Editing Billy Hughes (section)

====Electoral reform====
{{Main|Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918}}
The government replaced the [[first-past-the-post]] electoral system applying to both houses of the Federal Parliament under the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1903 with a [[Instant-runoff voting|preferential system]] for the House of Representatives in 1918. That preferential system has essentially applied ever since. A multiple majority-preferential system was introduced at the [[1919 Australian federal election]] for the Senate, and that remained in force until it was changed to a quota-preferential system of proportional representation in 1948.<ref>{{cite web|title=A brief history of the society and its purpose|publisher=Proportional Representation Society of Australia|url=http://www.vicnet.net.au/~prsa/history/history.htm#Gardiner|access-date=22 April 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081204150320/http://www.vicnet.net.au/%7eprsa/history/history.htm#Gardiner|archive-date=4 December 2008|url-status    =dead}}</ref> Those changes were considered to be a response to the emergence of the Country Party, so that the non-Labor vote would not be split, as it would have been under the previous first-past-the-post system.