| Election Name: | 2008 Australian Capital Territory general election |
| Country: | Australian Capital Territory |
| Type: | parliamentary |
| Ongoing: | no |
| Previous Election: | 2004 Australian Capital Territory general election |
| Previous Year: | 2004 |
| Next Election: | 2012 Australian Capital Territory general election |
| Next Year: | 2012 |
| Seats For Election: | All 17 seats of the unicameral Legislative Assembly |
| Majority Seats: | 9 |
| Election Date: | 18 October 2008 |
| Turnout: | 90.4 (2.4 pp) |
| Opinion Polls: | 2008 Australian Capital Territory general election#Polling |
| Leader1: | Jon Stanhope |
| Leader Since1: | 19 March 1998 |
| Party1: | Australian Labor Party (Australian Capital Territory Branch) |
| Leaders Seat1: | Ginninderra |
| Last Election1: | 9 seats |
| Seats1: | 7 |
| Seat Change1: | 2 |
| Popular Vote1: | 79,126 |
| Percentage1: | 37.4% |
| Swing1: | 9.4 |
| Leader2: | Zed Seselja |
| Leader Since2: | 13 December 2007 |
| Party2: | Liberal Party of Australia (A.C.T. Division) |
| Leaders Seat2: | Molonglo |
| Last Election2: | 7 seats |
| Seats2: | 6 |
| Seat Change2: | 1 |
| Popular Vote2: | 66,855 |
| Percentage2: | 31.6% |
| Swing2: | 3.2 |
| Leader3: | Meredith Hunter |
| Leader Since3: | October 2008 |
| Party3: | ACT Greens |
| Leaders Seat3: | Ginninderra |
| Last Election3: | 1 seat |
| Seats3: | 4 |
| Seat Change3: | 3 |
| Popular Vote3: | 33,057 |
| Percentage3: | 15.6% |
| Swing3: | 6.3 |
| Map Size: | 300px |
| Chief Minister | |
| Posttitle: | Resulting Chief Minister |
| Before Election: | Jon Stanhope |
| Before Party: | Australian Labor Party (Australian Capital Territory Branch) |
| After Election: | Jon Stanhope |
| After Party: | Australian Labor Party (Australian Capital Territory Branch) |
Elections to the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly were held on Saturday, 18 October 2008. The incumbent Labor Party, led by Jon Stanhope, was challenged by the Liberal Party, led by Zed Seselja. Candidates were elected to fill three multi-member electorates using a single transferable vote method, known as the Hare-Clark system. The result was another hung parliament with Labor winning seven seats, the Liberals six seats and the Greens finishing with four seats, giving the Greens the balance of power in the 17-member unicameral Assembly.[1] [2] [3] [4] On 31 October 2008, after almost two weeks of deliberations, the Greens chose to support a Labor minority government.[5] [6] [7] Consequently, Labor was re-elected to a third consecutive term of government in the ACT. Stanhope was elected Chief Minister at the first sitting of the seventh Assembly on 5 November 2008.[8] The election was conducted by the ACT Electoral Commission.
The incumbent centre-left Labor Party, led by Chief Minister Jon Stanhope, attempted to win re-election for a third term after coming to power in 2001. They were challenged by the opposition centre-right Liberal Party, led by Zed Seselja, who assumed the Liberal leadership in December 2007. A third party, the ACT Greens, held one seat in the Assembly through retiring MLA Deb Foskey.
The election saw all 17 members of the Assembly face re-election, with members being elected by the Hare-Clark system of proportional representation. The Assembly is divided into three electorates: five-member Brindabella (including Tuggeranong and parts of the Woden Valley) and Ginninderra (including Belconnen and suburbs) and seven-member Molonglo (including North Canberra, South Canberra, Gungahlin, Weston Creek, and the remainder of the Woden Valley). Election dates are set in statute to occur once every four years; the government has no ability to set the election date.
Following the 2004 election outcome, Labor held 9 seats, becoming the first majority government in the territory's history. The opposition Liberal Party held 7 seats, with the Greens holding a further one. The Liberal numbers in the Assembly dropped to six in December 2007 when former Shadow Treasurer Richard Mulcahy was expelled from the party and began sitting as an independent. The opposition thus would have needed to win a further three seats, on top of regaining Mulcahy's seat, to hold government in its own right.
