. (See Infobox example)

Notes

Given that SA will be nominating a Liberal senator sometime soon and hence changing the composition of the Senate, I think this is the best time to implement such changes. Marcnut1996 (talk) 01:37, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Yep, no disagreement here. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:57, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

I just found out that the senate composition figure (File:Australian Senate (current composition).svg) is used for some election pages, particularly the Results of the 2019 Australian federal election (Senate) and Members of the Australian Senate, 2019–2022. To my understanding, we are maintaining party names (LNP and CLP) in election pages. I suggest creating a separate permanent figure for Results of the 2019 Australian federal election (Senate) (similar to File:Australian Senate 2016 election.svg), which is fixed and does not need updating. As for Members of the Australian Senate, 2019–2022, it should follow Members of the Australian Senate, 2016–2019, with one figure from the 2019 election (i.e. the permanent figure) and one figure that will be continuously updated until dissolution at the next election. Same applies to HoR. Marcnut1996 (talk) 02:36, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that makes sense—do a snapshot of the election result diagram and update the composition one until the end of the term. There is quite frequently confusion between the current composition diagram and the election result one, particularly where someone updated the current one which is being used to illustrate the election result. --Canley (talk) 02:38, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

I have updated the figures and text as per discussed, and will update the Senate figure (or someone else) when the SA Liberal senator is appointed. Marcnut1996 (talk) 04:38, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

In the Members list of HoR or Senate for each parliamentary term (e.g. Members of the Australian Senate, 2019–2022), members of the LNP and CLP are shown as LNP (light blue) and CLP (orange) instead of the respective party rooms and/or colours. I feel like this is also potentially confusing, especially for anyone trying to see all Liberal or National members in that parliamentary term. I personally think, the party names LNP and CLP can stay, but the party colours of the MP/Senator should be the colour of the party room of the member. This is similar to the ministry tables in Second Turnbull Ministry. Marcnut1996 (talk) 02:01, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Party colours and party membership

Given the ministerial reshuffle today, I think we should completely ban the use of LNP or CLP party colours in federal politics, with the exception of elections and Senate appointments. It does not make sense to see the LNP or CLP colours in federal ministerial articles; they are either Liberals or Nationals if the Coalition is in government. Additionally, I propose the following format for federal LNP and CLP politicians party memberships: "Federal party room + (LNP)". This follows the format in Second Morrison Ministry which makes more sense to anyone. 06:13, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

The format in Second Morrison Ministry is a good way of dealing with this issue for ministry articles, though I would prefer that the acronym was consistently linked for the unaware. I would be hesitant to say "completely ban" without considering each context in which it's used lest there be others where it's appropriate. It makes sense in principle though. The Drover's Wife (talk) 07:05, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

I agree in some cases some context is needed to distinguish LNP CLP Nationals and Liberals, but in general, the LNP and CLP party colours are not helpful in many federal contexts and most of the time misleading. Marcnut1996 (talk) 07:18, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Llew O'Brien

Just when you thought it would be simple along comes Llew O'Brien. Is he:

• The sole member of a federal LNP that forms a third element to the Coalition?
• A "Coalition Independent" in Canberra who sits in the Coalition party room but not in either individual party room?

My instinct is the latter and it's probably easier to list him as such rather than reintroducing the LNP to diagrams such as on House of Representatives (Australia). Can anyone au fait with the diagrams get this changed? Timrollpickering (Talk) 14:15, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

I will disagree with you in listing him as an Coalition Independent, as he is not actually an Independent but still a member of the LNP, so listing him as such is confusing. He also said he is still a government member, so listing him as Independent is also contradictory. While I have previously said "Ban the use" of LNP colours in federal politics, I take O'Brien as an exception as he is the first ever LNP member to sit in neither party room and still be in the government benches. So, I will treat him as the sole federal LNP member in the government benches. You will never know whether other Nationals or Liberals members for Queensland will also follow suit. Marcnut1996 (talk) 22:10, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm with Marcnut1996 on this. The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:14, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

It's more common in other countries but it's far from unknown for coalitions to include in their parliamentary ranks members who are not members of any constituent party - they may be pre-existing independents who've come under the umbrella, people drawn to the coalition as a whole or technocrat "experts" recruited as ministers from outside politics. Hence the "Coalition Independent" description. I do think that's slightly more accurate than implying there's a third party in the Coalition. If any other Queensland Coalition MPs were to take the same route it would get seriously confusing.

The elected representative who's a member of a party back in the constituency but doesn't sit in that particular party room in Canberra has been a recurring problem and at some point we'll need to nail it for good. Timrollpickering (Talk) 13:41, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

The problem with that is that no one else whatsoever (that I've seen) refers to O'Brien as a "Coalition Independent". He doesn't call himself any form of independent and nor does anyone else. It might be how he'd identify and/or be identified if he were an MP in say, Ireland, but that's not the case here. I'm not sure this is a problem we've had before: the Nats guy from WA just sat separately to the Coalition as a representative of the state Nats, Hogan sat in the Nats party room but not the Coalition one, and I think they're the only two in recent memory who've done anything similar. The only other time it's come up is when someone has been suspended or expelled from the caucus but not the party and that's always going to be something that's going to require prose explanation (but they're still outside the parliamentary party for the purposes of most of these issues). The Drover's Wife (talk) 21:57, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

What on earth?

How have the Fourth and Fifth Fraser Ministry articles co-existed for so long, when there is no such thing as the Fifth Fraser Ministry, and they contain the same content. That's funny. SpaceFox99 (talk) 09:34, 9 February 2020 (UTC) Also, the numbering on Ministry pages needs a complete overhaul; they're all full of errors. SpaceFox99 (talk) 09:35, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

I noticed this the other day - I'm not sure if I commented on it in the previous discussion. Very strange. The problem is that we never developed a consistent approach to naming and numbering ministries so it's a total mess across the board. I've long thought we should use the one article for contiguous ministries to avoid all these issues. The Drover's Wife (talk) 09:36, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi The Drover's Wife (talk), yes I think that's a good idea; perhaps separate articles for the different Prime Ministers, but move the lists and infoboxes into different sections of the article. That would bring the number of Ministry articles down from 74 to 30. A thorough number/data accuracy check could probably be done quite quickly. Also while you're here, is there a consensus on listing the Elections Contested in Premiers' infoboxes somewhere? SpaceFox99 (talk) 10:11, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Also, can we get a consensus on the Fathers of Parliaments in infoboxes? I know listing it can be tedious, perhaps we should leave out Fathers of House of Reps/Senate, but keep Father of the Parliament due to its significance (I know people would argue it carries little practical significance, but in terms of tenure and records it is important). SpaceFox99 (talk) 10:14, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

I edit conflicted, but this discussion is starting to sprawl into a few separate topics, so:

• Re one article for contiguous ministries: Great. I'd really like to do it that way in particular because the states and territories all refer to numbered ministries in completely contradictory ways and coming up with a basic way of organising ours like this avoids the inevitable mess in trying to follow them on this. I've brought this up a few times over the years and never gotten much interest either way so it'd be nice to just fix the damn mess once and for all.
• Re elections in infoboxes: I don't think there's been any discussions about the elections contested in infoboxes in a very long time. I personally tend to think it's helpful as it's useful information for readers - what elections they've contested as leader is something I often want to easily find when I'm reading, say, Canadian politicians, and it's a pain to have to dig through prose to find them. I was a bit frustrated they were removed from opposition leaders, as they're equally useful there and I don't remember having any discussion to support removing them. More broadly, I don't really understand why this bothers anyone.
• Re: Father of House/Senate/Parliament. I'd be inclined to remove them from infoboxes (because bloat) but keep all of them in succession boxes because it's potentially useful to people. I don't understand the argument for only keeping "Father of the Parliament" - a quick Google search confirmed my suspicion that it's the least-used of the three titles (less than half the Google hits, singling out Australia and filtering out Wikipedia). The Drover's Wife (talk) 10:22, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

• Ministries. Cool, I’m happy to help sort that out
• Elections in Infoboxes. I see your point, but usually the elections a person contested (in Australia at least) are listed in the header and therefore immediately available/‘findable’. The other day I removed a few from opposition leaders because I noticed a few recent ones (e.g. John Howard, Kevin Rudd, among others) no longer listed them and they have been updated more recently. I just reckon infoboxes are supposed to be as informative as possible without being over-cluttered with information.
• Fathers; wow, I was actually surprised to see the little amount of mentions for all positions. I suspect that “Father of the Parliament” is probably known as other things on other pages (e.g. Father of the House, etc). Still, I don’t understand the argument for not having them in infoboxes, as they’re notable titles to hold. As for possible bloat on some who have held lots of other positions, perhaps we could put the title at the bottom near constituency, or in articles with separated sections, “Parliamentary Positions” or “Constituency” sections. Cheers. SpaceFox99 (talk) 10:43, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

• Re elections in infoboxes: as a reader, I really appreciate not having to dig through prose when I'm looking for things. It's quite common that I might stumble across a figure somewhere and then decide what I really want to read about is the relevant elections, and when the lead section is nearly 600 words (Kevin Rudd) or only mentions a couple of elections (say Robert Menzies) that's really quite a pain. It's a small figure within the infobox and doesn't really add clutter or length to the infobox at all.
• Re Fathers: I think that was the point I was making - even if they're "Father of the Parliament", they're usually more often referred to as "Father of the House" or "Father of the Senate". I'm not particularly fussed either way with this the infoboxes (happy to keep them if anyone cares) - I'd just suggest that if we're going to remove anything, we remove "Father of the Parliament" as the lesser-used term, though I would point out something like this takes up much more infobox space than the election links. The Drover's Wife (talk) 11:00, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

• Elections in infoboxes: Fair enough, I see what you mean. Hopefully someone else comments on this.
• Fathers: Yes. I vote to keep the titles in infoboxes. I agree, if given the go-ahead we won’t do “Father of the Parliament” and we’ll just name the father-ship of the specific house (although in exceptional cases like Philip Ruddock, who was Father of the Parliament for so long, I’m not sure) and am happy to add them to the ones that are missing (avoiding clutter and bloat when possible). Haha, yes that’s ironic isn’t it, they do take up more space. I won’t remove elections from Premiers unless this discussion turns up something else. Cheers. SpaceFox99 (talk) 11:08, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

I would oppose having Fathers of the Parliament etc. in infoboxes - it's an unofficial designation which doesn't have any powers or responsibilities. It's best left in prose. I actually can't find any non-Wikipedia sources that maintain a list of them. There's also the issue of consistency of usage - originally it was applied to the oldest member [43]. I think for many of those listed you would actually struggle to find sources referring to them as Father of the X. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 09:36, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case either. The Drover's Wife (talk) 10:11, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi The Drover's Wife and Ivar the Boneful, I've found a few exterior sources showing info for fathers of the house,123 (I also seem to remember Kim Beazley's autobiography referring to himself as Father of the House), but I do assert that the position is regularly referred to (as I mentioned, it was actually used by a member of the house in Today's Question Time); see Hansard for its increasing use in past decades. The position, although it doesn't hold any formal power, is mentioned a lot in parliament and can be found in other sources (see above). It would be a useful and informative (long periods of service to the parliament are notable) addition to the articles of those who have been in the position, particularly in recent times. Taking a look at the Westminster System, the Father of the House holds just as much power as the Prime Minister; no position is formally established (I know that's hyperbole, and of course the Prime Minister does MUCH MORE, but in its most basic form, it is true). The title does not need to hold prominence over the article, it could be listed near the constituency, in Parliamentary Positions section, etc. I make a plea for the re-assessment of the inclusion of the titles in MP's pages. SpaceFox99 (talk) 09:03, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

To be clear, I'm an "abstain" on this one either way. The Drover's Wife (talk) 10:09, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi The Drover's Wife, here's an external reference for most fathers of the House/Parliament. There are numerous locations for each one, I've just quickly compiled these ones.

