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38-525: The Nuclear Disarmament Party ( NDP ) was an Australian political party formed in June 1984. It was founded by medical researcher Michael Denborough as the political arm of the Australian anti-nuclear movement , which had been active since the early 1970s. The NDP primarily attracted left-wing Labor Party voters who were disillusioned with Bob Hawke 's pro-nuclear stance. At the 1984 federal election ,

76-480: A federal election. Hawke led Labor to a record third successive term in government, despite finishing slightly behind the Coalition in the first-preference vote (the first time that a party had won an election in spite of this since 1969), and suffering a swing of some 0.9% to the Coalition in the two-party-preferred vote. Nonetheless, Labor's result of 86 seats was the party's highest ever (the total number of seats

114-467: A lone vigil for 52 days outside Parliament House, Canberra, in protest at what he considered was the unjust invasion of Iraq. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 1999. He died on 8 February 2014, survived by his wife, four children and six grandchildren. 1987 Australian federal election Bob Hawke Labor Bob Hawke Labor The 1987 Australian federal election

152-506: A member of parliament. The New South Wales Branch of the NDP asked Dunn to resign so they could seek to have Wood appointed to fill the casual vacancy. This might have allowed Wood to re-enter the Senate, but Dunn refused, citing various difficulties and risks with this scenario. The NDP state branch passed a vote of no confidence in her, and she resigned from the party on 22 August 1988, the day she

190-457: A senator for New South Wales , but after less than a year in office was disqualified by the Court of Disputed Returns and replaced by Irina Dunn . However, Dunn was expelled from the party after less than a month in office, and like Vallentine served out the rest of her term as an independent. The NDP had no electoral success after 1987, and the 1990 election was the last at which the party ran

228-624: A serious campaign. After several years of inactivity, the party was revived for the 1998 election . It attracted little support in its second manifestation, and was eventually formally disbanded in December 2009, when it voluntarily relinquished its registration with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC). In the meantime, many of its initial members had either returned to the Labor Party or become involved with

266-578: A stronger stance against the policies of the U.S., and also that Hawke had overturned a long-standing ALP policy not to mine uranium, and had allowed mining in South Australia at Olympic Dam near Roxby Downs , which has since become one of the largest uranium mines in the world. At the December 1984 federal election the NDP received 643,061 votes (7.23% of the total), and exceeded 4% in every state except Tasmania, where it received 3.9%. Amongst

304-663: The Australian Greens . The NDP was founded by Canberra doctor and peace activist Michael Denborough in response to the world political situation in the early 1980s, particularly the arms race between the United States under Ronald Reagan and the Soviet Union . Such activists were disappointed that the Australian Labor Party government of Bob Hawke , elected in 1983, had not taken

342-753: The Australian National University , retiring in 1995. He later became an emeritus professor. Denborough founded the Nuclear Disarmament Party (NDP) in 1984 and was a candidate in the Australian Capital Territory for the Senate in the Federal elections of 1987 , 1990 and 2007 . He published Australia and Nuclear War in 1984. NDP Senators Jo Vallentine and Robert Wood were elected in 1984 and 1987 respectively. In 2003 he conducted

380-534: The National Party of Australia led by Ian Sinclair . This was the first, and to date only, time the Labor Party won a third consecutive election. This was the last federal election before Old Parliament House was decommissioned as the seat of parliament after 61 years. In 1988, it was replaced by today's Parliament House , which sits above its predecessor on Capital Hill . Future Opposition Leader John Hewson entered parliament at this election. Since

418-800: The Victorian upper house province of Nunawading , and having the winning vote drawn from a hat, a Labor government for the first time in its history had control of the Victorian Legislative Council . A fresh election was ordered by the Court of Disputed Returns. The Liberals won re-election and Labor lost its slim majority. Within a week of polling day Mr Martin Peake, Chairman of the Victorian Nuclear Disarmament Party, lodged an official complaint with

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456-550: The 1987 campaign failed to generate great excitement in the electorate, and the opposition was viewed as unlikely, particularly in view of the recent infighting, to be able to remove the Labor party from power. That view was strengthened by much of the polling during the campaign, which generally showed Labor with a commanding lead. The election was the last one in which the Liberals and Nationals competed directly against each other in

494-613: The Chief Electoral Officer of Victoria, about a deceptive NDP how to vote card handed out at the booths. In essence, the Victorian ALP state secretary organised forged NDP how-to-vote cards and members of the Labor Party were recognised handing out this card and that the allocation of preferences to the ALP on the card damaged the NDP. The government entered a cover-up to protect its state secretary Peter Batchelor and

