Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian politics/Electorates

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[edit] General conventions

The first issue we're going to have to work out with this WikiProject is what naming convention we're going to use for our electorate articles.

We currently have four states with at least one electorate article, and all four are using different conventions.

...as well as the federal convention, Division of Melbourne Ports.

I think it'd be nice if these could generally be standardised - any suggestions as to what? Ambi 08:02, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It may be that each state calls them something different - the South Australian ones are electoral districts according to the State Electoral Office. Victoria seems to have districts in the lower house and provinces for the upper house according to the Victorian Electoral Commission --ScottDavis 15:25, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You're exactly right. I just went through and checked each state and territory electoral commission website -

  • District
    • South Australia
    • Western Australia
    • Victoria
    • Queensland
    • New South Wales
  • Division
    • Northern Territory
    • Tasmania

and the ACT isn't clear; Elections ACT seems to just refer to them as "electorates" everywhere.

Which makes me lean towards just using [[Electoral district of ....]] and [[Electoral division of ....]] according to the appropriate local usage. Any thoughts about making that the convention? There's also the issues of what to do about disambiguation, as there's several electorates in different states that have the same names - as well as working out what to do about the ACT. Ambi 16:23, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Should it be "Electoral District of..." (like Mitchell and Strathfield above) or "Electoral district of..." (like Albany and MacDonnell) when it's the name of the district? --ScottDavis 00:05, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I prefer the latter personally. A bit of a Google search seems to suggest that the electoral commissions don't capitalise it, and this would fit with the convention of not capitalising things that aren't proper nouns. Ambi 02:03, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Any other thoughts on this? Ambi 08:17, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I'll cast my vote for the latter too. I had a quick look at the enabling legislation for elections in WA, and it uses "electoral districts" i.e. all lower case. Hesperian 06:12, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Alright, perhaps we should go with this then. Ambi 06:15, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation

The one other issue here is that of disambiguation. Should we just tack (South Australia) or (Victoria) onto the end of a non-unique electorate name, or should we pre-disambiguate all electorates (i.e. have [[South Australian electoral district of Mitchell]]. Ambi 08:17, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'd prefer full capitalisation for references to a specific district. Looking around Electoral Commission websites and searching specific electorates showed that this was commonplace. I won't push at it though. As for disabmiguating clauses, I prefer the brackets option, as that is done more often for poltics topics in general. I don't like the way the way the Canadian electoral districts are named (which often have no clause at all), but maybe there is something in their organisation.-- Cyberjunkie TALK 09:14, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for picking up the Canadian categorisation - I like that a lot, as it deals with both state and federal-level electorates quite well. I'll wait a little longer to see if anyone else feels like chipping in, else I'll start moving them to the capitalised version. Ambi 10:24, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I'll agree with "full capitalisation for references to a specific district", but only for the official name of the district itself. i.e. if the name of the district is North District, then District should be capitalised; but if the name of the district is North West Coastal, then North West Coastal should be fully capitalised but the word district in Electoral district of North West Coastal should not be capitalised since it does not form part of the official district name. Hesperian 06:23, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Is this fine with everyone? There seems to be general agreement in regards to lower houses, and I'd like to get started on implementing this for the lower houses of Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia - the Legislative Councils should probably wait until we sort out the issues below. Ambi 06:36, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Fine with me. I preempted the decision with a few links with a capital 'D', but they can be fixed. --ScottDavis 07:39, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Electoral district article?