• 1938-1952 Hughes 1
• 1952-1961 Page 2
• 1969-1971 McEwen 3
• 1971-1972 Calwell 4 (Page 5)
• 1972-1975 Daly 5A5B
• 1975-1977 Beazley Sr. 6 (page 60)
• 1977-1981 O'Byrne 7 (page 74)
• 1981-1982 McMahon 8 (page 48)
• 1982-1983 Fraser/Killen/Snedden 9/10/11 (page 14)
• 1983 Killen/Snedden 9/10/11 (page 14)
• 1983 Killen 9/10/11 (page 14)
• 1983-1984 Anthony 12 (page 84)
• 1984-1990 Uren 13
• 1990-1998 Sinclair 14 (page 27)
• 1998-2016 Ruddock 15
• 2016-2019 Macdonald 16
• 2019- Andrews 17

See my above comments regarding the position. I propose people who hold the position jointly not be listed. SpaceFox99 (talk) 04:26, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Regarding the fifth Fraser ministry, this was how the Parliamentary Handbook prior to 2014 and the National Archives (which used the Handbook as a source) numbered the ministry which ran from 7 May 1982 – 11 March 1983. In the 2014 edition (44th Parliament), these were merged but the old version is used as a reference in Fifth Fraser Ministry (even though it was created after the new edition merged the 5th into the 4th ministry, and the dates and content are wrong anyway). Given the current numbering scheme used by the Handbook, I agree these should be merged or the 5th deleted (there does not appear to have been a resignation by Fraser and his cabinet in May 1982 which would have incremented the ministries)—it seems to be just a fairly minor reshuffle between the Education, Health, Aboriginal Affairs and Immigration portfolios. --Canley (talk) 00:41, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

@SpaceFox99: I've declined the speedy deletion as it doesn't meet the CSD criteria, but feel free to WP:PROD the 5th ministry list. --Canley (talk) 00:45, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Re ministries, are you proposing that there would be just a single article for the Menzies governments from 1949-66? That's obviously an extreme example, but if we did this the articles for PMs with more than a couple terms (especially in the modern era) would be pretty unwieldy. As noted above I think the numbering is based on the parliamentary handbook or similar sources, it's not a Wikipedia invention. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 09:23, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

The problem with using the numbering from the Parliamentary Handbook is that every jurisdiction has a completely different approach so it leads to our overall coverage of ministries being a completely incoherent mess. Longer-serving governments could be dealt with by date disambiguation if necessary which avoids the whole issue of when to separate numbered ministries. The Drover's Wife (talk) 10:11, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Re Fathers of the House: I note that the term "Father of the House" was actually used by a member of the house in Today's Question Time!

Hello people, I didn't get any reply to my above list of sources listing many of the Fathers of the House, from multiple locations. I still think the title should be placed in the infoboxes of those who held it. Regards. SpaceFox99 (talk) 06:11, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

SPAs at it again

Some eyes would be appreciated at Jeremy Buckingham, where a new SPA is attempting to prune everything negative from his article. The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:27, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

The user also removed Buckingham's wife's name from the article saying it is wrong, but I found numerous articles and Buckingham's maiden speech stating his wife's name is indeed Sarah. Marcnut1996 (talk) 04:24, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the cleanup job and the reference check on the wife's name. Unless he got divorced? But then we'd need sources. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:46, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

This SPA is back with a vengeance - this article could really use more eyes on it. It probably could use some work more generally but it's very difficult to do with the kind of SPA who just repeatedly removes anything negative from the article. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:08, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

There's also a less egregious version of the same thing happening at Gary Gray, which has seen two SPAs add tons of stuff that's verging on puffery to the article of someone who's not exactly the most well-liked former Labor MP, but I don't really have the energy to try to dig through that mess. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:58, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

It's insane that it's being removed from the Buckingham's page. Even if the accusations are false, the section continually deleted doesn't state they're true, his resignation from the Greens makes no sense without mentioning them. Catiline52 (talk) 01:14, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

The SPA is absolutely mad in ignoring Wikipedia conventions and procedures. I wonder if it is possible to semi-protect the article. Marcnut1996 (talk) 02:57, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

@Marcnut1996 and Catiline52: - if either of you want to request that at WP:RFPP it wouldn't be a bad idea. The Drover's Wife (talk) 07:44, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

One of the edits suggests that the SPA either is or is pretending to be the subject of the article. I have added Template:Connected contributor to the article's talk page and a note on the user's talk page. --Find bruce (talk) 21:41, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Actually hadn't thought of that, but not surprising - the article subject is notoriously litigious/known for sending legal threats, so it fits. Good call. The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:21, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Now it's Angus Taylor (politician)'s turn. This one's similar to the Buckingham one - aggressively removing all negative content. Again, more eyes on that one would be helpful. The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:26, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Michael Easson

I've just stumbled across our article on Michael Easson, who was a major and very prominent union and Labor Party big-wig (old-school Labor Council of New South Wales boss) in the late 1980s and 1990s, and he's got a dreadful article that reeks of paid editing. Easson's union career collapsed after a botched bid to take Graham Richardson's Senate seat in 1994 (which I just stumbled across sources for while rewriting the article on his wife, Mary Easson), and he subsequently reinvented himself as a businessman - the article is basically promo spam for his business career that totally downplays his union and Labor prominence back in the day except in the context of anything that sounds good on a business CV. Anyone feel like having a go at this? The Drover's Wife (talk) 21:48, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Government departments

I have started a discussion about government department articles in Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board#Government department articles. Marcnut1996 (talk) 04:36, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Quarantine destubbing of federal MPs

Hey all - I've been spending my time on lockdown slowly working through a generated list of all the tiny lingering stubs we still have on federal MPs and Senators at User:The Drover's Wife/Aus MPs Worklist. We've had so many of these lying around for years and it'd really be good to see more of them get expanded.

Ivar the Boneful has been knocking off some of them as well and I thought I'd bring it here if anyone wants to get involved and knock off a few more. Anyone else feel like having a go at it? The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:03, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

I was going to ask if anyone knew how to narrow it down to sitting members, but I think I've figured it out. Link to smallest articles on current MPs if anyone wants to prioritise that way: [44]. Looks to be a lot of 2019 electees, but also some 10+ year incumbents who we should really pad out. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 02:54, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Current MPs are getting increasingly difficult to expand because MPs are getting more and more averse to giving concrete details of their history, so substantially increasing many of them might be quite hard - there's at least one person on your list that I rewrote to get off my list and it still wound up being short enough to make your list because there was just bugger all available on him. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:40, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Georgina Downer notable?

Do you think Georgina Downer meets notability? Unsuccessful candidate for parliament twice, part of the Downer family and central in the initial media interest in the Sports rorts affair (2020). Is that enough? There are plenty of sources. Newystats (talk) 11:22, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

I think so. Being an unsuccessful candidate is usually not an argument for notability but she's a fairly well-known public figure at this point candidacy or no candidacy. The Drover's Wife (talk) 11:25, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

I also think so - her bids for election have received significant amounts of attention, which has included significant coverage of her career more broadly. Nick-D (talk) 11:28, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

None of unsuccessful candidate, child of notable person, nor involvement in notable event necessarily make a person notable. My rule of thumb for current notable people is that it should be easy to find reliable sources of a biographical nature, giving details like age, education & what they have done. It looks to me like Downer is notable - 1st page of a google search includes [45] [46], both of which are about her, not merely candidacy nor involvement in an event. --Find bruce (talk) 23:43, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Generation of Queensland Government agency articles

Hi All.

I refer you to Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board#Scraper-generator for Queensand Government agency articles.

I can generate 100s of aticles, but would prefer some concensus before I put them into main space.

Regards. Aoziwe (talk) 13:31, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Inclusion of party offices in MP lists on Division pages

As of recently there's been an unregistered user (I'm not going to comment on some of the other edits this user has made which I have reverted due to said edits not being constructive; nor his accusation that my reversions were based on any "partisanship") who has gone around to a few pages (specifically three, which are Flinders, Kooyong and New England) and made edits adding the party offices of four MPs (Phillip Lynch, Peter Reith, Josh Frydenberg and Ian Sinclair). Up until these edits party offices were not included, for the sake of consistency. When I set up the infobox system on these pages the reason why I didn't include "Leader of the (insert party)" or "Deputy Leader of the (insert party)" was that I thought it'd clutter up the note section too much and in any case would with most cases be redundant given that they would already be listed as having served as Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister or Opposition Leader. Which is probably why this user did not make the same sort of edit for John Latham, Robert Menzies, Andrew Peacock, Stanley Bruce or Barnaby Joyce on their respective Division pages. Indeed, besides ministerial and parliamentary offices (such as the Speaker, Opposition Leader, Chief Whip), the only other info that has been included is the manner of departure from the seat, or if the MP had any relatives who also served as MP in the same seat.

