Talk:Leader of the Opposition (Australia)

Date formats
How can this possibly be seen as a model for others when the date formats are wrong? Surely featured articles and lists should have every detail of wikistyle correct? --Pete 02:58, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Sofixit.--cj | talk 05:45, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Will do, but I think the point needs to be made. If you are working on a featured article or list, check all the details. --Pete 21:26, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Eh???
Um, I added the pictures of those who werent there (leaving reappearances blank obviously) a few days ago and now they arent there and theres no history with my name on it... I swear I didn't dream it, I think theres a wiki bug... Timeshift 04:40, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * It's possible that your edit didn't save. To my understanding, the servers have been struggling over the last few weeks, and the database has been locking every so often to let them catch up.--cj | talk 05:17, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Just be careful, however, this article originally had a picture for all of them, however a lot of them had to be removed for copyright reasons. ..... Todd #661 11:03, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Notes uplinks not working
When you click on a, b or c, it does not move back up to the text in the article. Needs a clever person to fix (I'm too lazy to work it out). &mdash;Moondyne 07:01, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Stat
The following was added to the lead: Of the 29 people who have served as Leaders of the Opposition, 15 served terms as Prime Ministers. I am going to look for an exact citation for this. In the meantime I am going to leave it here. If somebody else finds it, I believe it needs to be added to paragraph 3 in an appropriate position. ..... Todd #661 12:04, 24 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Todd, the statement doesn't really need a citation as its just a statement of fact based on the names in Category:Australian Leaders of the Opposition and Category:Prime Ministers of Australia. &mdash;Moondyne 12:10, 24 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree it doesn't really need one as it's a non-contentious and very easily checked statement. There is however a reference here: "To 2001, there have been 35 Leaders of the Opposition. Of the 35, eight held the office more than once. Fifteen of them also served as Prime Minister." --Canley (talk) 02:05, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Prime Minister?
Is it just me, or do you guys here think we should add a column that in some way indicates whether the person listed was ever made a Prime Minister also? I think this would be an appropriate thing to list, as most of them would have at least wanted to be PMs, so to indicate whether they "made it", so to speak, would be worthy of note. -- linca linca  12:31, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * This information is included in the list. Although it is very subtle. The [a] & [b] notes indicate if they had been or did become prime minister. ..... Todd #661 09:21, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm.... too subtle in my opinion. I came here specifically ask the exact same question and I didn't even notice the 'a' and 'b' notes. I would agree that it would be nice to add a column that incorporated the knowledge described in the 'a' and 'b' notes - basically a column describing the form in which the person lost or attained the opposition leadership - it shouldn't be necessary to list both lost AND attained as the following/preceding leader's description will explain that. For example: Kim Beazly*replaced, Kevin Rudd*became PM, Brendan Nelson*replaced, Malcom Turnbull*incumbent. Witty Lama 06:45, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Recent changes to text
I've reverted changes that were made to the opening paragraphs. Admittedly I may be a bit biased because I wrote it originally, however it is better because of the following:
 * The revised versions opening paragraph consists of 1 sentance. This is not FL quality.
 * The text went through FLC. I can understand that it constantly needs to be improved upon, however you are 1 person and you have not consulted with anybody. FLC was a consultation with several editors. At least have it checked by somebody. I have reverted. I would appreciate it if you revert it again can you at least tell me why you made the improvements? ..... Todd #661 10:09, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate it's hard to tell from the diff just what my changes were. I had no control over that. So I'll explain them here:

(A) The opening sentence "This is a List of Australian Leaders of the Opposition, who in Australian Federal Politics is a Member of Parliament in the House of Representatives" was not grammatical.


 * "... Leaders of the Opposition, who ... is a Member of Parliament in the House of Representatives"
 * should at the very least be:
 * "... Leaders of the Opposition, who ... are Members of Parliament in the House of Representatives.

But even that’s crappy writing, because it could suggest there are multiple leaders at any one time. It also could be read that all the Leaders we've ever had since 1901 are still members of the current parliament. Far better to state what the list is about ("This is a List of ..."), and then, in a separate sentence, explain what office each of them must hold to qualify.

