Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian politics

Secretaries of departments - mishmash

Category:Secretaries of Australian Government departments has these sub-categories:

• Category:Secretaries of the Australian Department of Defence‎
• Category:Secretaries of the Australian Government Education Department‎
• Category:Secretaries of the Australian Department of Finance‎
• Category:Secretaries of the Australian Government Health Department‎
• Category:Secretaries of the Australian Government Immigration Department‎
• Category:Secretaries of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet‎
• Category:Secretaries of the Department of the Treasury of Australia‎
• Category:Secretaries of the Australian Government Veterans' Affairs Department‎.

• Some have the word "Government", some don't.
• Some have "Department of XX", some have "XX Department". (The only case where the latter form would be correct is Attorney-General's Department, but that category doesn't exist yet.)
• Some have "Australian ...", but one has "... of Australia".
• One doesn't specify the country at all.
• It's a classic mishmash.

We need to settle on a common naming convention. I'm not too fussed what that might be, but my suggestion, FWIW, would be:

• Category:Secretaries of the Australian Government Department of XX. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:47, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

agree Newystats (talk) 10:13, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Local election articles

User:Totallynotarandomalt69 has been creating a number of articles on local elections in different states in different years such as 2004 Victorian local elections. I can't work out what these articles purport to cover. They don't appear to be comprehensive summaries of various different elections.--Grahame (talk) 11:35, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree. There are severe problems with these articles. I have been concerned with 2023 Western Australian local elections recently, from which I have deleted a bunch of material from. The article focuses too much on political parties, which are generally not involved with local government elections in Western Australia and don't generally endorse candidates. To imply the state premier, opposition leader and other party leaders are campaigning in local government elections is ridiculous. To imply the table of results for each councillor elected for each political party is exhaustive is ridiculous. Sources do not frame local government elections through the lenses of political parties. They are all about the individual candidates. Steelkamp (talk) 06:54, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

I strongly agree. I am particularly concerned with the arbitrary and unsourced nature of "leaders" of parties and giving the (incorrect) impression that councils in Australia are akin to, ie, the UK, in their emphasis on parties. J2m5 (talk) 01:04, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

That being said, I do think the articles have a place on Wikipedia, just not in their current format. The elections should be considered separately rather than as a whole. J2m5 (talk) 01:07, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Re all - I'm more than happy to chuck on what's currently on the 2023 Western Australian local elections page infobox about "XXX is the XXX Party leader but not involved at a local level" etc, I have no problem with the leader bit being removed if that's the consensus.

However it's clear more broadly that parties are involved and some far more closely that others - the pre-1950s Vic local election pages I've managed to find results for clearly show a party endorsement, notably with the ALP. Most recent Vic elections in 2020 has multiple sources showing Labor endorsements in several LGA, plus Burwood Libs in three LGAs. Qld obviously has ALP/LNP endorsements in Brisbane, NSW has party endorsements throughout the entire state, etc, so to fully remove party references would be factually wrong.

Then there's the non-majors: Greens absolutely endorse and promote their candidates across Australia so it's appropriate to have their leaders there. Minor parties including the Vic Socialists, Sustainable Aus, Reason, Small Business, etc all have a closer involvement locally (including with their leaders who can also be councillors) so again, seems appropriate to list leaders and parties. Totallynotarandomalt69 (talk) 05:26, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

@Totallynotarandomalt69: I'm really not sure as to why the Greens endorsing and promoting candidates is in any way proximal to the supposed need to put a leader and a total councillor count in an infobox. The problem is that the "leader of the NSW Greens" for instance is totally irrelevant to the conduct of the Greens' council campaign for Shoalhaven City Council. Unlike UK politics, state and council elections bear zero reference to one another. To mention the "leader of the NSW Greens" in reference to the Greens' council campaigns is irrelevant. The same goes with the ALP and the Liberal Party. So would any "total councillors" count. When we are going through Hay Shire Council interests declarations to see if anyone's admitted to being a Nat, that's when we've gone too far with party-identifying council elections. J2m5 (talk) 14:08, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

There is just so much WP:OR everywhere at all times with the articles. I appreciate the need to cover council elections on Wikipedia but I think this has been approached in the wrong way.J2m5 (talk) 14:17, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Completely understand some of your points here:

1. I’m completely open to removing party leaders for Lib/Lab, it’s honestly not a big concern for me. However I’ll make the argument that Greens should stay - the Greens are far more open and involved in local government and in terms of leaders (noting they don’t have one in NSW) Samantha Ratnam was reasonably active in leading the push to elect Greens councillors in Vic 2020. Also - minor parties, especially those who may only have local representation like SusAus, should not have leaders removed and I don’t think that’s a controversial point

2. The addition of results pages is trying to make sure each council actually is shown individually (goes without saying they don’t have and should not have their own page) with specific results so it’s not lumped in with a state total - the main page I guess is more of a statistical thing with the important background info which again is pretty non-controversial (COVID delaying elections, changes to council structure, idk). Totallynotarandomalt69 (talk) 16:16, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Maybe in Melbourne, but in Newcastle while the Greens actively campaign and have got councillors elected, there is no visibility at all of the NSW leadership. It's misleading to include any state leaders in the infobox. Newystats (talk) 21:56, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

You keep coming back to the NSW example when again they don’t have a leader though Totallynotarandomalt69 (talk) 22:32, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

The same was true when they did have a leader as well. No mention of Lee Rhiannon at all. Newystats (talk) 09:57, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Having seen several of these articles (most familiar with Tasmania) I think the articles need massive surgery, or failing that deletion. The problem is the "party" section which has been used, in general if not always unsourced, to cover a wide range of party associations and party-like concepts thrown in together as if they are the same thing when they're not. These include at least the following six types:

1. formal endorsements by party (mostly Greens),

2. candidates known to be members of a party but not formally endorsed by the party,

3. candidates who have been covered as having a claimed connection to a party but are not known to be members,

4. candidates who had party associations in the past but no longer have those associations,

5. promotional tickets/teams of convenience that are created to run for particular elections and elect members but usually have no lasting existence beyond the election they run at

6. non-party local networks (teal groups etc)

It is more misleading than useful to capture all of these under the same heading "Party", especially when some are wrong (eg Tony Mulder is not an Independent Liberal anymore; he was suspended/expelled (sources vary) from the party in 2018 and no longer associates with it). Also these categories overlap, eg it is common to see tickets of convenience that include known members of, or recent state candidates for, political parties.

From the list of cases above, I think it's OK to include type 1 as "party" where the endorsement is publicly verifiable (media release, party website for instance) and the endorsement should be sourced. Type 2 might be worth covering but needs to be distinguished from type 1 in some way to indicate the candidate is not known to be formally endorsed, and sourced to a WP:RS in every specific case. Types 3 and 4 are footnote material perhaps, but even then only if sourced. If Types 5 and 6 are to be covered at all these cases should be explicitly distinguished from parties and sourced.

Declaring parties for local government is a problem because unlike state and federal elections where party endorsements are stated in official ballot material, in local government they're often not and therefore covering party alignments reliably is a lot of work. Declaring candidates to be independents is a problem for the same reason. Unless the issues can be solved quickly it would be better to delete all reference to parties. Therealsleepycat (talk) 21:15, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

I don’t want to make this about me let alone the articles but let me go through those in terms of where I’ve put in a party link when editing:

1. Yes, no disagreement

2. See IndLib/IndLab/IndNat

3. Unless there’s a really good source? Not put in

4. Not put in

5/6. Always sourced and given they operate with branding and technically endorsements it’s a useful guide - again, always sourced

The sources are always there and I have worked tirelessly to ensure they are on all articles, like anyone on this website. Take into account it’s NYE lol but if there’s an error like Muldee then yeah, remove it, it’s just an error. Totallynotarandomalt69 (talk) 22:40, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

