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ABC News News Home Fact Check Fact check: Has a government not won a seat from an opposition at a by- election in 100 years? Share # Fact check: Has a government not won a seat from an opposition at a by- election in 100 years? * ![\\"A](\\" M By Matt Martino * Topic:Australian Federal Elections Fri 27 Jul 2018Friday 27 July 2018Fri 27 Jul 2018 at 2:48am ![\\"mathias](\\" cdn.net.au/75b197031898fd286399cb92f1b52eb2?impolicy=wcms_crop_resize&cropH=529&cropW=939&xPos=0&yPos=96&width=862&height=485\\"/) Display caption Special Minister of State, Mathias Cormann, says that no opposition has lost a seat to a government at a by-election in 100 years. (ABC News: Matthew Roberts) abc.net.au/news/fact-check-has-a-government-not-taken-a-seat-from-an- opp/10003610 Link copied ShareShare article ## The claim A series of by-elections for the House of Representatives will take place on July 28, four of which have Labor as the incumbent party, and in one of which the incumbent is the Centre Alliance\'s Rebekha Sharkie. The by-elections are seen by some as a test of Opposition Leader Bill Shorten\'s leadership; speculation on his tenure is expected to increase should he lose any of the by-elections, and the Government is keen to argue that they are Mr Shorten\'s to lose. Speaking to ABC\'s National Wrap, Special Minister of State Mathias Cormann said the Government was the underdog: \"It is a matter of history that incumbent governments find it nigh on impossible to win seats off an opposition at a by-election. For the last 100 years or so no government, of either political persuasion, has won a seat off an opposition at a by- election.\" Has a government not taken a seat from an opposition at a by-election in 100 years? RMIT ABC Fact Check dives into the history books. ## The verdict Senator Cormann is correct. The last time an opposition lost a seat to a government at a by-election was in 1920 — almost 100 years ago. The previous MP in that by-election, Hugh Mahon, remains the only member in the history of the House of Representatives to be expelled. He recontested the seat and lost. However, whilst by-elections on average swing towards the opposition of the day, experts told Fact Check that there are a minority of historical cases where the government of the day has achieved a swing towards itself larger than those required to unseat Labor in Longman or Braddon. With this in mind, psephologist Kevin Bonham told Fact Check that Labor losing a seat would be \"unusual, but not as unusual as the very poor historic win rate indicates\". ## Super Saturday Four of the July 28 by-elections were prompted by a High Court ruling against former Labor senator Katy Gallagher, deeming her ineligible to sit in Parliament due to her dual citizenship. Three Labor members of the House of Representatives — Susan Lamb, Justine Keay and Josh Wilson — as well as Ms Sharkie from the Centre Alliance (formerly Nick Xenophon team) were under a similar citizenship cloud. These MPs resigned and all are recontesting their seats. The fifth by-election was caused when Labor MP Tim Hammond resigned for personal reasons. His seat will be contested by a new Labor candidate, Patrick Gorman. The pressure on Mr Shorten is focussed on Ms Lamb\'s Queensland seat of Longman and Ms Keay\'s Tasmanian seat of Braddon, both held on small margins and where the Government is fielding candidates. The Government has decided not to contest Mr Wilson\'s West Australian seat of Fremantle, nor the nearby seat of Perth vacated by Mr Hammond, leaving Labor to fight it out with the Greens there. In Ms Sharkie\'s South Australian seat of Mayo, Labor polled only 13.5 per cent of the primary vote in the July 2016 general election, so the by-election is seen as a re-run of the 2016 contest between the Centre Alliance and the Liberal Party. ## The business of by-elections According to the House of Representatives Practice, 6th edition, a by-election in the House of Representatives occurs after a vacancy is created by the resignation, death, expulsion, disqualification or ineligibility of a member. In the history of the Australian Parliament, stretching back to 1901, 152 by- elections have been held, which is around 3.4 per parliament on average. Each by-election is different, but by-elections on average swing towards the opposition of the day. Research from the Parliamentary Library found that between 1949 and 2017, there was an average swing at by-elections towards the opposition of 3.8 per cent on a two-party preferred basis. This rises to 4.9 per cent when only considering by-elections triggered by a resignation, as the coming by-elections were. However, four of the July 2018 by-elections are atypical, in that usually an incumbent member who resigns does not recontest the seat at the resulting by- election. ABC elections analyst Antony Green told Fact Check that swings away from a government are part of a broader trend of support which declines after a government is elected. \"Once a government comes to office, their vote starts to decline. That\'s been the tradition in Australia,\" he said. \"Of the last 19 elections, in 16 of them the government went backwards.\" Independent psephologist Kevin Bonham offers an additional explanation for the scarcity of government gains from opposition parties at by-elections: \"Governments often don\'t even contest opposition by-elections, especially not in recent decades. When they do, on average there is about a 1 per cent two-party swing to the opposition. While that swing is very variable, since the seats were opposition-held in the first place, and since many were not even especially marginal, this has translated into a very low strike rate for governments.