Introduction
This Quick Guide provides a brief overview of the 2019 New
South Wales Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council election results and
the new ministry appointed after the election. It also includes background
information on the electoral system in New South Wales, a summary of the 2015
election results, and details of by-elections and changes in party leadership
during the 56th Parliament.
New South Wales has a bicameral parliament comprising a 93-member
lower house, the Legislative Assembly, and a 42-member
upper house, the Legislative Council. Members of the Legislative Assembly
are elected under an
optional preferential voting system to represent single-member electorates for
four-year terms, while members of the Legislative Council are elected under an
optional preferential proportional voting system to represent the state as
a whole for eight-year terms, with only half of the Council’s members facing
election in each four-year electoral cycle.
The NSW Legislative Assembly has fixed four-year maximum terms:
sections 24 and 24A of the Constitution
Act 1902 (NSW) (Constitution Act) provide that:
- unless dissolved earlier, each Legislative Assembly expires on
the Friday before the first Saturday in March four calendar years after the
year in which it was elected; and
-
an election is to be held on the fourth Saturday in March
following such an expiry.
In accordance with these provisions the 56th Parliament
ended with the expiration of the Legislative Assembly on Friday 1 March 2019. The Governor issued
writs on 4 March 2019 for a general election for all 93 seats of the Legislative
Assembly and a periodic election for half of the Legislative Council seats (21
seats). Both elections were held on Saturday 23 March 2019.
NSW electoral boundaries remained unchanged between the 2015
and 2019 state elections. A
redistribution of NSW electoral district boundaries is required at least
after every second state election, or sooner if certain other criteria are met.
The
last such redistribution occurred in 2013, prior to the 2015 state
election, and the next
redistribution is due to be conducted after the 2019 state election.
Background
56th Parliament—election and by-elections
Elections for the 56th Parliament were held on 28 March
2015. The
Liberal-National Coalition Government was returned for a second term with a
reduced majority of eight seats in the Legislative Assembly and a slightly increased
proportion of Legislative Council seats. The composition of the two Houses by
party following the 2015 election is set out below in Table 1.
Table 1: Party representation in
the New South Wales Parliament after 2015 election
| Party |
Legislative
Assembly
Members |
Legislative
Council
Members |
| Liberal
Party |
37 |
13 |
| The
Nationals |
17 |
7 |
| Total Coalition |
54 |
20 |
| Labor
Party |
31 |
12(b) |
| Country
Labor |
3 |
|
| Total Labor |
34 |
12 |
| |
|
|
| The
Greens |
3 |
5 |
| Independents |
2 |
0 |
| Christian
Democratic Party |
0 |
2 |
| Shooters
and Fishers Party(a) |
0 |
2 |
| Animal
Justice Party |
0 |
1 |
| Total
|
93 |
42 |
(a) The Shooters and Fishers Party changed its name to the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers
Party in 2016.
(b) The Labor Party and the Country Labor
Party share a group on the Legislative Council ballot paper and NSW Electoral
Commission results do not distinguish between the two parties. This figure for
the Legislative Council may therefore include Country Labor members.
Source:
D McKeown, New South Wales state election 2015, Research Paper, Parliamentary Library, 31 May 2016,
p. 12.
Ten
by-elections were held during the 56th Parliament in the electorates of
Wollongong, Orange, Canterbury, Gosford, Manly, North Shore, Murray,
Cootamundra, Blacktown and Wagga Wagga. Only two of these by-elections altered
the representation of parties in the Legislative Assembly:
In addition, party representation in the Legislative Council
was altered when Greens
MLC Jeremy Buckingham resigned from the party to sit as an independent in
December 2018. However, Mr Buckingham’s resignation occurred after the final
sitting day of the Legislative Council for the 56th Parliament and he was not
returned at the 2019 election. As such, this change had no practical effect
with regard to votes in the Legislative Council.
Leadership changes
The Liberal, National and Labor parties each experienced
leadership changes during the 56th Parliament and the 2019 NSW election was the
fourth election
in a row to be contested by a new Premier. Troy
Grant resigned as leader of The Nationals (and thereby also as Deputy
Premier) in November 2016 and was replaced
by John Barilaro. The deputy leader of The Nationals, Adrian Piccoli, stood
down at the same time and was replaced by Niall Blair. Premier
Mike Baird resigned from both the leadership of the Liberal Party and the
Legislative Assembly in January 2017. He
was replaced by Gladys Berejiklian, who had been deputy leader of the
Liberal Party, with Dominic Perrottet assuming the deputy leadership. Finally, Luke
Foley resigned as leader of the Labor Party in November 2018 and was replaced
by his former deputy, Michael Daley, with Penny Sharpe assuming the Party’s
deputy leadership.
Results
Legislative Assembly
All 93 of Legislative Assembly seats were contested at the 2019
election. As set out in Table 2 below, the Liberal-National Coalition won 48
seats; the Labor Party 36; the Greens and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party
three each; and three independent members were also elected. The
Liberal-National Coalition thereby won a third term in government with a reduced
majority of two seats in the Legislative Assembly.
