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ACT - Legislative Assembly

The Australian Capital Territory has one parliamentary body, the Legislative Assembly.

The Legislative Assembly for the Australian Capital Territory has 17 members elected from 3 electorates - Brindabella, Molonglo and Ginninderra.

Brindabella and Ginninderra are 5 member electorates - they have between 62,000 and 63,000 enrolled voters; and Molonglo is a 7 member electorate with approximately 92,000 enrolled voters.

The Labor Party is in government.

Links:

Legislative Assembly web site

Members of the Legislative Assembly

Find a Member:
Click here. All you need to do is to choose your suburb, and a list of all your Members is displayed!

Chief Minister:
The Chief Minister is Katy Gallagher - who took on this role on 16 May, 2011 after the resignation of former Chief Minister Mr Jon Stanhope.
Click here for a full list of ACT government Ministers.

For a list of Ministers and Shadow Ministers, click here.

 

The Hare-Clark voting system

Members are elected using the Hare-Clark voting system - which is a preferential voting system. Voters number the ballot paper 1,2,3,4,5 etc to indicate a preference.

Members must receive a certain quota to be elected - 1/6 of the vote in Brindabella and Molonglo and 1/8 of the vote in Molonglo. Once a member reaches the quota - any additional votes to that person are redistributed according to 2nd preferences etc. These votes only have a fractional value. If after this redistribution not all positions are filled they then exclude the person with the least amount of votes - and redistribute these votes, once again at a fractional value.

The Hare-Clark system also uses Robson Rotation - which means the order of candidates names appears in a different order on consecutive ballot papers to reduce the influence of voters who just write 1,2,3,4,5 etc straight down on the ballot paper.
(Details obtained from ACT Legislative Assembly staff.)

An explanation of the Hare-Clark election system is available as a 'Fact Sheet' on the Legislative Assembly website - click here.