The Liberal campaign suffered early problems in February 2008 when a number of prominent Liberal Party and business figures, including popular former Chief Minister Kate Carnell and high-profile businessman and former party finance director Jim Murphy, relaunched the 250 Club, previously a Liberal fundraising group, as the independent Canberra Business Club. The new organisation pledged to support minor party and independent pro-business candidates in the election, citing their disillusion with both major parties and the need for a third political force in the Assembly.[10] At the same time, their best prospect for winning Mulcahy's seat of Molonglo, the Liberal candidate for Fraser in the previous Federal election, Troy Williams, withdrew.
Conducted by Patterson Market Research, and published in The Canberra Times, polling released on 4 October suggested the Green vote had doubled to tripled since the last election, at the expense of Labor, with the Liberal vote relatively unchanged. Commentators predicted the Greens would hold the balance of power and decide who forms government. The Greens stated they were willing to court both major parties.[11] [12] [13]
In the 2001 and 2004 elections, after the first manual count of paper ballots the preferences were data entered for distribution. For the 2008 election, paper ballots were scanned and character recognition software used to identify preferences. Any preferences that could not be identified by the software were entered manually.[14]
[15] Sitting members at the time of the election are listed in bold. Tickets that elected at least one MLA are highlighted in the relevant colour. Successful candidates are indicated by an asterisk (*).
Five seats were up for election. The Labor Party was defending three seats. The Liberal Party was defending two seats.
| Labor candidates | Liberal candidates | Greens candidates | Motorist candidates | CAP candidates | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| valign=top | Joy Burch Tracey Macket | valign=top | Steve Doszpot David Morgan | valign=top | Amanda Bresnan Sue Ellerman | valign=top | Ben Doble Burl Doble Brian McLachlan Geoff Rake Bruce Ritchie | valign=top | Val Jeffery James Sizer |
Five seats were up for election. The Labor Party was defending three seats. The Liberal Party was defending two seats.
| Labor candidates | Liberal candidates | Greens candidates | Motorist candidates | CAP candidates | Ungrouped candidates | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| valign=top | Chris Bourke Adina Cirson Mary Porter Dave Peebles | valign=top | Alistair Coe Jacqui Myers | valign=top | James Higgins Meredith Hunter | valign=top | Deborah Hannigan Chris Seddon Andrew Simmington Denis Walford Wayne Whiting | valign=top | Mike Crowther Roger Nicoll Jane Tullis | valign=top | Harold Hird (Ind) Cathy McIlhoney (Ind) Mark Parton (Ind) Adam Verwey (Ind) Darren Churchill (-) Eddie Sarkis (-) Barry Smith (Ind) |
Seven seats were up for election. The Labor Party was defending three seats. The Liberal Party was defending three seats. The Greens were defending one seat.
| Labor candidates | Liberal candidates | Greens candidates | Motorist candidates | CAP candidates | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| valign=top | Andrew Barr Eleanor Bates Louise Crossman Mike Hettinger | valign=top | Belinda Barnier Jacqui Burke Jeremy Hanson Giulia Jones Clinton White | valign=top | Elena Kirschbaum Caroline Le Couteur | valign=top | David Cumbers Kim Evans Stuart Green Angus Laburn Darren O'Neil Stephen Rowland Anthony Seddon | valign=top | Alvin Hopper Owen Saddler Nancy-Louise Scherger Norvan Vogt | |
| Mulcahy candidates | LDP candidates | Pangallo candidates | Ungrouped candidates | |||||||
| valign=top | Joanne Allen Richard Mulcahy Ben O'Neill | valign=top | David McAlary David Pinkerton | valign=top | Luciano Lombardo Frank Pangallo Phil Thompson | valign=top | Helen Cross (Ind) Tony Farrell (Ind) Greg Tannahill (-) Kerri Taranto (Ind) | valign=top |
See main article: Results of the Australian Capital Territory general election, 2008. |}
| Results by electorate | |||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brindabella | Ginninderra | Molonglo | |||||||||||||||||||
