Talk:Results of the 2023 New South Wales state election (Legislative Council)

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President

Recently, this article was edited to indicate that the expected appointment of a President of the New South Wales Legislative Council from among the fifteen upper house members of the Labor caucus meant that there were only fourteen members of the Labor caucus. This is incorrect for a number of reasons.

The President has not yet been appointed. User:Thiscouldbeauser stated in their edit summary that "according to Antony Green, Labor will appoint the President". This is almost correct. Green actually stated that "Traditionally one of the government's members is elected President." This has not yet occured and is not certain to occur.
The President maintains their party status. Even if Labor, as is expected, appoints a President from among their own caucus, the number in the caucus does not go down and will remain at fifteen. Even in the source cited by User:Thiscouldbeauser, the number in the Labor caucus is listed as fifteen.

--DilatoryRevolution (talk) 09:56, 10 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You're mostly correct. Yes, the source (i.e Antony Green from the ABC, for those of you who don't know who he is, he's basically the top psephologist (election scientist) in Australia) does have both major parties at 15 seats each. However, it also states (I've bolded the key stuff):

"The Legislative Council consists of 42 members. Traditionally one of the government's members is elected President. The President only has a casting vote meaning votes are determined by the 41 members on the floor with a government needing 21 members to pass legislation. After appointing the President, Labor will have only 14 members, which means the new government will need votes from seven of the 12 crossbench members to pass legislation."

I suggest keeping it as I put it with the footnote. It's not a matter of "this party won the Lower House so they've won the Upper House", because in many cases in Australian elections, the winning party in the Lower House is not the winning party in the Upper House (some good examples of this are the 2014 Victorian state election in the Upper House and every federal election in the Senate since 1983; however I don't think it ever happens vice-versa). Think of it like the midterm elections in America. In the 2022 United States midterm elections, the Republicans won the majority of seats in the House while the Democrats won the majority of seats in the Senate. Thiscouldbeauser (talk) 10:39, 10 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, User:Thiscouldbeauser. We know Antony Green. He means that there will be only fourteen members on the floor of the chamber, not that there are only fourteen members elected at the election that is the subject of this article. I'm sure that you are aware that the Coalition appointed the President in the last Parliament. We did not change their number of seats before the election to sixteen (not should we). This is not the way that the numbers are counted.

I did not mention anything about the lower house. That paragraph of your comment is irrelevant to this discussion.

The footnote should not be included because the selection of the President occurs separately to the election. They are separate events. It is misleading to imply that the election of a government has anything to do with this. This seems to be something that you understood when you stated 'It's not a matter of "this party won the Lower House so they've won the Upper House"'. Please apply that same logic to this discussion. --DilatoryRevolution (talk) 10:51, 10 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]