The 1985 Victorian Election
First, some context. The Nunawading Province was an electorate of the Victorian Legislative Council, also know as the upper house. It was created in 1976 and was in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne.
Nunawading Province was replaced by Koonung Province and then Koonung Province was abolished altogether when the Bracks Government reformed the upper house.
Fast forward to 1985, things were about to get serious.
In the 1985 Victorian election, the two main contestants were Bob Ives for the Labor Party and Rosemary Varty for the Liberal Party. Side note, this was also the first election contested by the then opposition leader and future Premier of Victoria, Jeff Kennett.
The Liberal party didn’t make it across the line for the 1985 vote, John Cain’s Labor party went on to lead the state but Nunawading was the real battle ground.
Both Rosemary and Bob, once preferences were distributed, received an even 54,821 votes- it was a tie. Not only was this a tie but it was one of the closest elections anywhere in the world for a state or national legislature. That happened right here in Melbourne.
The Returning Officer, Kathleen Leonard, was required by law to make a casting vote and to declare a winner of the election and she did it in the most Nunawading way possible: she put both Rosemary’s and Bob’s name into a hat and she would then pick one as the winner.
She picked Bob Ives and he was declared elected.
Rosemary Varty, understandably, was not having any of this and applied to the Court of Disputed Returns, which is the Supreme Court of Victoria sitting to hear electoral disputes, for a review.
The Judge, in finding that this situation was without precedent found that the Returning Officer:
“...also acted in accordance with my concept of common sense and resolved the problem in a very Australian way. In my opinion the casting vote is valid or would have been if the issue had arisen. The casting vote, in my opinion, is merely a technical device to break a deadlock, no more and no less.”
However, Judge Starke found that because of a whole lot of small irregularities (which become big irregularities when an election is this close) the election was declared void.
Judge Starke mentioned that the issue wasn’t how Mrs Leonard resolved the election that caused the count to be void bout rather errors and omissions by electoral officers which affected the result.
The election was held again as a 1985 by-election in which Rosemary Varty won comforably with 52,086 votes compared to Bob Ives’ 40,818. She retired from the parliament at the 1999 election.
Don’t ever tell me that your vote doesn’t matter and can’t make a difference.