If there is a consensus reached to include information regarding being the leader or deputy of a party, then that's fair enough. Perhaps in my view the only examples which could have merit would be those of William McWilliams, Archie Cameron, Sinclair and Charles Blunt - the four Country/Nats leaders who neither served as (caretaker) Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister nor Opposition leader. Thescrubbythug (talk) 16:13, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

This is one of the most bizarre issues I've ever come across in this area. If we're going to have these captioned member lists in electorate articles, they should obviously refer to the most notable things about the person's career. Being a party leader or deputy leader, if not otherwise mentioned by PM/DPM/LotO, is fairly obviously the most important and high-profile office they've held. Party leader (of Lib/Nat/Lab/Grn) is more notable than Speaker and it's certainly more notable than Chief Whip. There's no argument otherwise except: "they're not currently included!" (when they should be). Insisting on getting a WikiProject consensus to do something completely obvious and insistently revert-warring until that happens is pointless and unhelpful. The Drover's Wife (talk) 21:14, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Seems pretty clear to me that these should be included. As The Drover's Wife says, if we're including Chief Whip, there is absolutely no justification for not including these far more significant roles. Frickeg (talk) 21:17, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

The inclusion of notes in the list of members was an excellent improvement to the structure of the division articles. I agree with the principle that these notes should not be too detailed or cluttered, but also with the principle that the note should briefly cover the most notable aspect of a person's parliamentary career, which is why I like that the ones I have seen refer to being a minister under XX, rather than listing the various ministries held. I agree that for someone such as Ian Sinclair, being the leader of the nationals is the most notable thing about him. Similarly with Adam Bandt being the leader of the greens - see Division of Melbourne. In the case of Jack Lang and the Division of Reid, he was far more notable for being the premier of NSW, rather than the particular state seat he held. On that same page, Tom Uren being a minister under Whitlam and Hawke is notable, but I wouldn't include the brief period as deputy leader.

I am in two minds as to whether being the chief whip is being notable at all - without looking at the list I couldn't tell you who any of the whips are. I'm ambivalent about it's inclusion for Cunningham in McMillan, but wouldn't include it for Ruddock in of Berowra. There are limits - when MPs or related users have edited the members page they often want to include things like "member of XYZ committee", sometime the highlight of their parliamentary career, but I agree that would be excessive. I don't think it is productive to try and come up with hard and fast rules, but rather where a note proves to be controversial, have a discussion on the article's talk page or here as to why it is notable, and if so why its one of the most notable aspects. Find bruce (talk) 03:38, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Categories

Is anyone willing to help me categorise all MPs into categories such as "Australian MPs 1972–1974"? This would make category searches much easier and enable quick navigation. For example, Jim Chalmers would be in the categories "Australian MPs 2013–2016", "Australian MPs 2016–2019" and "Australian MPs 2019–2022/present". This would be quick to do by visiting the MP lists in Category:Members of Australian parliaments by term. Thanks. SpaceFox99 (talk) 00:22, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

I don't think it's a good idea to create 90 new categories (46 for the House & 44 for the senate) and not just because of the general uselessness of categories on wikipedia (too many good editors have been lost diving into that rabbit hole). Long serving MPs will be included far too many times - Billy Hughes for example would need to be added to 20 categories, swamping what is already a long list of categories for that article. Can you explain how this will assist a reader in a way that is not already available on the relevant article you propose to duplicate? Depending on what you are wanting to achieve, perhaps a better way is via wikidata. Each list of members has its own identifier, eg HR 2019–2022 is Members of the Australian House of Representatives, 2019–2022 (Q65043021). As best I can tell none these pages are currently linked to any members, unlike for example member of the Australian House of Representatives (Q18912794) where it seems every member is linked. --Find bruce (talk) 07:17, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Ah, sorry I forgot to mention it's been done for UK MPs, which makes quick searches using identifiers such as these and these quick. Wikidata is another option, I thought it may be more convenient to essentially index MP pages for Australia like they did in the UK. SpaceFox99 (talk) 08:18, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Fraser Anning

Brand new editor (registered yesterday), who has only edited this one article, is making major changes to Fraser Anning. They don't seem well sourced to me. I have tried to get the editors attention on their Talk page, to no avail. I have reverted twice, and am seeking other views and intervention to avoid Edit warring myself. HiLo48 (talk) 06:19, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Scott Morrison

Some creative interpretation of sources by two experienced editors. See the Talk page too. HiLo48 (talk) 01:54, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

NSW electoral results

I have finished adding the results & references for each NSW election - see Category:Results of New South Wales elections. The next step is going through each district to transclude those results into the "Electoral results for the district of ...". Many of the former districts do not exist & where they do are often incomplete. Before I commence this however I wanted to give people an opportunity to comment on the format I propose using. I have set up Electoral results for the district of Murrumbidgee where the list of members links to every election in place of a table of contents. Before I go and start creating these missing pages, I thought I would give others the opportunity to comment on that format. --Find bruce (talk) 07:05, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Firstly, amazing work on an enormous task. Secondly, I think Murrumbidgee looks pretty great. Two questions - why include the roll in the table? And what is the plan when seats have gaps in their existence? I actually really like your adjustment to multi-member tables but would like to know the plan for the many seats that have been abolished and re-created, sometimes multiple times. Frickeg (talk) 22:17, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind words Frickeg. It was mostly a case of combining available material & was much easier once I had done a few and figured out how to automate the data entry. The reason for the numbers on the roll is that I found that when the re-distributions occurred in 1880, 1894, 1904 and 1912 that I struggled to understand how the redistribution affected each electorate, the size of the roll helped & there was nowhere else that gave an indication of the size of the electorate. The roll was directly relevant to the number of members between 1880 & 1894 - the reason why Murrumbidgee got a third member was because the roll went back up over 5,000. Even up until 1979 rural electorates had a lower roll, but that information isn't recorded in any of the pages - you will see the jump in size of Murumbidgee in 1981. Your second point is excellent - as you say breaks in the electorates happened multiple times. I have used Durham to set out what I was thinking - showing the break in both the table and the results. The other two I am not sure about are The Murray and Macquarie for 1904. Both pages currently look like they continued unchanged through 1904, but in fact as the text under the results sets out the entire district was different - whilst connected to the same river, they both moved downstream. --Find bruce (talk) 04:00, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

While I get that the roll is useful in explaining member allocations, I'm not sure this is the best form for doing that as it needs a fair bit of explanation, even to political nerds like us. I wonder if this might be better as a collapsible table as part of a general history section on the main electorate page?

With Durham, could the interval look more like a part of the table perhaps? I can see that it is, but it looks a bit like random text. But I am not sure if this is possible within the table of contents structure. Frickeg (talk) 05:21, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Ow am I that far down the rabbit hole? Don't feel the need to answer that btw. I will have a look at the idea of collapsible table but that can wait for a while. One advantage of the visual editor is it is really easy to change tables such as inserting or deleting a column, merging cells etc so I have done that. While I have referred to it as a table of contents, it is a manually created table, so for Durham I have simply formatted the row the same as the heading. Let me know if you're happy with that or any other suggestions. --Find bruce (talk) 07:18, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

'Policies' section on parties

Hey everyone, was just wondering other editors thoughts on the ever growing 'policies' section that appears on party pages. A lot of them are poorly sourced, or use the party's website in an WP:ADVOCACY way. In cases like the Liberal Democrats it takes up most of the page. Should we remove them from the pages, unless they are sourced (Similar to Australian Greens after it was heavily pruned)? —Catiline52 (talk • contribs) 00:11, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

User:B20097

B20097 (talk · contribs), who has edited extensively on articles on Australian politics, has been confirmed to be the long-running sockpuppet account of a blocked editor, who was running a small sockfarm - details at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Speedrailsm. Material added by this account can be removed per the rules on handling sockpuppets. Nick-D (talk) 11:53, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Bridget McKenzie

Seeking help with the editing of this page by a new editor who claims to be an old editor, but seems to know nothing of our rules on sourcing, nor on writing on a Talk page. As well as the Bridget McKenzie article, please also see User talk:Bermudaresident, where I have tried to help this new/old editor with understanding our policies. I admit to a fair degree of frustration there, hence this notification. @Ivar the Boneful: for info. HiLo48 (talk) 08:02, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

I've just blocked Bermudaresident (talk · contribs) - they do not appear to be here to genuinely build an encyclopedia. Nick-D (talk) 08:12, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. HiLo48 (talk) 08:39, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Opinion polling edit war

Hi, I'd like to forward editors to Talk:Opinion polling for the next Australian federal election#Edit War. At the moment, there's an absurd situation where every time there is a new opinion poll, editors attempt to change it from Canley's graph to their own version of the graph. I'd like other editor's input on the situation, since the issue will continue if there is no clear consensus over what graph to use. Catiline52 (talk) 03:31, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Nationalists in WA

In the United Australia Party article it says "The Western Australia branch of the Nationalists, however, retained the Nationalist name." Does this mean they didn't join the UAP or that they joined but kept their old name? Hack (talk) 03:19, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

There was nothing really to join as the UAP never had a federal structure. At state level, the NSW and Victorian Nationalists changed their names relatively quickly, Queensland had the CPNP until 1936 when it split into a UAP and Country Party, SA had the Liberal and Country League, Tasmania and WA retained the old Nationalist name. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 04:46, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Victorian cabinet ministers

After yesterday and today's interesting turn of events, I was updating the ministerial appointment dates for some Victorian ex and present ministers when I realised most of the articles had not been updated since the election two years ago. I would need some help in updating the succession boxes, infoboxes, articles etc. Marcnut1996 (talk) 07:48, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

I just found the same... updating Robin Scott, then had an edit conflict with you on John Eren, then Martin Pakula still Attorney-General. I'll help with going through them... --Canley (talk) 07:49, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

I guess updating isn't the hard part. It is finding out which articles are outdated that is the hardest for me, since I am not familiar with Victorian politicians. Marcnut1996 (talk) 07:52, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Minister articles (NSW)

This may also apply to federal and other states' ministerial articles. In Minister for Agriculture and Western New South Wales, I have shown two portfolios in the "List of ministers" section, one for Agriculture and one for Western New South Wales, even though there is only one minister and one title for both portfolios. i.e. Adam Marshall and his ministerial title are repeated in both lists. However, it seems that this is not the convention for other articles. e.g. for Minister for the Public Service and Employee Relations, Aboriginal Affairs, and the Arts, the list only shows the Arts portfolio and its predecessor titles, and portfolios such as Aboriginal Affairs are listed under "Former ministerial titles" even though Don Harwin's title are technically also successors to those portfolios.