532-654: The Department of Clinical Science from 1975 to 1981 and acting director of the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies in 1982. He edited The Role of Calcium in Drug Action , the research for which centred on malignant hyperthermia which he described in 1962 and tentatively linked with Sudden Infant Death Syndrome . From 1992 to 1994 he was professor of the John Curtin School of Medical Research at

570-675: The Joh for Canberra push had been abandoned, the associated schism between the Nationals and Liberals led to several three-cornered contests, and the National Party ran independent Senate tickets in every state except New South Wales. Labor naturally chose to campaign strongly on the disunity amongst the opposition parties, contrasting it with the relative unity of purpose of the Labor Government. However, aside from those issues,

608-607: The Labor party. As police investigated the case, the culprits blamed the Socialist Workers Party . After this the NDP consisted of a group of activists led by Denborough. At the July 1987 federal election, the party's Senate vote in New South Wales fell from 9.6% to 1.5%. However, after distribution of preferences from other minor parties, the NDP's Robert Wood received more than the 7.7% quota, and hence

646-636: The Liberal and National parties. Within the Queensland National Party, the party president Sir Robert Sparkes enforced support for Bjelke-Petersen, making practical opposition within the Queensland ranks unlikely. The Coalition formally split in early May, with the National Party voting to break the federal coalition, and Ian Sinclair looking increasingly impotent and unable to ensure the loyalty of National Party members. However, it

684-594: The NDP candidates were Peter Garrett , a rock singer, and Jean Melzer , a former Victorian ALP senator. Garrett polled 9.6% of the vote in NSW, and Melzer polled 7.3% in Victoria. Because of an adverse distribution of preferences (see Australian electoral system ), neither Garrett nor Melzer was elected. However, Western Australian peace activist Jo Vallentine was elected to the Senate. In April 1985, Vallentine, Garrett and Melzer, along with 30 other members, walked out of

722-403: The NDP polled 7.23 percent of the total Senate vote, electing Jo Vallentine as a senator for Western Australia . However, Vallentine resigned from the party before taking her seat, due to allegations of a takeover by Trotskyists affiliated with the Socialist Workers Party . The NDP's vote collapsed to 1.1 percent at the 1987 election – a double dissolution . Robert Wood was elected as

760-432: The campaign, and Labor Senate Leader John Button even burst into laughter when referring to it in his speech announcing the election. Caught off guard by the early election, the opposition quickly ran into difficulties when the funding for its flagship tax cut proposals was revealed to have been miscalculated by some $ 540 million (at the time), a mistake revealed by the Labor party and conceded by Howard. Furthermore, although

798-403: The coalition, in the form of Queensland premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen . Premier since 1968, Bjelke-Petersen was a hardline conservative who aggressively opposed the "socialist" Hawke Labor government, and believed that he could transfer the style of politics that had served him so well in his native Queensland to the federal stage. Following a decisive electoral victory in Queensland in 1986 ,

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836-533: The course of his time in office, which included floating the Australian dollar, reducing tariffs on imports and completely reforming the tax system. However, the government's popularity dropped sharply throughout the course of its 1984–87 term, mostly due to a series of blunders such as its failed 'tax summit' (designed to gain support for Keating's proposed consumption tax), and declining terms of trade, which Treasurer Keating argued threatened to reduce Australia to

874-554: The federal coalition had been broken, and Howard's credibility as a challenger to the Hawke government had been severely damaged. The 1987 federal election was called by Prime Minister Hawke six months early, to capitalise on the aforementioned disunity in the opposition. The nominal trigger for the double dissolution was the rejection of legislation for the Australia Card by the Senate, but that did not figure prominently in

912-468: The introduction in the previous election in 1984 of leaders' debates, this was the only election in which there was not at least one leaders' debate due to Hawke's refusal to debate Howard. The Hawke government had been in power since the general election of 1983 , and had been re-elected in the snap election of 1984 , although with a decreased majority. Hawke, in partnership with Treasurer Paul Keating , had pursued an ambitiously reformist agenda over

950-462: The national conference in Melbourne and resigned from the NDP, claiming that the party had been taken over by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a Trotskyist group. In the wake of the split, Vallentine became an independent 'senator for nuclear disarmament' and went on to be re-elected as a ‘Vallentine Peace Group’ candidate in the double dissolution election of 1987 . Due to a tied vote in

988-544: The party to a surprising rebound in the 1984 general election, was replaced as leader of the Liberal party by the then Deputy Leader and Shadow Treasurer John Howard , after a botched effort to remove the latter from the Deputy Leadership and replace him with Queenslander John Moore , resulting in Peacock's resignation. Nonetheless, the party remained divided, as Howard was seen by some Liberals as being too far to