So for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2022_Tasmanian_local_elections, I am not aware of any of the shown Labor or Liberal or ON candidates there being endorsed by their parties, so they generally all (if confirmed as members by a reliable and stated source) are cat 2 and should be changed to Independent (insert party here) with a link to a source confirming them as a member of a party. Ditto the Liberals listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Hobart - one wasn't a Liberal at all at the time of the election, the others weren't (to my knowledge) endorsed by the party for the 2022 election (there was a very low key supporter email endorsement of several Hobart Liberals in 2018). Concerning sources I cannot see any source cited on either of those pages that verifies that any of the candidates listed have any of the affiliations stated (apart from if one digs through the candidate statements to find the Greens) - the sources may exist but sources need to be cited individually. A good example of a tricky one is Jarrod Boys who appears on the Burnie list to be the same as any other "Liberal" listed, but in fact ceased to be a Liberal at some time before nominations closed (https://www.examiner.com.au/story/7820500/tasmanian-liberal-party-quiet-on-former-proud-boys-volunteer-state-director-calls-matter-closed/). In the absence of a source the reader has no idea whether the editor was aware of that, was relying on an earlier source that is now out of date, was aware of it and found a different source that contradicted it (etc). Therealsleepycat (talk) 03:03, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Yep that's absolutely more than fair and I appreciate the correction! I'll change them to cat 2

In terms of sources I think we might both agree that it would look very ugly if the citation was directly next to the name in the infobox but they'll be at the top (eg where it says "2022 Tasmanian local elections: Flinders") Totallynotarandomalt69 (talk) 03:24, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

I really think these are pretty valuable articles that shouldn't be removed. A solid 90% of them tend to be completely factual, and I reckon its not worth deleting these articles because of that 10%. These articles seemingly contain the only catalogue of this sort that mentions party members in councils that aren't endorsed. I do agree the leaders section should be removed, but nothing else should be changed (other than corrections of course). Alot of very valuable information would be lost to time if the pages were to be deleted. AmNowEurovision (talk) 07:32, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Preselection article appropriateness for Wikipedia

Could we have a discussion about the appropriateness of an article about Liberal preselections as 2023–24 Liberal Party of Australia preselections currently exists in the mainspace. Where only spotty reporting about this occurs and no official primary data can be ascertained from returning officers, I'm not sure if we should be using the election box template as if presenting this data as certain fact. Not to mention that not all contests are reported on by the press. J2m5 (talk) 05:44, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

The current article also has factually incorrect information, such as labelling Alex Hawke a "moderate" and various others "unaligned" where this would come under WP:OR. Getting "factions" reliably would pose serious WP:OR issues if this article concept was expanded. J2m5 (talk) 05:47, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. There are numerous problems with this article, and I have nominated it for deletion. Steelkamp (talk) 07:33, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Candidates of the next Australian federal election

Deletion discussion taking place for the Candidates of the next Australian federal election. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:39, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Rewards for Good Articles

Hi all, I've put up an offer on the Reward Board which may be of interest. Basically, I'll give the {{Systemic bias barnstar}} to anyone who gets an article listed in Women in the Australian House of Representatives or Women in the Australian Senate to GA status. Ping me if you complete one :) GraziePrego (talk) 03:37, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Stage three tax cuts

Hi all, I've bitten the bullet and made a page for the Stage three tax cuts. Attempting to summarise all that has been written about them is an absolute monster of a task, and any contributions you can make to assist are extremely welcome. Thank you very much! GraziePrego (talk) 04:53, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

State government articles

Hi all,

I was wanting to add some information about events currently taking place in state politics, but then realised there's no appropriate page to put them. In federal politics, we have the Albanese government article to list day-to-day events that concern the government, but there is no equivalent timeline for state and territory governments. Is it appropriate for me to make, for example, Allan state government or Minns state government? GraziePrego (talk) 04:51, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Typically I would have thought they would just go on the page of the relevant individual/s (which are often pretty short on detail on what has happened during their term - see Jacinta Allan's article for example). ITBF (talk) 05:15, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

That's true- it does make it tricky to include some things though. If something happens that concerns the entire state government as a whole, rather than just the premier, it might be considered a bit irrelevant to include on specifically just the premier's article. GraziePrego (talk) 05:21, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Rann government is the only such article I know about. I do think this sort of article is viable in general and I support the creation of other such articles. The sources are certainly there. Steelkamp (talk) 05:51, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I have created Allan government. Needs a lot of expansion and integration with existing content about VicPol and the premier, working on those. Any help is greatly appreciated :) GraziePrego (talk) 07:01, 28 February 2024 (UTC)