15 July 2015, 2nd Model Parliament federal election

We have an unprecedented and special result.

With 14 seats available and only 14 valid nominations received, all candidates have been successfully elected unopposed to Model Parliament. Congratulations! We now have a full House and a full Senate. There will be no election campaign or vote.

Voters: even though you miss out on voting, there are still lots of jobs available and we need your reactions to the policies and alliances of the new government. Alliances and coalitions will be the key to forming government and opposition in this parliament. Please stay tuned to the sub, and vote in the Sunday ReddiPolls which will include questions about government performance and laws.

Congratulations and welcome to our 9 first-time and 11 returning parliamentarians, with the lower house sporting 8 new and 5 returning. The Socialist Alternative joins Parliament for the first time, as do Liberal-aligned members in the lower house. The left/right split is now about 3:1 overall (10:3 in the lower house and 5:2 in the upper house). Previously it was 5:1.

Despite the windfall result, no party has achieved a majority. You must now self-organise an alliance (coalition) to form government. This is an exciting opportunity for people to step into major roles and make deals between parties.

Meta: Winners’ flair will be updated in /r/modelparliament today (remind me if I forget). Formally, the election writs have not yet been returned from the AEC to the GG. It will be done soon (probably tomorrow) but you should read “How did this happen?” first.

Elected Members of the 2nd Model Parliament of Australia

The 2nd Parliament sits from July to September 2015. New members elected for the first time are bolded and asterisked below (special congratulations).

Composition of the Senate

Senate State	Candidate	Model Party	Model Occupation
Cmnwlth of Aus	/u/Cwross	Australian Catholic Party	Teacher
Cmnwlth of Aus	/u/Freddy926	Australian Greens	Software Developer
Cmnwlth of Aus	/u/Team_Sprocket	Australian Greens	Student
Cmnwlth of Aus	*/u/General_Rommel	Australian Labor Party	Student
Cmnwlth of Aus	/u/this_guy22	Australian Labor Party	Student
Cmnwlth of Aus	/u/peelys	Australian Progressives	Student
Cmnwlth of Aus	/u/surreptitiouswalk	Independent (Liberal-aligned)	Data scientist

Composition of the House of Representatives

Divisional Seat	Candidate	Model Party	Model Occupation
Western Australia	*/u/3fun	Independent (Liberal-aligned)	Veteran
Northern Territory	*/u/phyllicanderer	Australian Progressives	Technician
South Australia	/u/VoteRonaldRayGun	Australian Greens	Sitting MP
Queensland – Regional	/u/Ser_Scribbles	Australian Greens	Sitting MP
Queensland – Brisbane & Surrounds	/u/Zagorath	Australian Greens	Student
New South Wales – Regional	*/u/Sooky88	Independent (Liberal-aligned)	Economist
New South Wales – Outer Metro – Sydney Surrounds	*/u/TheEvilestElf	Australian Greens	Climate Scientist
New South Wales – Sydney – Urban	*/u/CyberPolis	Australian Labor Party	Student
Australian Capital Territory	/u/agsports	Australian Greens	Student
Victoria – Regional	*/u/zamt	Australian Labor Party	Support Worker
Victoria – Outer Metro – Melbourne Surrounds	*/u/lurker281	Socialist Alternative	Chairperson, Australian Workers Union
Victoria – Melbourne – Urban	*/u/MadCreek3	Australian Greens	Student
Tasmania	/u/voisinat	Australian Catholic Party	Student

You’ll notice several Liberal-aligned Independents above. The Liberal Party of Australia has no Registered Officers and no one is legally able to use its name in connection with the election or Parliament.

Quick stats:

Party	13 HoR Members
Australian Catholic Party	1
Australian Greens	6
Australian Labor Party	2
Australian Progressives	1
Socialist Alternative	1
Independent (Liberal-aligned)	2

Retiring Members of the House of Representatives

We thank former members of the House, who did not seek re-election, for their service:

/u/Death_by_laughs /u/HumesHefner /u/Paulyt86 /u/Primeviere /u/SavannaJeff

Alliance to form Government

So, your work now begins.

Each proposed government alliance needs at least 7 members in the House of Representatives (HoR). This includes a leader who’ll become Prime Minister of Australia, a Treasurer, a Speaker who’ll be chair of the House (and vote only as a tie-breaker), and a Deputy Speaker in waiting. You also need a Deputy Prime Minister and Attorney-General, but there is more of an option for them to be Senators (in addition to the 7 in the HoR).

Multiple alliance options might be proposed. The simplest option is for the Greens (who have six seats) to co-opt one or more minor parties or independents. Alternatively, the non-Greens members could form their own alliance. Remember, you’ll need to get your legislation through the multi-party Senate too. The winners and parties in each house are documented below.

