2007 Australian federal election
The 2007 Australian federal election was held in Australia on 24 November 2007. All 150 seats in the House of Representatives and 40 of the seats in the 76-member Senate were up for election. The election featured a 39-day campaign, with 13.6 million Australians enrolled to vote.[1]
All 150 seats in the House of Representatives
76 seats were required for a majority in the House
40 (of the 76) seats in the Senate
13,646,539 
4.18%
12,930,814 (94.72%)
(0.40 pp)
The centre-left Australian Labor Party opposition, led by Kevin Rudd and deputy leader Julia Gillard, defeated the incumbent centre-right Coalition government, led by Liberal Party leader and Prime Minister, John Howard, and Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister, Mark Vaile, by a landslide. The election marked the end of the 11 year Howard Liberal-National Coalition government that had been in power since the 1996 election.[2] This election also marked the start of the six-year Rudd-Gillard Labor government.
Future Prime Minister Scott Morrison, future opposition leader Bill Shorten and future Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles entered parliament at this election. This would be the last time the Labor Party would win a majority at the federal level until the 2022 election. This remains the most recent election in which both major parties won over 40% of first preference votes.
Rudd became the third Labor leader after World War II to lead the party to victory from opposition, after Gough Whitlam in 1972, Bob Hawke in 1983, and before most recently Anthony Albanese in 2022.
Although the Coalition was defeated, the results in Western Australia bucked the national trend. While there was a swing against the Liberal Party and to the Labor Party, which allowed Labor to gain the seat of Hasluck from the Liberals, the Liberals managed to gain the seats of Cowan and Swan from Labor.
Under the provisions of the Constitution, the current House of Representatives may continue for a maximum of three years from the first meeting of the House after the previous federal election. The first meeting of the 41st Parliament after the 2004 election was on 16 November 2004, hence the parliament would have expired on 15 November 2007 had it not been dissolved earlier. There must be a minimum of 33 days and a maximum of 68 days between the dissolution of the House of Representatives and the day of the election.[11] Prime Minister Howard opted for a 39-day campaign.
The prime minister of the day chooses the election date and requests the governor-general to dissolve the House and issue the writs for the election. On 14 October, John Howard gained the agreement of the governor-general, Major-General Michael Jeffery, to dissolve the House of Representatives and hold a general election for the House and half the Senate on 24 November 2007.[12]
During the last term of parliament before the 2007 election, the deadline for new voter enrolment was brought forward from 7 working days after the issue of the writ to the same day. When the election was announced, the writ was not issued the next day, but on the following Wednesday. This kept the roll open for three days, during which 77,000 enrolment additions were processed.[13]
Election campaign[edit]
Week 1[edit]
On 14 October, Howard announced a 24 November election. The Coalition had been trailing Labor in the polls since 2006, and most pundits predicted that Howard would not be re-elected. ABC Online election analyst Antony Green noted the Coalition's numbers were similar to what Labor had polled before losing power in 1996.
Election night was covered extensively by three of the Australian free-to-air networks, from the National Tally Room: ABC Television, the Nine Network and the Seven Network. Network Ten and SBS Television included brief updates and news bulletins through the night, but not to the other networks' extent. Sky News offered extensive coverage on Pay TV.[99]
Defeat of the Prime Minister[edit]
Prime Minister John Howard lost his own seat of Bennelong, in Northern Sydney, to Labor candidate and former journalist Maxine McKew, becoming the second sitting prime minister, and the third party leader, since Federation to be defeated in his own electorate. Prime Minister Stanley Bruce and National Party leader Charles Blunt lost their seats in 1929 and 1990 respectively. Howard had held the seat since 1974, and it had been in Liberal hands ever since its creation in 1949.
However, successive redistributions, along with demographic change, had made the once safe Liberal seat much friendlier to Labor; much of the area was represented by Labor at the state level. Howard's two-party majority was four percent, putting it right on the edge of seats that Labor would likely take in the event it won.
Late on election night, when conceding Labor had won government, Howard also acknowledged the likelihood he had lost Bennelong to McKew, though he and McKew agreed the margin was "very tight".[129] He had been ahead by thin margins for most of the night, never leading by more than 0.2 percentage points.[130] Howard had been 206 votes ahead of McKew on the first count, and finished 2.8 percentage points behind McKew on the estimated two-party vote.[131] McKew declined to claim victory at first, saying that the seat was on "a knife edge,"[132] while the Australian Broadcasting Corporation listed Bennelong as a Labor gain on election night, and ABC election analyst Antony Green said there was "no doubt" McKew had won.[133]
On 29 November, Rudd named McKew as a parliamentary secretary (assistant minister) to be appointed on 3 December,[134] and on 1 December, McKew claimed victory.[135] Although counting was incomplete at the time, with several postal and absentee ballots outstanding, it was expected that Howard would not win enough of the votes to retain his seat.[136] McKew finished with a primary vote of 45.33 per cent, and a two-party-preferred vote of 51.40 per cent, a 5.53-point swing from 2004. Howard lost on the 14th count due to a large flow of Green preferences to McKew. This swing was within the redistributed boundaries after the 2004 election.[137]
Three other Howard ministers were defeated – Mal Brough, Gary Nairn and Jim Lloyd.
The following table indicates seats that changed hands from one party to another at this election.[138] It compares the election results with the previous margins, taking into account the redistribution in New South Wales and Queensland. As a result, it includes the newly created electorate of Flynn, and the existing Parramatta, which was retained by Labor despite becoming a notional Liberal seat due to boundary changes. The table does not include Gwydir, which was abolished in the redistribution; Macquarie, which was reclassified from safe Liberal to marginal Labor and was subsequently won by Labor; or Calare, the seat of Independent MP Peter Andren, which was reclassified as a National seat by the redistribution and was won by the National Party.
In Popular Culture[edit]
The comedy band The Axis of Awesome parodied the events of the election in a song.
Official
Media
Unofficial Sites