I am just wondering which way would be more correct:

• 1. List all existing portfolios in the "List of ministers" and have a duplicated entry for the same current minister. In the future, if two or more ministers were to take over the portfolios, their names will be added behind the corresponding lists, and portfolios without successors can be moved into the "Former ministerial titles" section. Similarly, if there are ministerial reshuffles resulting in the splitting up of the ministerial title, the corresponding portfolios can also split up accordingly to the new ministerial articles.
• 2. As per existing, only show one portfolio and only one entry for the current minister

Marcnut1996 (talk) 07:26, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

NSW Ministerial articles are all a bit of a mess - as far as I can tell there is no consistent on WP on how to deal with these mega ministries. Some are listed as separate ministries, despite being held by one person while others have been lumped together. In the case of Harwin the page for each of the former portfolios Public Service and Employee Relations, Aboriginal Affairs, and the Arts have been retained. I am wondering whether the list of former ministers is better retained there. If it is felt necessary to have a list here, perhaps an excerpt would make it easier to adjust when the next reshuffle comes along. --Find bruce (talk) 00:43, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Australian Fed

I'd like a few editors to look over Australian Federation Party (formerly the Australian Country Party). The page is being edited by the party leader, and there is a previous page history of IPs attempting to add in the same content he's seeking to add. This seems like a clear WP:COI case, the same person was warned for his editing on the Australian Country Party page. Catiline52 (talk) 05:04, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Counterpoint (Radio National) stub

The article for Counterpoint (Radio National) needs expanding. A list of past presenters would be a good start, but i don't know where to find that? Irtapil (talk) 07:24, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Seeking consensus for infobox usage of 'MP for xxx'

Hey everyone, I have made a number of changes to different MPs' infoboxes, and I figured I should seek consensus and explain these changes. Basically, the previous wording of 'Member of the Australian Parliament for xxx' seemed clunky. This is based on the view that MPs' titles do not formally include 'Australian'; for example, Julian Hill would not typically be referred to in Australia as the 'Member of the Australian Parliament for Bruce', but rather simply as the 'Member of Parliament for Bruce' or even 'Member for Bruce'. I just think this change allows for more precise terminology, especially now that the HoR article title is HoR (Australia) rather than the previously inaccurate 'Australian HoR'. Let me know what you think.LeoC12 (talk) 05:51, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

While I agree that the current practice is not ideal (it stems, I believe, from the way the template was originally set up), I would prefer "member of the Australian House of Representatives for Bruce". I realise it's long, but for me the actual body of which they are a member absolutely must be part of the title itself. "MP for Bruce" or "member for Bruce" could be any parliament; indeed, the logical extension of this argument is that state MPs should also be referred to in the same way, which is not only imprecise but would involve multiple people with the same title (e.g. Tanya Plibersek and Alex Greenwich would both be the MP for Sydney).

As a PS, the move to House of Representatives (Australia), incorrectly submitted as a technical move, was improper given the last actual discussion regarding the name resulted in no clear consensus, or if anything a consensus in favour of Australian House of Representatives. I realise it was (gulp) eight years ago but that move should have been discussed. Frickeg (talk) 07:22, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

I think the situation of state/federal electorates having the same name could be a potential exception to my proposal, but I would say that this proposal is still the best of a number of otherwise good alternatives.

For me, this issue (albeit a minor one, but an issue nonetheless imo) stems from the fact that the name of the body and the actual title differ considerably. For example, a Serbian MP may be referred to equally validly as either a Deputy (precise translation) or as a Member of the National Assembly (more general formulation of 'Member of Legislative Body). In Westminster systems, of course, the trouble stems from the fact that 'Parliament' – from which MP is derived from – usually refers to the bicameral legislature rather than the individual chamber itself. While it was terminologically incorrect, Tony Abbott continued to refer himself as a 'MHR' while he was in parliament, which is against normal convention, but avoids this issue.

While designations (usually national) may sometimes be useful (such as in your very valid Sydney example), I think they are generally unnecessary, as seen with UK MPs. This is especially the case when articles would clearly state that the MP is an 'Australian' politician, and when 'Member of Parliament' links to HoR (Australia).

All this aside, I just think that MP for xxx is the best alternative because it is cleaner and more precise.LeoC12 (talk) 14:00, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Frickeg on this issue. While Member for xxx is cleaner, it is less precise because, unlike the UK, we have state and federal MPs. While Sydney is an example, there are numerous examples of state and federal electorates having the same title. More importantly though, even if it is a unique electorate title, the reader is unlikely to know which parliament it belongs to. The whole point of an infobox is to give the reader a quick overview, not having to dive into a link to see which parliament the person is a member of. Referring to them as an Australian politician is similarly imprecise as not only are there numerous people who have been members of state and federal parliaments, but a member of a state parliament is often (validly) described as an Australian politician. --Find bruce (talk) 23:33, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

I would also add that I think we should be avoiding "MP" in any case. It is easy for us, as politically informed residents of a Westminster democracy, to assume that this is a universally known abbreviation, but that simply isn't the case. Anywhere we can avoid initialisations is a plus in my book. Frickeg (talk) 01:06, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Agree the infobox should show which parliament of is they are a member of, and that will not be the official name of the parliament. For example see "deputy for X's nth constituency in the French national assembly", even though the name of the parliament just translates to national assembly. Newystats (talk) 20:58, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Which article is for what?

Hey! I'm trying to do some general editing of Australian government and politics articles, and I'm getting really confused about exactly what is what. Is this right?

• Government of xyz or the government's proper noun/name -> the executive branch of the state/territory/federal government
• Parliament of xyz -> the legislature
• Politics of xyz -> the general governance system

If so, shouldn't Politics of xyz refer to, well, politics? Shouldn't the general system of governance be under Governance of xyz? ItsPugle (talk) 11:35, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Good point. I agree with "governance" Newystats (talk) 20:59, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Lower casing 'prime ministers' etc

Should we lower case the titles prime minister, deputy prime minister, cabinet ministers, governors general & party leaders/deputy leaders, per WP:JOBTITLES, throughout the bios of individuals who've held those positions? GoodDay (talk) 14:49, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes...are you querying whether we use MOS:JOBTITLES or just clarifying its interpretation? Ivar the Boneful (talk) 15:33, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Asking if it should apply to the Australian prime ministers, deputy prime ministers etc, bios. GoodDay (talk) 15:42, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Generally no, as established through extensive discussions in the past. "Scott Morrison is the Prime Minister of Australia" not "Scott Morrison is the prime minister of Australia". Frickeg (talk) 21:15, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

conflating fractious splitters

A non oz editor has conflated the ever argumentive splinters under the one banner, so to speak... at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Communist_Party_of_Australia - my understanding beyond the very glib leftist memes, is that there were up to 3 or 4 separate bodies who are not in any way the 'same'. It would be great to think that the historical sublteties and nuances of the separate groups might be adequately understood in a good historical sense as to question the covering category - but by general views we have editors with limited understanding of this historic domain, someone please surprise me... JarrahTree 05:23, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Like - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Communist_parties_in_Australia seems to be a much more accurate indication... JarrahTree 06:13, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

When I was at uni (almost 50 years ago), there seemed to be 9 different Trotskyist parties that hated each other, but no non-Trotskyists understood the difference. It is true that Category:Communist Party of Australia is not very useful, but Category:Australian parties that call themselves the Communist Party probably wouldn't be much more useful.--Grahame (talk) 13:27, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

thank you for that graham, I wont identify how long ago I was the first or second time, but yes the variants would never actually align themselves with the generic name - they always had to have a different word order - like the [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monty_Python's_Life_of_Brian&action=edit&section=17 the liberation fronts... JarrahTree 13:41, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Daniel Andrews

Could some more editors please look at Talk:Daniel Andrews#Poorly sourced negative content in a BLP. As is common when one particular editor turns up at discussions I'm involved with, we have reached a stalemate. HiLo48 (talk) 03:58, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it that. Most of the time I ignore your edits, HiLo. But when you want to whitewash out well-sourced content about Chinese connections in the office of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, and you give as your justification the spurious claim the The Australian is nothing more than a Nazi propaganda rag, well, I wonder about your dedication to NPOV, that's all. --Pete (talk) 07:35, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

That's not what I said. And shall leave your rapid appearance here and the words you chose to use to speak for themselves with regards to how you feel about my edits. HiLo48 (talk) 08:15, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Why not ignore my lame humour and address wikipolicy instead? I'm not sure that you understand how NPOV works. Even if that story is negative, if it's reliably sourced and pertinent, it's fine in Wikipedia. That's BLP as well as NPOV. Why not address the argument, and not the arguer; we're all adults here and can discuss how to edit an encyclopaedia in a structured environment without heaving bricks at one another. For example, getting more eyes on the topic is a good one, and if we can wrangle out the facts and the policy, that's fine. Maybe both of us are missing something important that a more experienced or perceptive editor can show us. --Pete (talk) 09:52, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Can we keep this discussion in one place please? Frickeg (talk) 07:18, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Party ideology (in particular Victorian Liberal Party)

What is the WP:AUSPOL consensus on party ideology? In Liberal Party of Australia (Victorian Division), the infobox has listed some ideologies, including the right/conservative ideologies with valid citations, but I am not sure if they are appropriate to be listed. I don't want to start an edit war with the IP user. Marcnut1996 (talk) 02:59, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't have an issue with them being included if they're properly sourced. Most major parties (Lib/Lab/Green) have extensive sourcing (news & academic) on ideological influences both past and present. Catiline52 (talk) 03:17, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Is "Independent Australia" a reliable source?

