Talk:List of Australian federal by-elections

George Ried 1903

Was that really a by-election?

From the George Ried article:

He improved his party's position in the 1903 elections, and in August 1904, when the Watson government resigned, he became Prime Minister.

Plus the fact he appears to have been both the incumbent and the winner, I wasn't aware of a situation in which that could happen. --58.168.125.251 21:52, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Reid resigned in protest over a dispute over electoral redistribution. He then recontested and won the by-election sparked by his own resignation. Rebecca 01:45, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

The only such case in federal parliamentary history. -- JackofOz (talk) 03:30, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Reasons

Can whoever added the reasons for the by-elections please re-check them? I'm seeing some court-ordered by-elections that were marked down as "resignations". Rebecca (talk) 01:13, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Rebecca. The only error I can see is Jackie Kelly. She didn’t resign, but was disqualified because of her RAAF employment, and not having taken steps to renounce her New Zealand citizenship. I’ll fix it ASAP. If there are any others, please let me know. I’ve derived this information from here, btw. But I’ve noticed a couple of errors even in that august publication. For example, the asterisk next to Jackie Kelly points to “Resigned on 18.8.1903 and subsequently offered himself for re-election”, which is actually about George Reid a century earlier. The Parliamentary Handbook table needs a separate note explaining Jackie Kelly’s circumstances (listening, Parliamentary Library?). The double crucifixes next to Phil Cleary tell us “Disqualified 25.11.1992. Re-elected 13.3.1993”, which is true, but that was after he was elected to replace Bob Hawke on 11 April 1992, and is not directly relevant to the original by-election per se. -- JackofOz (talk) 03:29, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

43rd Parliament

Earlier today I removed "to date" from the 43rd Parliament part of this article on the basis that this Parliament had ended. JackOfOz in the edit history apparently addressing to what I have done posted the chronology of Australian Parliaments which includes showing when previous Parliaments were dissolved.

As a point of clarification I was trying to state that even though the 43rd Parliament hasn't been formally dissolved by Governor-General Quentin Bryce the Parliament will not sit again before the next election.

As this article is about the history of Australian Federal by-elections the 43rd Parliament did not have any by-elections now that it has concluded all its sessions. 220.239.167.151 (talk) 05:43, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Incumbent?

Why are we using the word "incumbent" to refer to the person whose resignation/death/invalidation has led to the by-election in the first place? By definition, they are no longer the incumbent. Maybe "previous member"? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:57, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Ha ha, I just thought that myself! I agree, "Previous member" makes more sense. --Canley (talk) 23:42, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

'Previous MP' and 'Resulting MP' or similar would be a suitable change. But this could go the way of election pages and PMs in infoboxes... ie: "Prime Minister before election" and "Elected Prime Minister". So clunky. Timeshift (talk) 01:28, 7 January 2014 (UTC)