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1920 Kalgoorlie by-election

Australian federal by-election


Summary

Australian federal by-election

FieldValue
countryAustralia
typeparliamentary
ongoingno
election_date18 December 1920
vote_typePopular
image1George Foley.jpg
candidate1George Foley
party1Nationalist Party (Australia)
popular_vote18,382
percentage151.4%
swing13.5pp
image2Portrait of Hugh Mahon (cropped).jpg
candidate2Hugh Mahon
party2Australian Labor Party
popular_vote27,939
percentage248.6%
swing23.5pp
titleMP
before_electionHugh Mahon
before_partyAustralian Labor Party
after_electionGeorge Foley
after_partyNationalist Party (Australia)
election_name1920 Kalgoorlie by-election

A by-election was held for the Australian House of Representatives seat of Kalgoorlie on 18 December 1920. It was triggered by the expulsion from the House of Labor Party MP Hugh Mahon.

The subsequent by-election was won by Nationalist Party candidate George Foley. It was the only federal by-election at which the government had won a seat from the opposition until the 2023 Aston by-election over 102 years later. Voting was not compulsory in 1920.

Background

After the death of the Irish nationalist Terence McSwiney, as the result of a hunger strike in October 1920, Mahon attacked British policy in Ireland, and the British Empire as a whole, at an open-air meeting in Melbourne on 7 November, referring to it as "this bloody and accursed despotism". Subsequently, Prime Minister Billy Hughes moved to expel him from the House of Representatives.{{cite Australian Dictionary of Biography

Under Section 8 of the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987, neither house of the Australian Parliament now has the power to expel someone from membership of the Parliament.

Results

References

References

  1. "Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987". Australian Government.
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