This edit [47] of Gerard Rennick cuts out an "Independent Australia" cite as "Not a RS for BLP". Is that in line with wikipedia consensus? Newystats (talk) 00:54, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Election results format

Some changes to the presentation of election results tables have been made at Results of the 2020 Northern Territory general election (such as using N/A in the swing column for newly-contesting parties). Thoughts and opinions welcome at Talk:Results of the 2020 Northern Territory general election. --Canley (talk) 14:43, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Frederick Cooper

It looks to me like Frederick Augustus Cooper, a member of the NSW Legislative Assembly, is the same person as Frederick Cooper (politician) a member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly.[48] I have started a merger discussion in the usual way, but thought I would link it here in case there was some obscure history. --Find bruce (talk) 08:29, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Probable typo in a source concerning Orders-in-Council for the establishment of a colony in NSW

Article Constitutional history of Australia states that "Orders-in-Council were issued in London on 6 December 1785 for the establishment of a colony in Botany Bay." However, many other sources state that the year was 1786, not 1785, which I found out while editing Penal transportation: https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/archives/collections-and-research/guides-and-indexes/sentenced-beyond-the-seas-australias-early http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article60569425 s:Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/575. If I'm right, quite a few articles featuring 1785 date should be changed, am I? Ain92 (talk) 16:46, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Pinging @Enthusiast01: I think they added this passage in 2012. --Canley (talk) 03:44, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Check out this source: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/63477180 which definitely says “Orders-in-Council for establishing this colony were issued in London on December 6, 1785.”Enthusiast01 (talk) 06:20, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

So its not a typo, at least in wikipedia. The real issue is what do the reliable sources say? Without being condescending about the reliability of the Townsville Daily Bulletin from 1950, I would have thought that we could come up with better sources - I am aware of controversy as to whether the transportation of convicts was the dominant reason for establishing the colony and I am sure that those books & scholarly articles deal directly with the issue. If there is controversy on it, we don't need to decide on the answer, but merely identify the debate. --Find bruce (talk) 10:58, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

• I meant a typo in 1950s newspapers. Some reliable sources I provided above, they appear to state 1786. It seems that relevant article don't mention any such a controversy at all. Ain92 (talk) 12:56, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

moving Category:Australian city councillors articles into state/territory based subcategories

would it be ok to move articles in Category:Australian city councillors to there appropriate state/territory subcategories? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Serprinss (talk • contribs) 05:24, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I think that's fine, the other LG category is broken down by state. The NSW one should be capitalised though. --Canley (talk) 05:36, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:21, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

There is no such thing as city councillors in Australia. They are already listed as mayors in appropriate categories. If they are not mayors they are probably not notable. I believe that Category:South Australian city councillors, Category:New south wales city councillors, Category:Tasmanian city councillors and Category:Australian city councillors by state or territory should be deleted.--Grahame (talk) 06:25, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Well, there's 200+ articles in those categories. I think we get people in those categories in a couple of different ways. One is that there are people who serve in state/federal parliaments (hence notable) who also have a career in local government. E.g. current federal MP was my Brisbane City councillor before that. And we can still get articles on city councillors because they simply can pass WP:GNG. Although I personally don't write them, I do see increasing numbers of Brisbane City Councillors getting articles written (some of them being large and well-written quite quickly which makes me a little suspicious about CoI/paid editing, but that's an aside). Now Brisbane is unusual, it's far and away the largest LGA in Australia as measured by population. Its budget is said to be larger than the state of Tasmania (citation needed!), so this may account for Brisbane councillors possibly having more "oomph" than the average council member. But to turn to the original question, yes, I think having state sub-categories makes a lot of sense and pretty much all of them should be put into the relevant sub-category (or sub-categories if they are border hoppers) and there really should not be anyone left in the Australia level. If there are specific LGAs with a lot of them (e.g. we have all the Brisbane mayors with articles), then we could have even have further sub-categorisation by LGA in some cases. Kerry (talk) 07:11, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

The appropriate categories are Category:South Australian local government politicians etc (if they are notable), we do not need "city councillors".--Grahame (talk) 07:17, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Houston, we have a problem. It seems we have 2 parallel category systems which I think are more-or-less representing the same thing, Category:Local political office-holders in Australia has its own state/territory sub-tree as well has having Category:Australian city councillors. What is the difference between a "local political office-holder" and a "city councillor"? Kerry (talk) 07:21, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Category:Australian city councillors was being used where people were members of a local government for a city (e.g. City of Melbourne, City of Darebin, City of Townsville as opposed to Shire of East Gippsland, Cabonne Council), so city councillors do exist in Australia and are not necessarily mayors. In terms of notability, it was not being used as a threshold for notability but as a category for people notable for other reasons (usually state or federal MPs) who were active in local government for a city. That said, it could be questioned why the city distinction is necessary, say Category:New south wales city councillors as a sub-category of Category:New South Wales local government politicians—I think you make a reasonable point that it's probably not needed. --Canley (talk) 07:27, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I was also making the point that Gillian Aldridge (for instance) is already listed as Category:Mayors of places in South Australia, she doesn't need to be listed in any super category.--Grahame (talk) 07:33, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Ok, I am definitely in favour of not having a separate Category:Australian city councillors hierarchy if the "city-ness" is the basis of it. As is so often the case with categories, they would be a lot better if each category stated its "inclusion criteria" (and its relationship to sibling categories and sub-categories, particularly when an article should or shouldn't be in more than one of them (diffusing etc). While there will always be people who do random categorisation, I think if we give some guidance, a lot of people are more likely to be consistent in their use of categories. Kerry (talk) 07:46, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

There is no difference between a "city councillor" at the city of Liverpool and a councillor at the shire of Sutherland. It just reflects how a particular local government area decides to style itself and should play no part in our categories.--Grahame (talk) 07:50, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Would agree with the above, distinction between city and non-city LGA's is arbitrary and doesn't always reflect population/importance. Should merge into the local government politicians cat and divide by state. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 10:44, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm going to start a merge discussion here. Serprinss (talk) 09:00, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Democratic Labor Party page merger

Hi, I'd like other editors to contribute their opinions on a proposed merger of Democratic Labor Party (historical) and Democratic Labour Party (Australia) at Talk:Democratic Labor Party (historical). Having two pages, two party colours, two party names, two of every template, for the one party is an issue that seems to have come up several times before but there has been no formal discussion on what to do. Catiline52 (talk) 05:34, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

navboxes for electorates, should these be organised by political parties?

@Thescrubbythug: I have just noticed that {{Electoral districts of Queensland}} which was previously an alphabetic listing of the electorate names has been reorganised by the political parties who currently represent that electorate, including counts for individual parties. I can see some other similar templates (such as NSW) have also been re-organised in this way too. Personally I feel quite uncomfortable about this. I think it's fair enough to have tables showing which parties hold how many seats in each parliament and we already have such things in the various articles on the parliaments, and the article on each electorate states which party currently represents it as well as its electoral history, but I feel that electorates themselves (a boundary on a map) should be neutral when listing them as a navbox. The electoral commissions never list them by party. What are the thoughts of others? Kerry (talk) 20:33, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I'm with Kerry on this one. I assume Thescrubbythug is following UK practice here, but I've never much liked their approach. We sort by party in the MP navboxes which is fine, but for electorates, as Kerry says, neutrality is better. Frickeg (talk) 21:18, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

I was following the UK practice yeah, and liked the precedent they set. I thought it’d be better to organise them by which party held each seat, rather than it being a big wall of different electorates bunched together. They’re now all separated and categorised which IMO makes it easier on the eye and easier to search through. This way it’s easier to find which electorate you are looking for, and shows us which party of the day happens to hold each seat. I don’t see it as non-neutral at all - it shows us without bias which party holds which seat, and ranks them by how many seats each party has. Not that it’s necessarily relevant, but I have had friends who follow politics since tell me that they liked these changes and think it’s an improvement and easier to navigate through. Thescrubbythug (talk) 00:36, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

@Thescrubbythug: I note that I reverted the changes as per WP:BRD. I don't follow the logic of why it's easier to find a a particular electorate. It's harder. If I know the name of the electorate, I now have to scan several lists, instead of one. I certainly don't know the parties hold which seats, which means I can't go quickly to the right list. Kerry (talk) 04:11, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I don't think I made my argument effective enough first time around, so I'll try one more time knowing full well that people here have made up their minds. I liked the UK navbox precedent because rather than having one giant wall of text linking all of the different electorates (albeit alphabetically), it was split up by party - which I don't necessarily think is a bad thing at all as it informs people at the same time which party holds which seat in the legislature. While I thought it was a good idea for the UK navboxes, I thought it would work more effectively in an Australian setting where multiple parties and independents are more likely to be elected as we don't have a FPTP system. I didn't think it would be any inconvenience for everyone for the navboxes to be broken down in that manner; on the contrary I thought it would make things a lot easier because rather than having to look through one giant wall of text, you can instead navigate through smaller categories - in this case by which party it is held by, which is still alphabetised anyway. That's my opinion on it anyway, but at the end surely there's got to be an acceptable alternative that we can all agree on. Thescrubbythug (talk) 08:46, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

As someone who uses electorate navboxes to navigate frequently, I think this breakdown by party makes that much more difficult than the alphabetical arrangement. If there is to be a breakdown, maybe by geographical region, but I don't think by party holding is in any way better. Please revert, I have used the UK navboxes a lot too and I find it's not an improvement, I much prefer alphabetical. There are already several navboxes with party breakdowns as Kerry has said. --Canley (talk) 05:07, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

@Kerry Raymond: @Frickeg: @Canley: If there's a consensus against breaking electorates down by party as the UK navboxes do, then that's fair enough and I understand. Nevertheless, I feel like there should be a better way than the status quo, which is just an entire wall of different electorates - even if it's in alphabetical. I wouldn't be opposed to geographical breakdown, like for example splitting between inner city, outer suburban, and regional electorates - and then alphabetising within each breakdown. At the end of the day, all I want to see on Wikipedia is improvements on layouts on pages and templates to do with Australian politics, and bring them to a higher standard more in line with international counterparts - hence my work not just on this, but also on the federal electorate pages, the ministerial pages, etc. And I genuinely believe we can do better when it comes to electorate navboxes than what we've had until now. What does everyone think? Thescrubbythug (talk) 05:44, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I do not like the navboxes breaking the electorates down by parties, particularly as they are used on articles that include historical information where parties have regularly changed. The purpose is, as the name suggests, to help people navigate to what they are looking for. For the most part I couldn't tell you which electorate is held by which party. Thescrubbythug makes a good point about the wall of text - the current 93 electorates of NSW are bad enough, but the 258 former districts are something else. Breaking the wall of text into geographical groups makes sense to me, with an aim to have no more than about 20 in a group, but I'm happy to consider other ideas. --Find bruce (talk) 11:01, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm happy to get started on changing to a geographical breakdown soon - just that university work takes priority haha. A little disappointed, however, that the others who contributed to this thread failed to give their two cents on the geographical breakdown idea, and how it should best be implemented - particularly those that objected most strongly to the original changes with the party breakdowns. Given that I pinged them and they therefore would have 100% seen the geographical breakdown proposal, since they have made edits since, I have no choice but to assume that they have no objections to the proposal. Thescrubbythug (talk) 07:00, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Well, I did suggest it so I figured my preference was clear: I still prefer plain alphabetical overall but geographic is OK and I wouldn't object–it is more functional than by party, breaks up the text, and doesn't have to be updated whenever party allocation changes. --Canley (talk) 07:58, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

