Australian Essential Services referendum, 1926

4 September 1926 (1926-09-04)

Do you approve of the proposed law for the alteration of the Constitution entitled —

"Constitution Alteration (Essential Services) 1926" ?

Results

Choice	Votes	%
Yes	1,195,502	42.80%
No	1,597,793	57.20%
Valid votes	2,793,295	94.23%
Invalid or blank votes	171,089	5.77%
Total votes	2,964,384	100.00%
Registered voters/turnout	3,254,952	91.07%

The Constitution Alteration (Essential Services) Bill 1926,^[1] was an unsuccessful referendum held in 1926 that sought to alter the Australian Constitution to give the Commonwealth legislative power to protect the public from any actual or probable interruption of essential services.

Question

Do you approve of the proposed law for the alteration of the Constitution entitled 'Constitution Alteration (Essential Services) 1926'? The proposal was to alter section 51 of the Constitution as follows:

Section fifty-one of the Constitution is altered by inserting after paragraph (v.) the following paragraph :—

(v.) a. Protecting the interests of the public in case of actual or probable interruption of any essential service.^[1]

Results

The referendum was not approved by a majority of voters, and a majority of the voters was achieved in only two states, New South Wales and Queensland.^[2]

Result ^[2]
State	Electoral roll	Ballots issued	For		Against		Informal
State	Electoral roll	Ballots issued	Vote	%	Vote	%	Informal
New South Wales	1,241,635	1,131,656	545,270	50.39	536,734	49.61	49,652
Victoria	968,861	888,661	296,548	35.55	537,560	64.45	54,553
Queensland	440,632	399,664	188,473	50.56	184,320	49.44	26,871
South Australia	303,054	281,492	81,966	31.32	179,740	68.68	19,786
Western Australia	190,286	164,555	39,566	25.90	113,222	74.10	11,767
Tasmania	110,484	98,356	43,679	48.59	46,217	51.41	8,460
Total for Commonwealth	3,254,952	2,964,384	1,195,502	42.80	1,597,793	57.20	171,089
Results	Obtained majority in two states and an overall minority of 402,291 votes. Not carried

References

^ ^a ^b "Constitution Alteration (Essential Services) Bill". Retrieved 22 April 2019 – via legislation.gov.au.
^ ^a ^b Handbook of the 44th Parliament (2014) "Part 5 - Referendums and Plebiscites - Referendum results". Parliamentary Library of Australia.

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