Do you think we'll eventually need an article like Electoral district (Canada), possibly titled Electorates of Australia? It could serve as a parent to federal divisions and state electoral districts.-- Cyberjunkie TALK 10:31, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It certainly wouldn't hurt. It might be nice to have an article about Australian electoral districts in general (as with the Canadian one) and then more specific ones for each state and territory, explaining how they work in that state and listing the electorates there (i.e. Electoral divisions of the Northern Territory, which I know isn't very helpful at the moment, but I hope you get what I mean). Ambi 10:44, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I find the title Electorates of Australia a tad misleading, since for example the Electoral districts of Western Australia are not Electorates of Australia. They are, however, Electorates in Australia, and I think this would be a more appropriate title. Hesperian 06:12, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Agreed. Ambi 06:15, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Western Australia and Legislative Councils

As noted above, Western Australia calls their lower house electorates districts, so I have adopted the convention Electoral district of..., e.g. Electoral district of Albany. Annoyingly, the Western Australian Electoral Commission have in their wisdom named one of the districts in adjectival form. Electoral district of North West Coastal sounds really stupid, but after talking it over with Adam I am reconciled to retaining consistency, even if the title sounds stupid in this case. We call our upper house electorates regions, although we used to call them provinces like Victoria still do. Our regions are all named adjectivally, so in the name of consistency they would all end up with strange names, e.g. Electoral region of Agricultural. Again I was planning on accepting the silly names as the price of consistency. For electorates that were provinces and were abolished before the adoption of the term region, I was planning on taking liberties with the terminology and using the Electoral region of... convention even though these electorates were never known as anything but provinces. Finally, I am very sad to say that before 1965 the upper house had both districts and provinces. I am not prepared to use Electoral district of... for both lower house districts and pre-1965 upper house districts, as this would just cause confusion. But it seems inappropriate to call these regions, especially as in one case "District" is actually in the name. How bad does Electoral region of North District sound?! I will be very happy if we can all put our heads together and come up with a better solution to this mess. Hesperian 13:02, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree that it's probably simplest to keep North West Coastal in that form, even though it looks really quite stupid. I think you're probably making the right call in regard to the pre-1965 Legislative Council districts as well - things would get too confusing otherwise, and I can't think of a better third option.
I think it would probably be easier not to use a convention for Legislative Council seats, as they only apply to three states which all have quite different circumstances. Because Western Australia uses adjective names, it would probably make more sense to use Agricultural electoral region or Agricultural electoral region, Western Australia there. Under the current Victorian system (which will have changed by the next election), it would probably make more sense to use just Higinbotham Province - which is the most common way of referring to them. I'm really not familar with the Tasmanian situation, so I can't say there, but the three seem different enough that it seems easier to not use a convention in regard to Legislative Councils.
While you're here, too - any thoughts on capitalisation/disambiguation? Ambi 13:28, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Last bunch of anomalies

I think we've pretty much straightened out the lower houses - I've been going around fixing these up, and they seem to be looking quite a bit better.

There's two more issues remaining -

Firstly, the Tasmanian lower house uses the same divisions as the federal parliament. What do we do here? They used to have a list of state members as well, but Adam erased them a few months ago, and I'm not sure that was the way to go anyway.

Secondly, the Legislative Council issue remains. Any more thoughts there? Ambi 1 July 2005 09:32 (UTC)

I wrote something on the talk page for Division of Denison, Tasmania, but this seems like the more appropriate place. Since Tasmanian lower house electorates use Federal boundaries, I suggest we merge them. None of the articles are large enough to justify splitting off, and I think it's valuable to be able to see who are the state members alongside who is the federal member. As well as this, geographical and demographic information is the same. Braue 01:17, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Titles in member lists

I hope this is a good place to continue this discussion concerning lists of members on electorate pages:

Is it really necessary to have a new line in the members list when a member gains the title "honourable" at Electoral district of Marrickville?For one thing, other members on this list don't have their titles included. JPD (talk) 09:09, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

It's probably not necessary. Some existing pages such as those under use titles. I've split rows where titles have changed on a number of pages because I was uncertain what title I should use particularly because they change over the political career. If the consensus is that the split is unnecessary, I can go through the tables and remerge them. I'd like to know first if the preferrable format is all titles adopted in the person's lifetime, or no title or some other variant. -- Newhoggy | Talk 11:41, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I would prefer not to include titles in the list at all. The lists are showing who was member when, and showing changes in title is a distraction. Apart from that, I don't think it is not normal Wikipedia style to include titles such as "The Honourable" in the text. JPD (talk) 13:58, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