I also prefer alphabetical overall. I have an additional objection to register to party breakdowns, which is that the articles are about electorates throughout their history - to my mind, it's inappropriate to list Reid as a Liberal seat when it spent eighty-odd years held by Labor. To be honest I really think there's only an argument that there's a problem at all for NSW, Vic and Qld - the rest are not substantial enough to require breaking down further, and I would strongly oppose any kind of division in, say, NT electorates (or, worse, Tas and ACT). I would also like to formally oppose using any kind of breakdown for federal electorates, given how much they can move around over the years (it would be inaccurate, for example, to class Werriwa as a Sydney seat, given how for much of its history it was solidly rural; Robertson is another example). For NSW/Vic/Qld, I still think alphabetical is not too bad, but could live with a geographical breakdown provided clear criteria were used to assign those categories (state electorates, having largely geographical names, do not move around anything like as much as federal ones do). I take Find bruce's point about abolished electorates - some of those navboxes are huge - so would be happy to look at a proposed breakdown of one of those navboxes. Frickeg (talk) 09:34, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I'm in full agreement regarding Tasmania and the Territories - separating by territory federally (ACT and NT) would suffice just fine. Though for NT on a Territory level, we could consider separating the urban electorates (Darwin and Alice Springs in particular) from the rural ones. Thescrubbythug (talk) 09:38, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

For Victorian state electoral districts, they are already cleanly divided into eight Legislative Council regions (which you could link to in the navbox as well – perhaps even with merging Template:Electoral regions of Victoria if there is consensus to to so), so that would be an more appropriate division rather than Melbourne metropolitan/regional Victoria. The article Electoral districts of Queensland is split into geographic regions as well. --Canley (talk) 08:22, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Geographic has an appeal but the devil is in the detail which Electoral districts of Queensland illustrates rather nicely. It's all easy when you talk about the Far North etc (where there are few electorates) but once you hit South-East Queensland, it gets messy with random headings for ill-defined things like "Northern Brisbane" (which curiously omits Moggill and Maiwar which seems geographically perverse to anyone looking at a map, but maybe this is because it is so ill-defined) and then the article gets desperate for sub-headings and so bundles the remainder into "Rest of South-East Queensland" where we find electorates for Ipswich listed with ones for Redlands, not geographically associated at all, being listed together, many of which are annotated to try to explain what is going on. That article is more guidance on how NOT to do a geographic breakdown. Seriously if we go down the geographic path, I think when we hit the urban sprawl of capital cities, we have to think hard how to handle it. For SE Qld, I'd say just list the LGAs and include the electorates for each of them (repeating them if they cross the LGA boundaries -- many do). Kerry (talk) 01:06, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

While we ponder the geographic approach, could {{Electoral districts of Queensland}} please be restored to a non-partisan alphabetic list given there is an election involving those electorates this month and not make any further changes to it until after the election. Kerry (talk) 01:08, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

I've reverted the Queensland navbox—consensus should have been required for the change, not for reversion. --Canley (talk) 02:07, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Writing a biography of a living person, who is still active in politics

A question for all informed, concerned and all those passionate about democracy. Do you know of a wiki community approved article about writing articles on a BLP for a person who is still active in politics?

There's only one good article on an Australian politician who is still alive! It's the one on Julia Gillard. I like it very much, her background, the stages of her career, the section on her political views. From there, an editor would need to go to American examples. But is there a checklist anywhere? Sections that the community would expect to see?The Little Platoon (talk) 07:24, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

I think the structure of each article would be highly individual as it would depend a lot on what the individual was doing after their parliamentary role. Some actively lobby for issues dear to them; others take leading roles in businesses. Others pursue a hobby with a passion that keeps them in the media. Some devote themselves to critiquing the current government or their former party or their successors, others refuse to be drawn into commentary on such topics. I don't think there's a general structure that can be followed. Kerry (talk) 21:30, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

@Kerry Raymond: makes sense.The Little Platoon (talk) 01:27, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Discussion of intro for Indigenous politicians

Hi all, just wanted to inform people of a discussion starting at Talk:Lidia_Thorpe#"Lidia_Thorpe_is_an_Australian_senator". There has been a minor conflict over whether to describe Indigenous politicians such as Lidia Thorpe and Pat Dawson as "Australian" or by their First Nation nationality. I'd like to invite people to contribute their views on this issue, as the consensus would likely apply to several pages. Catiline52 (talk) 01:34, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Preference distributions in multi-member seats

Discussion proceeding here; further input appreciated. Frickeg (talk) 07:36, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

How do I set up a party style template?

I noticed there wasn't an article for the Belco Party so I created one seeing they ran five candidates and got 9% of the vote in their electorate. And I created a colour template Template:Belco Party/meta/color for them based of the orange they use in their logo and the ABC used in their results pages. However I'm still pretty new to wikipedia and I don't know how to link their colour template to create a party style template to work in the results infoboxes. Could anyone help? AustralianSwingVoter (talk) 07:13, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Go to Template:Australian politics/party colours. This is the main colour template - ideally we'd phase the meta ones out altogether but I think there are a few infoboxes etc. that require them. Frickeg (talk) 07:30, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I really don't get what I'm supposed to do here. I put the Belco Party into the list but it doesn't link together. Sorry if I'm being a nuisance. AustralianSwingVoter (talk) 07:41, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

You're not being a nuisance, I should've explained more fully. I've done it for Belco, but for next time, you edit the template itself (not the parameter list as you did), and basically alphabetically add |party name=#000000 where 000000 is the six-digit colour code. You'll also want to add a link to Template:Australian politics/name. Frickeg (talk) 07:47, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Ahhhh! Thank you so much! AustralianSwingVoter (talk) 07:52, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Iemma electricity privatisation 2007-2008

I am thinking of extracting information about Iemma's "electricity privatisation" debate and the subsequent resignation as Premier from the Sydney Metro (2008 proposal)#North West Metro and Morris Iemma articles, to a more relevant article or new article. The reason is, while relevant to the topic of Iemma's metro proposal and/or Iemma, it also involves other infrastructure proposals at the time such as M4 East (briefly mentioned in WestConnex#M4 East), and involves a number of ministers as well. I have proposed a few possible places to place and expand the information:

• new article
  • "New South Wales electrical asset privatisation debate, 2008" or something like that? - seems too specific and limited for a new article
  • "2008 Australian Labor Party (New South Wales Branch) leadership spill" (or election) - as the background for the spill/election
• Australian Labor Party (New South Wales Branch) - within the history, I prefer this the most as the debate is most relevant and also involves the NSW Labor state conference
• Morris Iemma - I don't prefer this because the electricity privatisation debtate involves a few ministers including the Treasurer as well.

Below are some news articles for background and can be used as citation for expanding the content of the debate. This list is incomplete, given the frequent change of events in the lead-up to September 2008.

• October 2007 - https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/sydneys-7bn-mega-motorway/news-story/56f4c4a22be7c16244467b7033afebd2?sv=d9709b5efebdc135bf59f5dcb28559db
• December 2007 - https://www.smh.com.au/national/unions-oppose-nsw-electricity-sell-off-20071210-gdrs9c.html
• March 2008 - https://www.smh.com.au/business/iemmas-reasons-for-privatising-electricity-20080316-1zsa.html
• 4 May 2008 - https://www.smh.com.au/national/iemma-loses-privatisation-vote-20080504-gdsc4g.html
• 14 May 2008 - https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw-mps-to-vote-on-power-selloff-costa-20080514-2e6b.html
• 16 June 2008 - https://www.afr.com/markets/commodities/iemma-switches-off-power-bills-20080616-jao3y
• 27 August 2008 - https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/power-tactic-spares-iemma/news-story/c0f35d1ec62c31a097c458ef01f7d962
• 29 August 2008 - https://www.smh.com.au/national/nationals-leader-ejected-from-parliament-20080829-45lx.html
• 5 September 2008 - https://www.smh.com.au/national/michael-costa-dumped-20080905-4a99.html
• 5 September 2008 - https://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2356411.htm
• 6 September 2008 - https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/labor-revolt-morris-iemma-to-quit-politics-20080906-geabqj.html

Feedback is appreciated. Marcnut1996 (talk) 23:51, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Good idea. I would start it as a section of Australian Labor Party (New South Wales Branch) and then split it into its own article once it is big enough. Onetwothreeip (talk) 00:13, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

I have migrated some content into Australian Labor Party (New South Wales Branch). Anyone that is familiar with the privatisation fiasco, particularly in the final 2-3 months prior to Iemma's outsting (May 2008 onwards), please contribute to the missing content. Marcnut1996 (talk) 05:11, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Appointed Senators start date

What is the actual start date of a Senator's term if he or she was appointed by the state/territory parliaments to fill a casual vacancy? I have always thought it is the date when he or she was appointed, as these dates are stated on the Senators' biography page on the APH website. However, I also understand that a Senator is also sworn in when he or she first physically enter the chamber. The date of swearing in is not on mentioned in the biography page.