Compared to the results of the 2015 election, the Liberal Party lost
two seats and The Nationals lost four, while the Labor Party gained two
seats and the representation of the Greens was unchanged. The Shooters, Fishers
and Farmers Party did not have any lower house representatives following the
2015 election, but won three seats in 2019 by retaining the seat of Orange (which
it had won in a 2016 by-election), and by winning a further two seats from The
Nationals—Barwon and Murray.
Only
two further seats changed hands between the parties, with the seat of
Lismore won by the Labor Party from The Nationals and the seat of Coogee won by
Labor from the Liberal Party. Two well-established independent members, Alex Greenwich
in Sydney and Greg Piper in Lake Macquarie, retained their seats, and a third independent,
Joe McGirr, also retained the seat of Wagga Wagga, which he had won from the
Liberal Party in a by-election in late 2018. These results, along with primary
vote shares and swings, are set out below in Table 2.
Details of the results in each of the 93 electorates are
available from the New South
Wales Electoral Commission.
Table 2: Seats won and first preference
votes by successful parties and independents in the Legislative Assembly at the
2019 general election
|
Party
|
Seats
won |
Change from
2015
election(a) |
Primary
vote % |
Primary
vote swing |
Two-party
preferred swing |
| Liberal
Party |
35 |
-2 |
31.99 |
-3.09 |
|
| The
Nationals |
13 |
-4 |
9.60 |
-0.95 |
|
| Total Coalition |
48 |
-6 |
41.59 (52 2PP) |
-4.04 |
-2.30 |
| Labor
Party |
32 |
+1 |
25.91 |
0 |
|
| Country
Labor |
4 |
+1 |
7.40 |
-0.76 |
|
| Total Labor |
36 |
+2 |
33.31 (48 2PP) |
-0.76 |
+2.30 |
| The
Greens |
3 |
0 |
9.57 |
-0.72 |
|
| Shooters,
Fishers and Farmers Party |
3 |
+3 |
3.46 |
+3.46 |
|
| Independents |
3 |
+1 |
4.77 |
+0.93 |
|
| Total |
93 |
|
|
|
|
(a) These figures do not take into
account the Nationals’ loss of Orange to the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers in a
2016 by-election and the Liberal’s loss of Wagga Wagga to an Independent in a
2018 by-election.
Source:
New South Wales Electoral Commission, ‘Legislative Assembly State Summary of Elected
Candidates’, NSW State Election Results
2019; New South Wales Electoral Commission, ‘Legislative Assembly State Summary or Elected
Candidates’, NSW State Election
Results 2015; A Green, ‘Correction: NSW state election 2-Party preferred result
was Coalition 52.0%, Labor 48.0%, a swing of 2.3%’, tweet, 2 May 2019.
Legislative Council
Twenty-one of the 42 seats in the NSW Legislative Council
were contested at the 2019 election. As set out in Table 3 below, at the
election the Liberal-National Coalition won eight seats; the Labor Party seven;
the Greens and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party two seats each; and the
Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party and the Animal Justice Party one seat each.
Both the Liberal Democrats and the Christian Democratic Party achieved a slightly
higher percentage of first preference votes than the Animal Justice Party, but
failed to win a seat. The failure of the Liberal Democrats to win a seat saw
former federal senator David Leyonhjelm unsuccessful in his
attempt to move from the Senate to the Legislative Council.
As set out in Table 4 below, this result gives the Liberal-National
Coalition a total of 17 seats, reduced from 20 seats in the previous
Parliament, and the Labor Party a total of 14 seats, increased from 12 in the
previous Parliament. In circumstances where the Liberal-National Coalition and
Labor do not agree on a matter before the Council, the
Coalition will need five crossbench votes to achieve a majority, whereas it
had required only two additional crossbench votes in the previous Parliament.
The Labor Party will require eight crossbench votes to achieve a majority.
Among the parties represented on the crossbench, the Animal
Justice Party and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party each gained an additional
seat and have a total of two members each, while the Christian Democratic Party
lost one seat and now has a single member. Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party
was not represented in the Legislative Council in the previous Parliament, but
gained two seats at the election, one
of which was won by Mark Latham, a
former leader of the Labor Party in the Commonwealth Parliament. The seats
of two Greens members and one former Greens member who had resigned from the
party to become an independent, Jeremy Buckingham, were contested at the
election. Mr Buckingham was not returned and only two Greens were elected,
leaving the party with a total of four representatives in the Legislative
Council. This total was further reduced to three shortly after the election when
Justin Field, a continuing member elected in 2015, resigned
from the party to sit as an independent.
Full details of the Legislative Council results are
available from the New South
Wales Electoral Commission.
