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Queensland Legislative Assembly[1]
Election / Assembly number	ALP	Conservatives NAT/LIB	ONP	Other	Total
1932 / 26th	33	28	..	1	62
1935 / 27th	46	16	..	..	62
1938 / 28th	44	13	..	5	62
1941 / 29th	41	14	..	7	62
1944 / 30th	37	12	..	13	62
1947 / 31st	35	14	..	13	62
1950 / 32nd	42	31 20 / 11	..	2	75
1953 / 33rd	50	23 15 / 8	..	2	75
1956 / 34th	49	24 16 / 8	..	2	75
1957 / 35th	20	42	..	13	75
1960 / 36th	25	46	..	7	78
1963 / 37th	26	46	..	6	78
1966 / 38th	26	47	..	5	78
1969 / 39th	31	45	..	2	78
1972 / 40th	33	47	..	2	82
1974 / 41st	11	69	..	2	82
1977 / 42nd	23	59	..	..	82
1980 / 43rd	25	57	..	..	82
1983 / 44th	32	49 41 / 8	..	1	82
1986 / 45th	30	59 49 / 10	..	..	89
1989 / 46th	54	35 27 / 8	..	..	89
1992 / 47th	54	35 26 / 9	..	..	89
1995 / 48th	45	43 29 / 14	..	1	89
1996 by-election	44	44 29 / 15	..	1	89
1998 / 49th	44	23 23 / 9	11	11	89
2001 / 50th	66	15 12 / 3	3	5	89
2004 / 51st	63	20 15 / 5	1	5	89
2006 / 52nd	59	25 17 / 8	1	4	89

The Queensland Legislative Assembly is the unicameral chamber of the Parliament of Queensland. Elections are held approximately once every three years. Voting is by the Optional Preferential Voting form of the Alternative Vote system. The Assembly has 89 'Members of the Legislative Assembly', who use the letters MP after their name since 2000 (previously they were styled MLAs).

The 89 Members of Parliament are intended to represent approximately the same population in each electorate, however that has not always been the case (see Queensland's Gerrymander).

Contents 1 Current distribution of seats 2 Before 1922 3 Queensland's Gerrymander 4 See also 5 External links 6 References

(Following 2006 state election)

Party	Seats held
Australian Labor Party	59
National Party of Australia	17
Liberal Party of Australia	8
One Nation Party	1
Independent	4

(see detailed list)

The Legislative Assembly was the lower house of a normal Westminster style bicameral parliament. The upper house, the Legislative Council, with members appointed by the government of the day for life. The Assembly was elected under the 'first past the post' (plurality) system 1860 to 1892. From then until 1942 an unusual form of preferential voting called the 'contingent vote' was used. In 1942 the plurality system was reintroduced until it was replaced in 1962 by the 'full preferential' form of the Alternative Vote. In 1992 this was changed to the optional preferential system currently used.

In 1922 the Legislative Council was abolished, with the help of members known as the "suicide squad", who were specially appointed to vote the chamber out of existence. This left Queensland with a unicameral parliament - currently the only Australian state with this arrangement. [1]

Queensland, from 1948 until the reforms following the end of the Bjelke-Petersen era, had a system of electoral zoning that could be used by the government of the day to maximise its own voter support at the expense of the opposition. It has been called a form of gerrymander, however it is more accurately referred to as an electoral malapportionment. In a classic gerrymander, electoral boundaries are drawn to take advantage of known pockets of supporters and to isolate areas of opposition voters so as to maximise the number of seats for the government for a given number of votes and to cause opposition support to be "wasted" by concentrating their supporters in relatively fewer electorates.

The Queensland "gerrymander", first introduced by the Australian Labor Party government of Ned Hanlon in 1949 used a series of electoral zones. While the number of electors in each seat in a zone was roughly equal, there was considerable variation in the number of electors between zones. Thus an electorate in the remote zone might have as few as 5,000 electors, while a seat in the metropolitan zone might have as many as 25,000.

Initially Queensland was divided into three zones - the metropolitan zone, the provincial cities zone (which also included rural areas around provincial cities) and the rural zone. Using this system the Labor government was able to maximise its vote, particularly in the provincial city zone. With the split in the party in the late 1950s the ALP lost office and a conservative coalition government led by the Country Party (later National Party of Australia), came to power, which, as discussed above, initially modified the voting system to introduce preferential voting, to take advantage of Labor's split. Subsequently as the divisions in the ALP abated in the early 1970s, and tensions in the conservative coalition grew, (thus reducing the advantage to be gained by the use of preferential voting), the conservative government modified the zoning system to create four zones - to the existing three zones was added a fourth zone - a remote zone, with electorates with even fewer electors. The provincial cities zone was reduced in size, with provincial cities' hinterlands added to the rural zone. Thus the conservative government was able to isolate Labor support in provincial cities and maximise its own rural power base.

The entrenchment of a conservative government was also caused by socio-economic and demographic changes associated with mechanisation of farms and urbanisation which led to a drift of working class population from rural and remote electorates to the cities.

By the late 1980s the decline in the political fortunes of the National Party, together with rapid growth in south east Queensland meant that the zonal system was no longer able to guarantee a conservative victory.

In addition, in 1988 the Federal Labor Government held four constitutional referenda -- one of these was for the adoption of fair electoral systems around Australia. Although the referendum did not succeed, it heightened pubic awareness of the issue. A large public interest non-partisan organisation, the Citizens for Democracy, lobbied extensively the Liberal and Labor parties to abolish the gerrymander and to make it a major issue in the lead up to the landmark 1989 Queensland election.

In 1989 Labor won government, promising to implement the recommendations of the Fitzgerald Inquiry into police corruption, including the establishment of an Electoral and Administrative Reform Commission (EARC). EARC recommended the abolition of the zonal system, and its replacement of a "modified one vote, one value" system. Under this proposal, subsequently adopted, most electorates consisted of approximately the same number of electors, but with a greater tolerance for fewer electors allowed in a limited number of remote electorates. So the 'one vote one value' principle, while overwhelmingly adopted in Queensland, was not universally adopted.

This article does not cite any references or sources. (February 2007) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

• Parliaments of the Australian states and territories
• Current list of Members of the Queensland Legislative Assembly

• Current E-Petitions, currently online petitions for Queensland parliament