What they said. Rebecca 03:58, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I also would prefer no titles at all, but would like consistency across all states and nationally. -- Newhoggy | Talk 22:33, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I invited a number of wikipedians from each state because I'd really like some consistency and wide agreement on this issue would be very helpful. -- Newhoggy | Talk 05:03, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree, don't split up because of titles. Tacked-on titles that nobody uses in common parlance ("Rt Hon" and so on) really shouldn't be included in links to that individual; there's a good case for *mentioning* the title on the pollie's article, but we don't need to do it in links, and we certainly don't need to disrupt the flow of a list so as to have one item for pre- and post-title. fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 05:04, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Is that an argument against using all titles in links? There are other titles like Dr. Major. Lt. Sir. I agree using titles in the member's name is useful. In that case, should it be all the titles acquired the person's lifetime? Should the titles be listed in any particular order? -- Newhoggy | Talk 06:06, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
There's no need for titlecruft, but I do think it is common sense to refer to people as Sir and Dr where applicable, as they're titles that very regularly are used in reality (unlike Rt Hon, Major, Hon, AO and such). Rebecca 06:08, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

It would seem logical that if honourific prefixes — aside Sir and Dame — are not used in biography articles, neither should they be in lists. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)#Honorific prefixes.--cj | talk 07:03, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks cj - that helps clear things up a lot. So does that mean that all lists should not use any titles at all? Taking John Hewson as an example, would the lists refer to him as John Hewson rather than Dr John Hewson, and the first sentence in his article begin with "Dr John Hewson (28 October 1946), born John Robert Hewson, ..." rather than what it is now? -- Newhoggy | Talk 07:38, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I think that it'd be best to leave it out to avoid confusion; the use of Dr really depends on whether the person goes by it or not, so for consistency's sake, I'd say sacrifice all or none.--cj | talk 08:23, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I say, don't split rows of any list just to include more than one title. I think it's okay to use a person's title in a list, but it should be either the most recent one or none at all. --Susurrus 12:23, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

For lists, I believe it's a choice between all or nothing. If only some list items have titles and other don't, it may not be wrong - but it isn't possible to know by just reading the list whether the an untitled person actually has a title, or in the case that the a title is specified, if the title is complete. In that sense inconsistently providing titles is of limited benefit to the reader. In the choice between all or nothing, I'd choose nothing because it's much more manageable to update the title in the member's article page rather than all over the place. This reduces the risk of having out of date information persist for a lengthy amount of time. -- Newhoggy | Talk 13:20, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I suggest we don't use titles, but even if we do, the point of this list is to show the period when a Member served in that seat. Separating it suggests some sort of change in their status as member for that electorate has changed, which is inaccurate. Don't split them. Ben Raue (Talk)

[edit] Guidelines

It would be really nice if there were a set of guidelines somewhere and an easy way to get to them from each of the electorate pages. An easy way to get to this page would be nice too.

-- Newhoggy | Talk 05:01, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

The other problem is the dash character separating the start and end dates varies between pages and also whether or not duplicate members or parties in the same table should be linked. -- Newhoggy | Talk 08:03, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

That's a good point. Re: duplicate linking, in theory we shouldn't link duplicates, but sometimes it's annoying to have to scroll up a lot if the last Labor member (say) held the seat in the 1940s, and the politician you're looking at now was voted out in 2004, so I'd support the use of duplicate links for parties in particular, and perhaps members as well. The dash character should always be an en dash (–), but often people will use a hyphen (-) because they don't know how to use an actual dash. fuddlemark (befuddle me!) 10:46, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
What Mark said. Rebecca 08:33, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

One more problem is that sometimes the link ALP is used and sometimes Australian Labor Party, or Labor. Which is the preferred method? -- Newhoggy | Talk 13:56, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I think just "Australian Labor Party" is best, for clarity — a non-Australian won't need to click on the link to find out who the ALP are. But it can depend on space constraints, too. I think in most cases we have enough room to use the full name of a party. fuddlemark (befuddle me!) 14:40, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I support using the abbreviations that the ABC and electoral authorities use so long as they're linked.--cj | talk 15:07, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Which ABC are you referring too? -- Newhoggy | Talk 01:05, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd rather use the full names. There are no space constraints in these tables, as they're typically rather small, and it makes them more comprehensible to non-Australian readers. Rebecca 08:33, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Coming to a resolution?

