1897 Australasian Federal Convention election

In January 1895 a meeting of the premiers of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania approved a scheme, devised by John Quick and adopted by George Reid, to directly elect the members of a convention which would be tasked to draft for the six colonies a federal constitution. Western Australia later decided its delegates would be MPs chosen by parliament, and the Queensland legislature could not settle on how to choose delegates, but the other four colonies went ahead with elections according to the Quick scheme.

The Enabling Acts, which the four colonies passed to regulate the election of their convention representatives, conferred the right to vote on anyone entitled to vote in their lower houses of parliament: all male British subjects over 21 years of age in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, and all British subjects over 21 in South Australia. The right to nominate as a candidate was similarly defined, except in Victoria where a hefty £50 deposit was also required, with the upshot that there only 32 candidates nominated, compared to 32 in both Tasmania and South Australia, and 49 in New South Wales.

Each colony voted as a single electorate; there was no division of any into geographical constituencies. All four colonies used the same voting method to decide the ten successful candidates, known then as scrutin de liste, block voting, or general ticket voting. Each voter indicated on the ballot the ten candidates they favoured, and the total of such indications (or "votes") for each candidate was then computed. The ten candidates with the ten largest totals filled the vacancies.

The campaigns were brief, there being less than two weeks, in South Australia for example, between the close of nominations and the elections. Candidates ran as individuals, and only loosely co-operated with one another. But newspapers, pressure groups, and the nascent Labor party (or Trades Hall) promoted 'lists', 'bunches' or 'tickets' of the ten candidates they favoured. These tended to reflect political divisions of the day. In Victoria the most prominent sponsors of such tickets were the protectionist Age, the free-trade Argus, and the Trades Hall. In South Australia the most prominent were the Liberal Union (protectionist), the Australian National League (free trade inclined) and Labor. In New South Wales Labor also ran a ticket, but the most influential tickets were United Protestant (organised by Church of England and Methodist clergy), and Orange (organised by the Loyal Orange Lodge). These tickets were precipitated by the candidacy of Cardinal Francis Moran (cardinal), the Catholic Bishop of Sydney, who insisted he was standing only in an individual capacity, but who, declaimed the Rev. George McInnes, was "no true citizen of this country, no true subject of Her Majesty".[5]

Tickets appear to have been distinctly influential, except in Tasmania where 'tickets', according to the press, 'as a rule were held cheap' .[6]

The table records the votes of the forty successful candidates.

H.B. Higgins, of the Age ticket, who won the tenth spot in Victoria, wrote to the eleventh-placed Henry Wrixon, of the Argus ticket, expressing his commiserations at Wrixon's failure. All successful candidates were duly sworn in at the first session of the Convention, which commenced proceedings on 22 March 1897.