| Party | Votes | % | Seats | Votes | % | Seats | Votes | % | Seats | ||||||||||||
| Labor | align=right | 23,123 | align=right | 36.5 | align=right | 2 | align=right | 24,119 | align=right | 40.2 | align=right | 2 | align=right | 31,884 | align=right | 36.1 | align=right | 3 | |||
| Liberal | align=right | 22,364 | align=right | 35.3 | align=right | 2 | align=right | 16,683 | align=right | 27.8 | align=right | 2 | align=right | 27,808 | align=right | 31.5 | align=right | 2 | |||
| Greens | align=right | 8,600 | align=right | 13.6 | align=right | 1 | align=right | 8,350 | align=right | 13.9 | align=right | 1 | align=right | 16,107 | align=right | 18.2 | align=right | 2 | |||
| Motorist Party | align=right | 4,418 | align=right | 7.0 | align=right | 0 | align=right | 3,684 | align=right | 6.1 | align=right | 0 | align=right | 2,451 | align=right | 2.8 | align=right | 0 | |||
| Community Alliance | align=right | 4,829 | align=right | 7.6 | align=right | 0 | align=right | 1,897 | align=right | 3.2 | align=right | 0 | align=right | 1,004 | align=right | 1.1 | align=right | 0 | |||
| Independent | align=right | — | align=right | — | align=right | — | align=right | 5,316 | align=right | 8.9 | align=right | 0 | align=right | 1,645 | align=right | 1.9 | align=right | 0 | |||
| Pangallo Independents | align=right | — | align=right | — | align=right | — | align=right | — | align=right | — | align=right | — | align=right | 4,252 | align=right | 4.8 | align=right | 0 | |||
| Mulcahy Canberra Party | align=right | — | align=right | — | align=right | — | align=right | — | align=right | — | align=right | — | align=right | 2,341 | align=right | 2.7 | align=right | 0 | |||
| Liberal Democrats | align=right | — | align=right | — | align=right | — | align=right | — | align=right | — | align=right | — | align=right | 774 | align=right | 0.9 | align=right | 0 | |||
| Electorate | Seats held | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brindabella | width=20 | width=20 | width=20 | width=20 | width=20 | |||||||||
| Ginninderra | width=20 | width=20 | width=20 | width=20 | width=20 | |||||||||
| Molonglo | width=20 | width=20 | width=20 | width=20 | width=20 | width=20 | width=20 | |||||||
At the close of counting on election night 18 October 2008, with 82.1 per cent of the vote counted Labor had obtained 37.6 per cent of the vote across the ACT, with the Liberals at 31.1 per cent and the Greens at 15.8 per cent. Swings were recorded against both the Labor (-9.3 per cent) and Liberal (-3.7 per cent) parties with a +6.6 per cent swing towards the Greens. Labor won 7 seats, the Liberals won 6 seats, while the Greens won 4 seats, giving them the balance of power, and negotiated with both major parties for the formation of a minority government.[4] [20] After almost two weeks of deliberations, the Greens chose to form a minority government with Labor.[5] The ACT Electoral Commission determined and announced the election's final results on 25 October 2008 after distribution of preferences.[21]
In Brindabella, Labor lost one of its three seats to Greens candidate Amanda Bresnan. Government minister John Hargreaves was re-elected, but Labor backbencher Mick Gentleman was beaten by another Labor candidate, Joy Burch. For the Liberal Party, former leader Brendan Smyth was re-elected, but shadow minister Steve Pratt lost his seat to party colleague Steve Doszpot.[21]
Labor also lost a seat in Ginninderra, where Greens candidate Meredith Hunter was elected. Chief Minister Jon Stanhope and Labor MLA Mary Porter were both re-elected, and on the Liberal ticket sitting MLA Vicki Dunne was joined by Alistair Coe, who replaced retiring Bill Stefaniak.[21]
In seven-member Molonglo, the Liberals lost one seat to the Greens. Labor ministers Katy Gallagher, Andrew Barr and Simon Corbell all won re-election, as did Liberal leader Zed Seselja. Sitting MLA Jacqui Burke lost to Jeremy Hanson for the second Liberal seat. The Greens increased their representation in this seat to two, electing new MLAs Shane Rattenbury and Caroline Le Couteur, the latter at the expense of Liberal-turned-Independent MLA Richard Mulcahy.[21]