\" The largest swing towards a government occurred in the 1981 McPherson by- election. The Coalition government already held the seat, but achieved a swing of 16.2 per cent in its favour. ## How often do seats change hands at a by-election? The Parliamentary Library has published a list of the results of 151 by- elections that were held between 1901 and 2017. The only by-election which has occurred since is in the Victorian seat of Batman in March, 2018. The library has also published a list of seats which have changed hands at by- elections. In the vast majority of by-elections (117), the previous member or a replacement from the original party which held the seat before the by-election is the winner. There are only 35 by-elections where the seat was lost. Fact Check has amalgamated these lists and included the result of the Batman by-election to produce the graph below. Hover or tap on the timeline to reveal more information about each by-election ## When was the last time an opposition lost to a government? The official opposition, as defined by the House of Representatives Practice, is \"the party or group which has the greatest number of non-government Members in the House of Representatives\". A second approach is to use the Parliamentary Handbook list of Leaders of the Opposition to define the official opposition at any given time. Because of the fluid nature of party politics in the early 20th century, Fact Check has used the second approach in categorising the seat changes. Only five of the losses on the Parliamentary Library\'s list have been by the opposition of the day. In the two most recent cases, the seats were lost to an independent (when Rob Oakeshott won the NSW seat of Lyne from the Nationals in opposition in 2008) or to a minor party (when Michael Organ took the seat of Cunningham for the Greens from the Labor opposition in 2002). The last time a seat changed hands from an opposition to a government was in 1920, 98 years ago, in a by-election in the West Australian seat of Kalgoorlie, when the ALP opposition lost the seat to the Nationalist Party government. The ALP opposition also lost the 1921 by-election in the Queensland seat of Maranoa to the Country Party (precursor to today\'s Nationals) but the Country Party was not yet in coalition with the Nationalist government of the time, and thus, does not count as a government taking a seat from the opposition. The fifth loss by an opposition was in 1904, when the Free Traders lost the NSW seat of Riverina to the Protectionist Party — again, its future coalition partner — while Labor led a minority government with the support of the Protectionists. ## Is the win rate all that matters? Dr Bonham said that a loss for the Opposition at one of the July 2018 by- elections would be \"unusual, but not as unusual as the very poor historic win rate indicates\". He told Fact Check that there are a minority of by-elections where there has been a swing towards the government above those required to flip the seats in Longman and Braddon. Election analyst and editor of election blog Poll Bludger, William Bowe, told Fact Check that \"by-elections in highly marginal opposition-held seats are far from a common occurrence, and it is Bill Shorten\'s bad luck that he has copped two simultaneously. The last time there was a by-election in an opposition-held seat with a margin of 5 per cent or less was in Moreton in 1983\". Dr Bonham told Fact Check: \"There are two such by-elections on at once, and the results are likely to have some independence of each other, so the chance of at least one Labor loss is higher than if just one was held.\" Using data from the Parliamentary Library, only available for the period 1949 to 2017, Fact Check has graphed swings towards and against the sitting government, where a two-party swing was available, and found that 10 of these swings that were towards a government were above Labor\'s margin in Longman of 0.8 per cent, and five of them were above Labor\'s margin in Braddon of 2.2 per cent. Government swings in by-elections 1949-2017 In its research paper, the Parliamentary Library wrote about the importance of swings in considering the success of a party at a by-election: > \"Conventional wisdom holds that there is usually a swing against the > government of the day at a by-election. > > \"The success or otherwise of a government, opposition, or party leader at > the by-election is often measured by the size of the swing in comparison > with the average swing recorded in past by-elections. > > \"However, by-elections occur in varied and disparate electoral divisions, > with different numbers and mixes of candidates and with a variety of local, > state and national issues involved. > > \"It could, therefore, be argued that, given the variety of factors > involved, there is no \'normal\' by-election swing. By-elections are held in > such varying circumstances that none can be regarded as typical, and it is > generally agreed that any swing that occurs is usually explained by the > special factors pertaining to each by-election.\" ## What happened in 1920? The 1920 by-election in Kalgoorlie was an oddity, in that the circumstances which led to it had never occurred before in the Australian Parliament, and haven\'t occurred since. On November 12 of that year, sitting member Hugh Mahon of the ALP became the first and only member of the House of Representatives to be expelled. Mahon gave a speech several days earlier to the Irish Ireland League which criticised official British Empire policy on Ireland, speaking of \"this bloody and accursed Empire\". After a vote in the House, he was expelled from Parliament for \"seditious and disloyal utterances\", the House finding he had been \"guilty of conduct unfitting him to remain a member of this House\". Mahon recontested the seat, but lost to the Nationalist government candidate. The House of Representatives lost its power to expel members after the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987 was passed. _Principal researcher: Matt Martino_ _factcheck@rmit.edu.au_ ## Sources * Mathias Cormann, Interview on National Wrap, ABC News, June 17, 2018 * Australian Parliament House, House of Representatives practice, 6th edition * Australian Electoral Commission, Perth by-election * Stephen Barber, House of Representatives by-elections 1901-2017, Parliamentary Library, March 5, 2018 * Stephen Barber, Appendix 1: House of Representatives by-elections 1901-2017, Parliamentary Library, March 5, 2018 * Stephen Barber, Appendix 2: House of Representatives by-elections 1901-2017, Parliamentary Library, March 5, 2018 * Louise Yaxley, David Feeney resigns from Parliament over dual citizenship, prompting Batman by-election, ABC News, February 1, 2018 * AEC, 2018 Batman by-election * AEC, 2016 Federal Election, Longman, Qld. * AEC, 2016 Federal Election, Braddon, Tas. * Hannah Gobbett, Simon Speldewinde and Rob Lundie, First, most and more: facts about the Federal Parliament, Parliamentary Library, May 10, 2017 * Parliamentary Handbook, Part 6, Historical information on the Australian Parliament, July 2017 Posted Fri 27 Jul 2018 at 2:48amFriday 27 Jul 2018 at 2:48amFri 27 Jul 2018 at 2:48am, updated Thu 6 Sep 2018 at 10:36amThursday 6 Sep 2018 at 10:36amThu 6 Sep 2018 at 10:36am Share options * Copy link * Facebook * X (formerly Twitter) ## ![\\"Fact](\\"/news-assets/logo-fact-check.png\\"/) Fearlessly follow the facts no matter where they lead. 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It is a matter of history that incumbent governments find it nigh on impossible to win seats off an opposition at a byelection For the last 100 years or so no government of either political persuasion has won a seat off an opposition at a byelection