Timeline of Victorian Democracy

1830s
1835 European settlement of Port Phillip District begins.

1840s
1842 Six members (out of 36) represent Port Phillip District on New South Wales Legislative Council.

1850s
1850 Colony of Victoria created.
1851 Separation from New South Wales becomes official.
Victorian gold rushes begin.
Victoria’s first Legislative Council (upper house) formed, with 20 elected and ten nominee members.
1852 British government invites the Victorian Legislative Council to frame a constitution, in preparation for responsible government.
1853 Select Committee of Legislative Council draws up a draft constitution for Victoria.
1855 Constitution Act proclaimed.
1856 Victoria adopts the secret ballot – a world first.
Melbourne stonemasons campaign for – and win – an eight-hour working day.
Elections held for Legislative Council and Legislative Assembly – the first elections under the new constitution.
Parliament of Victoria formally opened.
1857 Property qualification for members and electors of the Legislative Assembly (lower house) abolished.
Introduction of manhood suffrage for electors of the lower house.
Opponents of the government’s proposed Lands Act hold the Victorian Land Convention (‘the Outside Parliament’).
1858 Lower house membership increased; members’ tenure reduced from five years to three.

1860s
1860 After a riot outside Parliament House, public meetings banned in the vicinity.
1865–68 Conflict between upper and lower houses results in major parliamentary deadlocks.
1869 Property qualification halved for Legislative Council members and electors, increasing the number of eligible voters for the upper house by two thirds.

1870s
1870 Payment for members of the lower house introduced on a trial basis (made permanent in 1878).
1877–78 ‘Black Wednesday’ parliamentary deadlock.

1880s
1881 Qualifications further eased for upper house members and electors; their tenure reduced from ten to six years.
1882–84 Royal Commission on Employees in Shops recommends that shop-closing times be set by law.
1886 Factories and Shops Act legislates shop trading hours – a world-first.
1889 Parliament grants Yarra Bank/Flinders Park as site for open-air public meetings.

1890s
1891 The parliamentary mace disappears.
1899 Plural voting (eligibility to vote in more than one electorate) in lower house elections abolished.

1900s
1901 Federation – Victoria is now a state.
Victorian parliament moves to Exhibition Buildings for 26 years, while federal parliament occupies Parliament House.
1903 Legislation to resolve parliamentary deadlocks – but by a process so complex and so favourable to the upper house that it is never used.
1904 Property qualifications for Legislative Council membership and voting further reduced.
1908 Women over 21 granted a vote in Legislative Assembly elections, and equality with men at elections for the Legislative Council.

1910s
1911 Preferential voting introduced for Legislative Assembly elections.

1920s
1921 Preferential voting for Legislative Council.
1922 Payment for upper-house members introduced.
1923 Women permitted to stand for Parliament.
Police strike.
1926 Compulsory voting introduced for Legislative Assembly elections.
1928 Absentee voting permitted for Legislative Assembly elections.

1930s
1933 Lady Millie Peacock becomes first woman member of Victorian parliament (elected, uncontested, to her late husband’s seat).
1935 Compulsory voting and absentee voting introduced for Legislative Council elections.
1937 New deadlock procedure introduced (slightly less complicated, but still inoperable).
Qualifications for membership of Legislative Council further eased; minimum age for MLC candidates reduced from 30 to 21 years (same as Legislative Assembly).
Ivy Weber the first woman to win a seat in Victorian parliament at a contested election.

1940s
1946 Late-night shopping abolished.

1950s
1950 Full adult suffrage and abolition of membership qualifications for Legislative Council.
1953 Shop-trading hours further curtailed.
1955 Bolte Liberal government elected (to hold office for 27 years, until 1982).
Australian Labor Party split.

1970s
1971 Late-night shopping reintroduced in Victoria.
1972 Sir Henry Bolte, Victoria’s longest-serving premier (1955–72), retires.
1973 Age for voting and membership of Victorian Parliament lowered from 21 to 18 years.
1975 Victoria’s constitution proclaimed as an Act of the Parliament of Victoria, rather than of the parliament of Great Britain.
1979 Gracia Baylor and Joan Coxsedge the first women elected to the Legislative Council.

1980s
1982 Pauline Toner the first female minister in a Victorian government.
1983 Legislative Assembly membership and electorates increased to the current 88.
Australian flag, instead of Union Jack, flown atop Parliament House.
1984 Tenure of Legislative Assembly members increased from three to four years.
Legislative Council tenure altered from six years to two terms of parliament.
1986 The Australia Act 1986 of the Parliament of Great Britain terminated the power of the British parliament to legislate for Australia, including Victoria.

1990s
1990 Joan Kirner becomes the first female premier of Victoria.
1996 Shop-trading hours deregulated in Victoria.

2000s
2002 First female Parliamentary Speaker, Judy Maddigan, and President of Legislative Council, Monica Gould.
2003 Constitution (Parliamentary Reform) Act introduces major changes to the upper house of Victorian parliament.
2004 ‘Recognition of Aboriginal People’ added to Victorian constitution.
2006 Constitutional reforms of 2003 will come into effect with the November elections – before which Victoria’s upper house will be dissolved for the first time since 1856.