1026-515: The right, and these opponents of the Howard policy agenda rallied to Peacock, who was eventually sacked from the shadow ministry in March 1987, following unfortunate remarks regarding Howard by Peacock to Victorian state opposition leader Jeff Kennett in an infamous car phone conversation. Moreover, Howard and National Party leader Ian Sinclair faced challenges from the right as well as the left of

1064-630: The so-called Joh for Canberra campaign began in earnest, supported by much of the Queensland business establishment (the infamous "white shoe brigade"), with Bjelke-Petersen announcing that he intended to run for the Prime Ministership on 1 January 1987. At the end of February 1987, the Queensland National Party decided to withdraw its twelve federal members of parliament from the Coalition, and demanded that federal National Party leader Ian Sinclair also withdraw because of "basic differences in taxation and other philosophies and policies" between

1102-441: The statewide senate vote – more than Irina Dunn's independent ticket, but not nearly enough to be elected. The NDP was voluntarily deregistered by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) on 23 April 1992. It was re-registered on 7 May 1998, and stood candidates at another four federal elections ( 1998 , 2001 , 2004 , and 2007 ) before again being voluntarily deregistered in December 2009. Michael Denborough Denborough

1140-402: The status of a banana republic unless tough measures were taken to correct the balance of trade. Meanwhile, for much of the 1984–87 term, the opposition Liberal-National coalition led in the polls, leading to speculation that it could regain office in 1987. However, both coalition parties were also wracked by infighting throughout the parliament. In September 1985, Andrew Peacock , who had led

1178-796: Was Resident Medical Officer at the National Heart Hospital in London in 1958 before travelling to Australia, where he was first assistant at the University of Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital from 1960 to 1968, reader in medicine at the University of Melbourne from 1972 to 1974 and was a professorial fellow at the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra from 1974 to 1991, working as acting head of

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1216-482: Was at this point that Bob Sparkes reneged on his loyalty to Bjelke-Petersen and withdrew from the campaign. With his pool of supporters steadily decreasing, the likelihood of an effective challenge to the federal Coalition from Bjelke-Petersen began to collapse. When the election was called on 27 May, Bjelke-Petersen was in the United States, and quickly decided to withdraw from his bid for federal power. However,

1254-620: Was born in Salisbury , Rhodesia (now Harare , Zimbabwe ) to Paul Peter Denborough and Alma Mary Hepburn. He was educated at Prince Edward School in Salisbury and the University of Cape Town before being awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Exeter College, Oxford , where he was an assistant at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, Radcliffe Infirmary . He married Erica Elizabeth Griffith Brown on 12 December 1959. He

1292-474: Was duly elected. In May 1988, however, Wood, who was born in the United Kingdom, was disqualified from membership of the Senate on the grounds that he had not been an Australian citizen at the time of nomination. Wood's seat was won on a recount of the ballots by the second candidate on the NDP ticket in NSW, Irina Dunn . When Wood was subsequently granted Australian citizenship he became eligible to be

1330-587: Was expanded by 23 in 1984), and the party made particularly strong gains in Bjelke-Petersen's native Queensland, gaining four seats to bring their Queensland tally to 13 of 24 seats. The Liberals suffered a net loss of two seats, primarily due to losses in Queensland, although they did make small gains in Howard's native New South Wales and in Victoria. The federal National Party also suffered a net loss of two seats, failing to expand upon its traditional rural base and hampered by disunity within its ranks. This

1368-674: Was held in Australia on 11 July 1987, following the granting of a double dissolution on 5 June by the Governor-General Sir Ninian Stephen . Consequently, all 148 seats in the House of Representatives as well as all 76 seats in the Senate were up for election. The incumbent Australian Labor Party , led by Prime Minister Bob Hawke , defeated the opposition Liberal Party of Australia , led by John Howard and

1406-578: Was sworn in to the senate. Like Wood and Vallentine, Dunn described herself as a Senator for Nuclear Disarmament having already distanced herself from the NDP. She lost her Senate place at the 1990 election . At the 1990 election , the NDP only ran candidates in New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory , and the Northern Territory . Robert Wood was the lead candidate in New South Wales, and polled 1.04% of

1444-549: Was the most recent election in which every seat in the House of Representatives was won by either Labor or the Coalition. Following the election, John Howard stayed on as leader of the Liberal Party, and would eventually become Prime Minister in 1996 . However, the experience of the 1987 campaign is said to have been the origin of his oft-repeated remark that, in politics, "disunity is death". Meanwhile, Hawke would go on to win

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