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 Mr Jon Stanhope. Click here for details.

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.)