Reason I asked this is because on the Lidia Thorpe article, the start date in the infobox is the swearing in date and not the appointment date. Marcnut1996 (talk) 22:39, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

You are correct, it should be the date of appointment, in other words the date of the joint sitting of the Victorian parliament, not the date of swearing in. Source: Odgers' Senate Practice, Chapter 4: "The term of a senator filling a casual vacancy commences on the date of his or her choice by the appointing body." --Canley (talk) 22:51, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Lists of Liberal members by faction

I stumbled across List of Moderate Left Liberals and List of Conservative Right Liberals - these seem fairly problematic to me. Even beyond the fact that Liberal factions are completely informal, those informal factions are not transferable state-to-state, and they're certainly not called "Moderate Left" or "Conservative Right". (The inclusion of certain historical figures like Holt is laughable.) I'm thinking deletion, but wondering if anyone sees anything salvageable. Frickeg (talk) 13:46, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

@Frickeg: I support your view. From what I can work out, the groupings only exist around certain issue, but these dissolve as new issues arise. For example, at the Federal level, an number of progressive and conservative members will form a grouping against CCP interference, but the same people will divide sharply over a life issue like euthanasia, and other groupings will arise.The Little Platoon (talk) 19:51, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

Nominated for deletion here. Frickeg (talk) 09:36, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

1984 Senate election

Another question, Senator Sue Knowles was elected on 1984 (which was half-senate) and hence would start her term on 1 July 1985. However, [49] says that Knowles was in the Senate Standing in February 1985 before her term started. How was this possible? The infobox in the Sue Knowles article also originally said her term started 1 December 1984 (date of election), but I changed it to 1 July 1985. Marcnut1996 (talk) 04:37, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

In 1984, the number of senators was increased (from 10 per state to 12, so from 64 to 76), so the non-sitting senators elected at the 1984 election (Sue Knowles, John Black, Terry Aulich, David Brownhill, Barney Cooney, Ray Devlin, Jim McKiernan, Chris Puplick, Glen Sheil, Jim Short, Amanda Vanstone and David Vigor) started their terms immediately on 1 December 1984 instead of on 1 July 1985. --Canley (talk) 05:08, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

How about Jo Vallentine and John Siddons? Marcnut1996 (talk) 05:12, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

(edit) I think I get it, half of the 12 starts immediately, while the other half starts on 1 July 1985. Something like that. Marcnut1996 (talk) 05:29, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, pretty much: There's four of them: Vallentine, Siddons, Norm Sanders and Michael Baume. Four senators retired at the 1984 election, and their terms ended on 30 June 1985, so Vallentine, Siddons, Sanders and Baume replaced them. --Canley (talk) 05:30, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

I understand that Representation Act 1983 states that the above Senators who started early started on 1 December 1984. However, a number of Senator biographies such as [50], [51], [52] etc. stated that the term started on 21 February 1985, the first sitting day since the election. Which one is correct?

On a side note, we should document this irregularity somewhere like Results of the 1984 Australian federal election (Senate), stating who and why some started 1 December (or 21 February) and why the rest started 1 July 1985. Marcnut1996 (talk) 06:31, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

We would always go with the Act (and Parliament itself); in this case it appears the Biographical Dictionary of the Senate is using the common but incorrect assumption of terms beginning when one is sworn in.

Long-term it would be really nice to have proper write-ups in the result pages, but in the meantime an explanation would not go astray. Frickeg (talk) 09:28, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the parliament link, that was very useful. Then should we also change Members of the Australian Senate, 1985–1987 for the senators who started on 1 December 1984, like a note or something. Marcnut1996 (talk) 22:01, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Now that I understand the details of the process, I have updated Members of the Australian Senate, 1985–1987 to accurately describe the process, as well as updating all "21 February 1985" references to "1 December 1984". @Canley:, please check if what I have written is correct. Marcnut1996 (talk) 02:44, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

2001 federal election and potentially others

I found two different Senate results tables for the 2001 election:

• Template:Australian Senate results, 2001, used in 2001 Australian federal election
• Results of the 2001 Australian federal election (Senate)

Why are they different, why are there discrepancies (Labor seats won), and why isn't one an excerpt of the other? This may have applied to other years too.Marcnut1996 (talk) 07:06, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the reason they are different is this 2018 edit (with the edit comment "Mistake : the Labor won 14 seats, and had 15 yet helds (17 elected in 1998, except the 12 form NT and ACT), so it has 29 senators. The mistake is the Independants have juste 1 seat (1 gained in 1998, 0 gained in 2001).") which presumably in good faith was attempting to correct what they believed was an error. What I think they did was to directly compare the 1998 Senate results to the 2001 ones—and thought there was an error because in 1998 Labor won 15 seats for the 1999–2005 term and 14 seats in 2001, and 15 + 14 = 29. What I don't think they took into account was Shayne Murphy resigning from the Labor Party in October 2001 just before the election in November so going into the 2001 election Labor had 14 seats from 1998, and won 14 in 2001 so 14 + 14 = 28—I've undone the edit with this explanation.

I don't think the template is necessary, it seems to be only used on one page (2001 Australian federal election), and as you say we could use excerpts now or even just place the table in the election article, but the template was created in 2015 which I believe was before excerpts or "cascading content" were possible. --Canley (talk) 13:06, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

There seems to be two election templates (HoR and Senate) for each election between 1987 and 2007. See the full list in Category:Australia election result templates. The one for 2007 is a simplified version of the table in the Results of the 2007 Australian federal election (Senate) article, with all minor parties squished into the Others row, and all Coalition breakdown results into a single row. Should we make all the main federal election pages have a simplified Senates results table, and the "Results of the xx" articles have a full results table? Or have both of them have the same table (through excerpts and transclusions)? In either way, I think the templates can be deleted.

Also is it the convention to put all the Coalition parties into consecutive rows, and first of the rows for total Coalition votes and seats? Marcnut1996 (talk) 22:34, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Australian Democrats page edits by COI

Hi, just letting everyone know that recently there has been significant edits on the Australian Democrats by an editor who describes themselves as "affiliated with the party". There is currently a discussion on the page's talk page. Catiline52 (talk) 08:51, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Can we standardise how political party names appear in the infoboxes of politicians and elsewhere?

I’ve noticed a lot of different variations of how political party names appear in infoboxes. As such, I want to propose the following standardisation for how political parties appear on the infoboxss of politicians, because there’s a lot of different variations currently around. Taking note how political party names are formatted internationally, for example: US politicians belonging to the Democratic Party just have “Democratic” in their infoxes, which links to the Democratic Party article. In Australia, in popular discourse, the political parties aren’t referred to as “Labor Party”/“Labor Victoria”/“NSW Labor”/etc, “Liberal Party”, “Australian Greens”/“Australian Greens Victoria”/“Greens NSW”/etc, etc. They’re simply referred to as Labor, Liberal, Greens, etc.

I propose that the formatting below be used for the listing of parties/party affiliations in infoboxes, which reflects how the majority of the population refers to them.

• Liberal (for state politicians, would link to the relevant state division article)
• Labor (for state politicians, would link to the relevant state branch article)
• Nationals (note: Nationals with an ‘s’ as opposed to ‘National’ is the most common pronunciation)
• Liberal National
• Country Liberal
• Greens (for state politicians, would link to the relevant state branch article)
• One Nation
• Australian
• Shooters
• Liberal Democrats
• Animal Justice
• Other minor parties to be listed by their full name where applicable.

2001:8003:D059:9A00:48DE:EC54:2444:2AC0 (talk) 10:44, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

I think this is sensible, although it's also not something that's hugely important. I would make the following changes to the above list:

• "Nationals" has only been an official abbreviation since 2003-ish. "National" may be more appropriate for MPs before that.
• "Katter's Australian" rather than "Australian" for KAP (never referred to as just "Australian").
• "Shooters, Fishers and Farmers" or "SFF" rather than "Shooters" (post-name change; Shooters seems a bit too colloquial and it's explicitly not the abbreviation they use).

Historical parties may need more thought (what to do about federal SA Liberals when the state party was the LCL?). Frickeg (talk) 21:13, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

And then there's:

• MPs who are in both state/territory and federal parliaments - which party link should be used, the federal party or the state party
• LNP federal MPs/senators - include both the state party (LNP) and the relevant federal party room?
• Barnaby Joyce - too complicated to describe

Marcnut1996 (talk) 03:22, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

On this, I would say:

• Always the state party.
• LNP should have both, something like "LNP (caucusing with Liberal)".
• Joyce actually brings up a good point - those who have changed allegiances. I have never liked using "Other political parties" or whatever it's called as it implies some are less important than others, especially for historical figures. I would put all changes in a single field with years appended. Frickeg (talk) 06:29, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

For federal MPs use the federal party they sat in - it especially avoids confusion when the state party name was a bit different or the complicated structures of and relations between state and federal parties on the right before about 1950. Joyce has clearly been a National throughout his career regardless of the Qld parties merging at the state level. Timrollpickering (talk) 12:47, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

The Liberal Party and the National Party have such inconsistent, ever-changing and confusing conditions of being merged/not merged, or working in a coalition, or having nothing to do with one another across the country and over time, I don't know how they can ever be standardised. HiLo48 (talk) 21:14, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Sir Graham Waddell

It appears to me that there is an error in the NSW parliamentary record for Sir Graham Waddell - the record, which wikipedia has followed, shows him as serving from 1934 to 1943 while contemporaneous accounts show him as serving from 1937 to 1949. Because the record is usually fastidiously accurate, I have set out the detail at Talk:Members of the New South Wales Legislative Council, 1934–1937. As always I'm happy to discuss. --Find bruce (talk) 06:13, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Polling booth level

In Western Australia we have a new editor who is trying polling booth level analysis against the AEC record - from memory I have never seen such minute level of working with basically primary sources - any thoughts? JarrahTree 09:41, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

The editor claims that adding these "Politics" sections to locality articles is merely numerical observation and not original research, but I disagree – the ones I have seen contain assertions of trends and typicality, which require a level of analysis/research which I don't think can be addressed by just adding a link to the most recent booth-level AEC results. As you say, AEC results are primary sources, and if the booth-level results for a locality or region are notable or remarkable in some way, then that should be referenced by a reliable secondary source, not just pointing to the AEC site and saying work it out yourself to show what I say is true. I would also suggest, if such analysis is to be included (preferably with secondary references), that it be handled on an electorate/division level rather than by locality – the rationale seems to be that politics sections are somehow "missing" and that adding them provides coherence and consistency – which means around 17,000 articles to edit, but only at most 151 if a particular locality or booth is so notably different within its division that it warrants external coverage and analysis. --Canley (talk) 10:19, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

The New Liberals

For a couple of days I've been seeing in my Facebook feed posts from this apparently new Australian political party, founded by one Victor Kline. We seem to have nothing on it or him. No idea how real or significant they are.

Some links - Website and Facebook

Can't see anything about them in a quick search of mainstream media.

Thoughts anyone? Worth an article yet? HiLo48 (talk) 00:42, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

The current notability requirements seem to be adding them when they're registered with the Australian Electoral Commission (or a state commission), or have substantial media coverage for non-electoral parties. No point making a page until they register. They've existed as far back at the 2020 Eden-Monaro by-election, but looks like they've struggled to gain the relatively low 500 members to become registered. Catiline52 (talk) 01:38, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

sidebar style issue

The prime ministerial sidebar templates such as {{Scott Morrison sidebar}} seem to all be getting put in Category:Sidebars with styles needing conversion but the "problem" appears to actually be in the underlying {{Sidebar/Australia political leader}} which isn't added to the category. Does anyone understand the issue and how to fix it? Perhaps @Catiline52 ? Thank you. --Scott Davis ^Talk 05:47, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Division of Hawke

This page has been created despite there only being a draft redistribution at this stage. I have proposed a move to draftspace here. Frickeg (talk) 22:31, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

CLP federal MPs and Senators

I was looking at the articles past Country Liberal Party federal MPs and Senators and it appears that their affiliations or party rooms (Liberals or Nationals) are not stated. Paul Everingham's article states that "Everingham set a precedent during his single term in Canberra when he chose to sit with the Liberals" and "Since Everingham's tenure, however, subsequent CLP members of the House of Representatives have sat with the Liberals, but CLP Senators have continued to sit with the Nationals in the Senate." However, the supporting citation does not mention anything about sitting with the party rooms, and therefore I am unable to confirm if this is true or not.