(B) "Member of Parliament in the House of Representatives" is not a standard expression. Being a member of the House of Reps makes one a member of parliament, so all we need to say is "Member of the House of Representatives".

(C) "List of Australian Leaders of the Opposition" is ambiguous, because it could refer to all the state and federal leaders of the Opposition throughout Australia, of which there are 9 at any one time. This list is about the leader in the Federal Parliament only, so we should make that explicit. You’ve tried to compensate by introducing the term "in Australian Federal Politics", but that’s a long way round, and it introduces an additional ambiguity. The phrase "who in Australian Federal Politics is a Member of Parliament in the House of Representatives" could be interpreted that in some other context the Leader is not necessarily an MP.

I’ve resolved all these issues by:
 * This is a List of Australian Leaders of the Federal Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition is a Member of the House of Representatives. (I made a new para after the 1st sentence, but you needn't break the para if that's an issue.)

On reflection, it would be even better to say:
 * "This is a List of Leaders of the Opposition in the Australian Federal Parliament. The Leader of the Opposition is a Member of the House of Representatives ...".

(D) "When in Parliament the Leader of the Opposition sits on the left-hand side of ..."
 * That’s ambiguous. From the point of view of the reader, who’s looking at the pic, it would be read as if they sit on the reader’s left, but we know that’s not the case, because the sides on which the government and the opposition sit are always defined from the Speaker’s perspective, who's facing the reader.  So I made that clear by "When in Parliament the Leader of the Opposition sits (from the Speaker's viewpoint) on the left-hand side of ..."

(E) I changed "the table in the centre" to "the central table" (sounds more professional; I'm sure there's an even better formal name for it, though)

(F) "The Liberal Party have been in opposition ...
 * I changed "have" to "has".

(G) " ... since losing the 2007 election to the Labor Party who had been the opposition from 1996 to 2007". I reduced this to:


 * "... since losing the 2007 election to the Labor Party who had formed the opposition since 1996".

This gets the message across more concisely.

(H) "To date there have been thirty-one Opposition Leaders, sixteen of which have served terms as Prime Minister".


 * I changed "which" to "whom", since we’re talking about live human beings here. --  JackofOz (talk) 14:06, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition
Odd phrase. Do we have a source? --Pete (talk) 06:17, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

The term is not used in Australia and the references to it should be removed. Intelligent Mr Toad 2 (talk) 06:38, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Also Chris Bowen was never Leader of the Opposition. He only acted in the position. Likewise, Albanese was only acting Deputy Opposition Leader. They should both be removed from these tables.

From the Parliament House website:

Parliamentary party positions Acting Leader of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party from 13.9.13 to 13.10.13. Acting Leader of the Opposition from 18.9.13 to 13.10.13. Member, Opposition Shadow Ministry from 10.12.06 to 3.12.07 and from 14.10.13. Shadow Assistant Treasurer from 10.12.06 to 3.12.07; Shadow Minister for Revenue and Competition Policy from 10.12.06 to 3.12.07. Shadow Treasurer from 18.10.13.

Intelligent Mr Toad 2 (talk) 06:38, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Deputy Leaders Of The Opposition 1901-1909
Does anybody know who the Deputy Leaders of the Opposition were from 1901 to 1909? The section on this page about the Deputy Leaders of the Opposition seems to skip straight to Joseph Cook in 1909...... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.96.96.204 (talk) 09:09, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 22:06, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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William McMahon
On what grounds are we reckoning Billy McMahon as Leader of the Opposition for 15 days after losing the 1972 election? The current list doesn't include Keating or Bruce, despite the fact they both remained leaders of their parties for tiny periods after election defeats. I think McMahon should be removed unless there are sources that explicit include him in the list of opposition leaders. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 17:25, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Removed him. Can't find anything in contemporary sources referring to him as opposition leader, and parliament didn't resume until the following year so he certainly never appeared in that capacity in the House of Representatives. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 14:31, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

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Lots of inaccuracies
This "featured list" has a lot of inaccurate dates and totally inadequate sourcing for the main two lists. Some of the figures listed didn't even hold the position that is being claimed they held. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 00:35, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

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