Table 3: Seats won, first
preference group and candidate vote and swing 2019 Legislative Council election
| Party |
% First preference
group and
candidate votes |
Swing |
Seats won |
| Liberal-Nationals
Coalition |
34.82 |
-7.79 |
8 |
| Labor/Country
Labor |
29.69 |
-1.4 |
7 |
| The
Greens |
9.73 |
-0.19 |
2 |
| Pauline
Hanson’s One Nation Party |
6.90 |
+6.90(a) |
2 |
| Shooters,
Fishers and Farmers Party |
5.54 |
+1.65 |
1 |
| Christian
Democratic Party (Fred Nile Group) |
2.28 |
-0.65 |
0 |
| Liberal
Democrats |
2.18 |
+2.18(a) |
0 |
| Animal
Justice Party |
1.95 |
+0.17 |
1 |
| Keep
Sydney Open |
1.83 |
+1.83(a) |
0 |
| Others |
5.08 |
|
0 |
| Total |
100 |
|
21 |
(a) The Liberal Democrats, Pauline
Hanson’s One Nation and Keep Sydney Open did not contest the 2015 Legislative
Council election.
Source:
New South Wales Electoral Commission, ‘First Preference Group and Candidate Votes - First
Preference Group and Candidate by Vote Type’, NSW State Election Results 2019; New South Wales Electoral
Commission, ‘First Preference Group and Candidate Votes - First
Preference Group and Candidate by Vote Type’, NSW State Election Results 2015.
Table 4: Current (post-election) party
representation in the Legislative Council
| Party |
Continuing
members |
New members
(elected
2019) |
Total current
members |
Change from
beginning
of 56th
Parliament |
| Labor
Party (including Country Labor) |
7 |
7 |
14 |
+2 |
| Liberal
Party |
6 |
5 |
11 |
-2 |
| The
Nationals |
3 |
3 |
6 |
-1 |
| Total Coalition |
9 |
8 |
17 |
-3 |
| The
Greens(a) |
1 |
2 |
3 |
-2 |
| Animal
Justice Party |
1 |
1 |
2 |
+1 |
| Shooters,
Fishers and Farmers Party |
1 |
1 |
2 |
+1 |
| Pauline
Hanson’s One Nation Party |
0 |
2 |
2 |
+2 |
| Christian
Democratic Party |
1 |
0 |
1 |
-1 |
| Independent(a) |
1 |
0 |
1 |
+1 |
| Total |
21 |
21 |
42 |
|
(a) These figures take into account the
resignation of Justin Field from the Greens to sit as an independent shortly
after the election in April 2019. He is listed as an independent rather than a
Green in the ‘Continuing Members’ column.
Source:
New South Wales Electoral Commission, ‘Legislative Council - Candidates in Sequence of
Election’, NSW State Election Results
2019; New South Wales Electoral Commission, ‘Legislative Council - Candidates in Sequence of
Election’, NSW State Election Results
2015.
New Ministry
Table 5 below sets out the new Berejiklian ministry as appointed by the
Governor of New South Wales on 2 April 2019.
Table 5: Ministry appointed on 2
April 2019
| Minister |
Offices |
| The
Hon. Gladys Berejiklian MP |
Premier |
| The
Hon. (John) Giovanni Domenic Barilaro MP |
Deputy Premier
Minister for
Regional New South Wales, Industry and Trade |
| The
Hon. Dominic Francis Perrottet MP |
Treasurer |
| The
Hon. Paul Lawrence Toole MP |
Minister for
Regional Transport and Roads |
| The
Hon. Donald Thomas Harwin MLC |
Special Minister of
State
Minister for the
Public Service and Employee Relations, Aboriginal Affairs, and the Arts
Vice-President of
the Executive Council |
| The
Hon. Andrew James Constance MP |
Minister for
Transport and Roads |
| The
Hon. Bradley Ronald Hazzard MP |
Minister for
Health and Medical Research |
| The
Hon. Robert Gordon Stokes MP |
Minister for
Planning and Public Spaces |
| The
Hon. Mark Raymond Speakman SC MP |
Attorney General
Minister for the
Prevention of Domestic Violence |
| The
Hon. Victor Michael Dominello MP |
Minister for
Customer Service |
| The
Hon. Sarah Mitchell MLC |
Minister for
Education and Early Childhood Learning |
| The
Hon. David Andrew Elliott MP |
Minister for Police
and Emergency Services |
| The
Hon. Melinda Jane Pavey MP |
Minister for Water,
Property and Housing |
| The
Hon. Stuart Laurence Ayres MP |
Minister for Jobs,
Investment, Tourism and Western Sydney |
| The
Hon. Matthew John Kean MP |
Minister for Energy
and Environment |
| The
Hon. Adam John Marshall MP |
Minister for
Agriculture and Western New South Wales |
| The
Hon. Anthony John Roberts MP |
Minister for
Counter Terrorism and Corrections |
| The
Hon. Shelley Elizabeth Hancock MP |
Minister for Local
Government |
| The
Hon. Kevin John Anderson MP |
Minister for Better
Regulation and Innovation |
| The
Hon. Dr Geoffrey Lee MP |
Minister for Skills
and Tertiary Education |
| The
Hon. Anthony John Sidoti MP |
Minister for Sport,
Multiculturalism, Seniors and Veterans |
| The
Hon. Bronwyn Taylor MLC |
Minister for Mental
Health, Regional Youth and Women |
| The
Hon. Gareth James Ward MP |
Minister for
Families, Communities and Disability Services |
| The
Hon. Damien Francis Tudehope MLC |
Minister for
Finance and Small Business |
Source:
NSW Government Gazette, No. 30, 2 April 2019, pp. 1087–90.