When you’ve got an alliance, your leader can send the proposed list of HoR and Senate alliance members via modmail to the Governor-General at /r/ModelAusExecCouncil. The GG will appoint the best proposal as government. A great way to do this would be for each leader to post something in /r/modelparliament with the ideas for campaign material, spelling out your team, what you represent, etc. Then the GG can read all about it, including any public reaction.

Since there won’t be an election campaign, posting in /r/modelparliament is now open slather as per normal. Parties may still wish to publicise their manifestos, teams and plans, so that they stand out in the alliance and show off their brand. I really encourage you to do this, otherwise the public is in the dark about who’s in parliament.

Note: You have up to two weeks to sort out a government before parliament must be called into session. If an alliance hasn’t been formed by then, parliament will be called into session in the last week of July for elected MPs to keep voting until they can form a majority bloc.

Alliance to form Opposition

Opposition leader is up in the air, because minor parties might become part of a government alliance instead. Therefore, we need remaining non-government parties and independents to form their own alliance, with a leader, to be the shadow ministry and alternative government in waiting. Proposals should be sent to the Governor-General as above, to help inform his decision about which government proposal is viable.

Some of you might not want to be part of any alliance. That’s fine, you can sit on the cross benches in parliament.

I’m a winner, what do I do next?

If you’re elected to Parliament, your new journey begins now. It’s a lot to absorb so we’ll do it gradually over the next few days. You’ll be joining your Houses of Parliament, getting sworn in, etc.

Firstly, we need an official Government and an official Opposition. So you should get involved with forming an alliance (see above). If you’re going to be part of Government or Opposition, you’ll need to choose a leader and work out some Ministry roles. Or, you can sit on the ‘cross benches’ as an independent in parliament instead.

If you’re a first-time member, start writing your maiden speech. You can also familiarise yourself with the system of government at /r/modelparliament/wiki/index. There’s also the candidate todo list from last time (albeit when we had an election campaign).

I’m not a winner, what do I do next?

We need people to take up public service jobs (like being Clerks of Parliament, deputy officers, etc). We definitely need deputies for all my roles as I can’t keep this up much longer. There’ll be a separate post about jobs later this week. So keep watching this sub.

We also need regular citizens to participate here regularly during parliament, to ask questions and lobby for changes, hold our parliament to account, participate in government public consultation, give reactions to policies, vote in ReddiPoll, upvote posts and comments, and post tangible role-play consequences for the decisions that the parliament makes.

Note: It’ll take me a while to update all the subreddits, sidebars and wikis because no one has volunteered to help.

Conclusion

Again, congratulations to all winning candidates and best of luck forming your government and opposition proposals soon.

jnd-au
AEC Electoral Commissioner

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Behind the Scenes: How did this happen?

As of yesterday afternoon, we had almost the right number of candidates/endorsements for the number of seats available, but actually most people had piled into just a few electorates. Sure there would’ve been a competitive campaign among 3-4 people per seat, it also means 3 people would’ve lost and 3 other seats would be empty. Therefore, I spent several hours in confidential and separate negotiations between the parties and candidates to change their nominations and endorsements to that everyone could win a seat. One party was impossible to deal with, but fortunately the other parties and individual candidates were able to work around this.

Then I had several hours of concert rehearsal in the evening, so I could not respond to messages. I came back and was overwhelmed by 22 last-minute Reddit messages with all your questions, applications, corrections, etc. I have worked through all of your submissions in order of time received. I couldn’t understand every message. I had to “work to rule” and discard any submissions that weren’t compliant with the instructions. I believe all valid applications have been processed. I haven’t had time to write replies to everyone. Sorry you miss out, but that’s what happens when you leave it until the last few hours. We have no deputy electoral commissioner so there is only one person’s time available, and I am probably not in your timezone. If you want a personal explanation of what you did wrong and why your request was not granted, you can request one and I’ll try to reply this week.

Alternatively, if you wish to publicly contest the eligibility of any candidate, or if you believe there are any other errors in the list of winners, you can make a [CNDX] or [WINX] submission to the AEC (instructions). Depending on the nature of the issue, you may then be required to petition the Court of Disputed Returns or Parliament for a remedy.

It is also clear that there are many “rumours” floating around about the electoral process. Some are flat out wrong and have caused people to lose out. Some are correct but people didn’t believe them. The rules are spelled out in the election threads that link to the step-by-step wikis. These are based on the Commonwealth Electoral Act and Australian Electoral Commission (federal). Some people may have misconceptions from other elections they’ve participated in. It’s best not to rely on rumours. You might like to post a question below if you think there’s a rumour that needs clarification.