Is there a website or resource that shows the affiliation of the CLP MPs and Senators? The APH biography website is not useful as it states Country Liberal Party and not the affiliation of the MP or Senator. Marcnut1996 (talk) 23:59, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

Special Air Service

Comment sought at Talk:Special Air Service Regiment about whether war crimes investigations should be mentioned in the introduction. Meticulo (talk) 12:44, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

COI edits - NSW parliament

Its obviously been too long since 'A strong campaigner': the beauty of Wikipedia as the parliamentary IP 203.13.67.10 (talk) is back spreading fluff. I would appreciate other views on this edit to Catherine Cusack as its mostly supported by references, except for the puffery in last sentence. I also discovered the SPA puff account AlburyEO which has edited Albury MP Justin Clancy. It's a bit sad that this is the best that AlburyEO has to say about their boss. I presume this happens in other jurisdictions. Perhaps we need to look at a systemic way to monitor edits from parliamentary IP addresses. --Find bruce (talk) 02:13, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Hansard as WP:RS?

Hi all. Just a quick question, that's probably been covered a gazillion times but I don't know where to find it ... is Hansard always a good reliable source?
My reservation about it is while it is a reliable record of what is said in parliament, it makes no pretence of verifying the truth/factuality of what is said. So if a MP gets up and says "The moon is made of green cheese!", that will be recorded in Hansard. Now I have no problem with a WP article stating that "MP (name) said the moon is made of green cheese" and reffing Hansard, but I wouldn't like to see a statement of fact: "The moon is made of green cheese" that relies on a ref to Hansard.
This came to mind while reading an article on a Aus pollie, that stated that he grew up in a particular place, and reffed that to the pollie's own maiden speech, in Hansard. Sufficient? Or should I a)(preferably) dig up a better source, or b) if I can't find a better, tag it as needing one? (and possibly c), as its a BLP. delete it as not WP:RS? I wouldn't, but some might.)
So if I'm right and this has been canvassed elsewhere, can somebody please point me towards it? Thanks.

And for your efforts ... an anecdote: I recall in the 1990's a guide in Old Parliament House relating the story that many decades ago somebody in the public gallery responded loudly to a PMs speech by calling out: "The Prime Minister is a liar!" This was, we were informed, reported in Hansard as "A voice from above stated that the Prime Minister is a liar." (my emphasis) The good old says of divine intervention, perhaps? Wayne 04:47, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

Hansard is often a great source for things like basic biographical details in maiden speeches that are often very difficult to otherwise pin down, and I see no reason for dumping a bunch of accurate and undisputed information stemming from BLP subjects about themselves. It's also reasonably likely that most secondary sources on many MPs backgrounds will either come from a) the MP via Hansard or b) the MP directly anyway. In the rare event that something biographical is actually disputed in WP:RS, this has a tendency to become a story in itself (for example Barry Urban). The use of Hansard in more controversial circumstances probably needs discussion of specific cases, but none of the situations in the above post have much relevance to a BLP subject putting their own story on the public record. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:02, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

Also keep in mind that an MP stating falsehoods in their first speech or subsequent statements in parliament could run the risk of misleading parliament, so Hansard could actually be more reliable than other sources where the information came from the MP anyway, such as their parliamentary profile, a biography, or an interview. Having other corroborating sources is better of course, but as The Drover's Wife says, most biographical material is neither controversial nor disputed (like where they grew up) and will almost always have come from the subject somewhere down the line anyway. --Canley (talk) 09:21, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

All of which is true enough, and I thank you all for your input. I still have grave reservations about the implied trust that the nature of the publisher imbues, as against the content. Misleading parliament would never be applied to expressions of opinion, or rhetorical flourishes. Further, even if a statement made on the floor were later subject to admonishment as misleading, the original statement would remain, without being flagged, in Hansard. Still, I have my answer: nobody else thinks this is a problem. Cheers Wayne 00:13, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

By now it is fair enough to say that I'm probably flogging a dead horse, ... but: it occurs to me that Hansard is no more than a record of things said in speeches. Does it not then qualify as a primary document, and thus constitute original research? WP:RS states, inter alia: "Wikipedia articles should be based mainly on reliable secondary sources, i.e., a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere." There is no discussion of the factual standing of Hansard records within those individual records. (ie an extract of Hansard will never tell you what other MP's or anyone else thought about that same extract.) What I'm thinking is that Hansard is probably good enough for very basic, uncontentious biographical info, eg place and year of birth, and that's about it. Any claims to standing, activities, qualifications, legal or medical history etc needs (esp. in a BLP) to be sourced elsewhere. Happy to hear any dissenting or alternative thoughts, but I really just wanted to put it out there. Wayne 03:24, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

What makes Hansard a generally reliable source of this sort of information is that it is subject to significant scrutiny - eg Barry Urban referred to above or Felicity Wilson's pre-election claims about living on the North Shore for 10 years and having 2 undergraduate degrees from Macquarie University. There are clearly limits - I wouldn't use Hansard as a reliable source for treatment of Covid 19 for example. --Find bruce (talk) 11:16, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

New Liberals (Australia)

This newish article about a very recently registered new political party reads somewhat non-neutrally to me. (The article was created three months before the party was registered!) I have attached an advert tag to it, and would appreciate other's contributions please. HiLo48 (talk) 08:11, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Category:Australian Labor Party officials has been nominated for merging to Category:Australian Labor Party politicians

Category:Australian Labor Party officials has been nominated for merging to Category:Australian Labor Party politicians. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Place Clichy (talk) 15:41, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Some feedback would be appreciated here - there are a couple of users completely unfamiliar with Australian politics proposing changes that would randomly make a mess of something we sorted out years ago. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:49, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Election Box Colour Help (National Party SA/Progressive Country)

I've been having a bit of trouble for a while getting the code to work to properly name, link and colour election box entries for the Progressive Country Party that contested the 1921 South Australian state election. It's a bit of a mess because they previously contested the 1918 election as the National Labor party branch (as the National Party (South Australia)), but changed their name again for 1921. I can't seem to get the party name linked up properly in the election box template, so any assistance would be appreciated. Kirsdarke01 (talk) 07:00, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

I think the issue was the SA was in capitals, I changed it to lower case in the name and party colours templates which seems to have partially fixed it. --Canley (talk) 11:44, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

There was a hash (#) missing in the colour definition too, should work now. --Canley (talk) 11:49, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

{{{title}}}

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Progressive Country	{{{candidate}}}	{{{votes}}}	{{{percentage}}}	{{{change}}}

Josiah Thomas (politician)

This page was recently moved without discussion from Josiah Thomas. Although he is not particularly well known, I would have thought he was significantly better known than Josiah Thomas (cricketer) or Josiah Thomas (priest).--Grahame (talk) 07:01, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Certainly more incoming links and more historical significance, though none of them are getting more than a couple page views a day. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 09:50, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

He is the more notable of the three, but I don't know that I feel very strongly about it. The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:17, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Notice

Heads up, RFC taking place, which may affect Australian political articles. GoodDay (talk) 21:55, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

the RFC concerns a question of style: Government bio infoboxes, should they be decapitalized or not? --Find bruce (talk) 22:18, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Electoral results in biographies

Is there any consensus relating to electoral results being included within a politicians or candidates biographical article? An editor I've been dealing with on edit warring, sock puppetry, pov pushing and other issues (all dealt with) is now cut and pasting results from the Electoral results for xyz series of articles and adding the results as a new section to select biographies of SE Melbourne based politicians. If you're seeking an example, refer to the article on Peta Murphy which now includes a direct duplication of information sourced from Electoral results for the Division of Dunkley. I checked a few random AusPol related articles and haven't noticed this as being a widespread inclusion. -- Longhair\^talk 10:53, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of having them there, and we've never done it in Australian articles before - we've got detailed electoral results articles for a reason. The Drover's Wife (talk) 00:55, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Yep. Similar thoughts here. He's sticking to his local area, making a point based on past actions. Cheers. -- Longhair\^talk 04:04, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

A small table of primary/two-party percentages by election for the subject MP only would be alright I think, but full results tables for each of their elections contested is way too much. --Canley (talk) 05:58, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Electoral history

Election	Division	First preference %	Two-party vote %
2016	Dunkley	33.17	48.57
2019	Dunkley	38.52	52.74

Agree with all of the above. Frickeg (talk) 07:08, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

The editor concerned was indef blocked due to Checkuser showing abuse of multiple accounts. Revert the lot. -- Longhair\^talk 02:29, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Liberal Party (1922) and Commonwealth Liberal Party

Ivar the Boneful has picked up a long-lasting whopper of a historical error at Liberal Party (1922). It'd be great to have a bit of help in working out how to sort it out. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:28, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

We're also revisiting the longstanding mess at Commonwealth Liberal Party with a view to finally sorting out a correct name and disentangling the mess of links of Fusion-era liberal parties - eyes there would be much appreciated. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:37, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Terminology and numbering

There is an ongoing discussion here about finding a consistent term to describe Earle Page, Frank Forde and John McEwen's premierships in their articles and beyond (acting, caretaker, interim etc). It has also touched upon how to number Australian Prime Ministers. It would be very much appreciated if any interested editors could join in and voice their thoughts on the matter! Thanks! FollowTheTortoise (talk) 19:51, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Bill 2020

As noted by commenters, it gives sweeping extrajudicial powers for police investigating offences as minor as copyright violations, but I haven't found even a word about it in Mass surveillance in Australia, not to speak about a separate article. Is it not considered important on your continent? Ain92 (talk) 08:57, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Vince Connelly

User:Reddog227 has been removing content from Vince Connelly, saying it is "inaccurate" in the edit summary. They seem to not want to talk about it. Could someone revert their edit, I am butting up against the three revert rule. Steelkamp (talk) 16:54, 18 September 2021 (UTC)