How about we list our positions on these things in a table?

Decision For Against Resolution
Always use titles in lists for all MPs that have them.

Failed
Remove all titles from lists

Passed
Always use duplicate links in lists
Always use full party names
Always use *space* ndash *space* to separate dates in list
Use Wikipedia's most commonly used separator for dates in lists whatever that is.
Always use abbreviations for party names
used electoral authorities in lists
Always use four digit years rather than
abbreviated two digit years.

Passed
Always use tables for members lists rather
than bullet points.

Passed
All electorate articles in Australia should
use consistent style.

Passed

It seems like "Always use tables for members lists rather than bullet points" has the most support. If there are no objections, I'd like mark the resolution of this item as "passed" and start changing all electorate past members lists into tables while waiting for more feedback on the other items. -- Newhoggy | Talk 02:37, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm obviously coming to this debate pretty late but where a Party is mentioned multiple times would it be OK to use the full name the first time it is used and then shorten it to Liberal, Labor, National, Greens ect. I am asking regarding my work at the Electoral districts of Thuringowa, Mundingburra and Townsville articles. Thanks, Alec 10:07, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I think it'd be better to be consistent the whole way through - either use Liberal, and link it to the article at the full title, or use the full Liberal party of Australia all the way through. Rebecca 11:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Table columns

NSW uses "Member", "Party affiliation", "Period", SA uses "Member", "Party", "Term". I propose all NSW articles adopt the SA column headings because they are clearer and shorter. -- Newhoggy | Talk 05:47, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Table style

SA uses an assortment custom table attributes resulting in a table with darker column headings. NSW uses the standard "wikitable" class giving tables with light column headings matching the colour scheme of Wikipedia. I propose that SA tables be styled using the NSW method, which is more concise, constitent and manageable. -- Newhoggy | Talk 05:49, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

So long as it's consistent across the board, I don't care which format is used.--cj | talk 05:23, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ ndash should not be stood off by spaces: WP:DASH
  2. ^ I changed my vote to this one because I value consistency more in this case.
  3. ^ I've changed my mind on this too. Abbreviations might be okay when discussion only parties currently in existence, but there are various parties throughout Australia's history that have the same abbreviation but are unrelated. Being able to unambiguously distinguish between them in the past members list is important.
  4. ^ why has Newhoggy signed for both this and the contradictory proposal above?
  5. ^ In principle. (unsure about multi-member electorates.)

[edit] Electorate categories

The way the categories are organised is unsatisfactory - Category:Electoral divisions of Australia refers to Australian House of Representatives electoral Divisions yet contains categories for state electorates. Perhaps Category:Electoral divisions of Australia should exclusively list Australian federal electorates and, along with categories for state electorates, be placed in a more general category to be named Australian electorates. Thus, the cats would be organised as follows:
Category:Politics of Australia

Category:Australian electorates
Category:Electoral divisions of Australia
Category:Electoral districts of New South Wales
Category:Electoral districts of Queensland
Category:Electoral districts of South Australia
Category:Electoral divisions of Tasmania
Category:Electoral districts of Victoria
Category:Electoral districts of Western Australia
Category:Electoral regions of Western Australia
etc

MH au 05:42, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Did you mean to have the state categories indented at the same level as Cat:Electoral divisions of Australia? If so, I agree with that type of structure. However, "Electoral divisions of Australia" does sound as though it could be the name of a the general category. JPD (talk) 10:45, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
You are right - that was my intention - I have altered it accordingly. The use of "Electoral divisions of Australia" was for consistency with the state cats. MH au 05:50, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
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