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The referendum of 21 May 1977 approved an amendment to the Australian constitution concerning the filling of casual vacancies in the Senate. Technically it was a vote on the ''Constitution Alteration (Senate Casual Vacancies) 1977'' which, after being approved in the referendum, became law on 29 July of the same year. Prior to the amendment: * the legislature of the relevant state was not required to have regard to the political allegiances of the replacement senator, and * the new senator's term continued only until the next general election for either the House of Representatives or the Senate, or the end of the original senator's term, whichever happened earlier. The amendment changed this procedure by providing that: * a state legislature replace a senator with a member of the same political party, and * the new senator's term continue until the end of the original senator's term. Its intended purpose was to prevent major changes in the balance of power in the senate in the middle of a parliamentary term, but as it did not provide any time limit within which the appointment had to be made, the state legislature remained free to decline to fill the vacancy. As Section 11 of the Constitution permits the Senate to carry on despite the failure to fill any vacancy, the amendment did not completely solve the problem. On the same day as the vote on the casual vacancies amendment, four other questions were also put to the electorate. These concerned the: *Simultaneous elections amendment *Referendums amendment *Retirement of judges amendment *National song plebiscite. ==Overview== The casual vacancies amendment came about as part of the political fallout from the Australian constitutional crisis of 1975. In the aftermath of this crisis, four amendments were recommended by sessions of the Australian Constitutional Convention, including one that would change the procedure for appointing replacement senators. All four were put to voters on 21 May 1977, and all were passed except a proposal for simultaneous elections to the House of Representatives and Senate. The casual vacancies proposal arose out of the 1975 controversy over the appointment of independent Cleaver Bunton (New South Wales) and anti-Whitlam Australian Labor Party member Albert Field (Queensland) to fill Senate seats formerly held by ALP senators. The change aimed to ensure that a replacement senator would be required to be a member of the party of which the previous senator was a member at the time of his or her election. The amendment was approved by a 73.3 per cent majority of the electorate. Despite the intention of the amendment's supporters to ensure that the party balance in the Senate should not be altered by a casual vacancy, the amendment has not been entirely successful in that regard. Following the resignation of the Tasmanian ALP Senator Don Grimes in April 1987, the nominee of the ALP, John Devereux, was rejected by a tied vote in the Tasmanian Parliament. As one Tasmanian Minister argued: "we can choose only a person who is a member of the same party ... but we are not bound to accept the nomination of the party concerned". Tasmania therefore had only eleven senators between 2 April and the double dissolution election of 11 July 1987. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Australian referendum, 1977 (Senate Casual Vacancies)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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