page_title: Bill Aylett
section_title: 1953 election
hierarchical_section_title: Bill Aylett / Senate / 1953 election
caption_attribution_description: English: Electoral advertisement for Senator Bill Aylett used at the 1953 Australian Senate election. Against the wishes of his party, his campaign material instructed voters to rank him first on the ballot paper, above three other candidates higher on the official Australian Labor Party ticket.
context_page_description: William Edward Aylett was an Australian politician who served as a Senator for Tasmania from 1938 to 1965, representing the Labor Party. He worked as a miner, mail contractor, and farmer before entering politics. He was first elected to the Senate at the age of 36 and won re-election on five further occasions.
  Aylett was placed at the bottom of the ALP ticket for the 1953 election, but issued his own campaign material and was re-elected. He was subsequently censured by the ALP state executive for his defiance of the party's instructions. In 1959, a year into his final term, Aylett decided to move to Queensland's Gold Coast, for what he said were health reasons. He kept his office in Launceston, but his decision to move states proved controversial. In 1962, Aylett's frequent absences from the Senate came under public scrutiny. He was censured by the ALP federal executive for his attendance record, although moves to expel him were unsuccessful, and he retired from parliament at the next election.
context_section_description: In 1952, Aylett was defeated in the preselection ballot for Labor's Senate ticket at the 1953 election. He and Reg Murray polled an equal number of votes, before Murray's name was drawn out of a hat. Another serving senator, Bill Morrow, was also dropped from the ticket. Aylett publicly criticised the ALP state executive, and his supporters in the labour movement attempted to overturn the result of the ballot. However, the death of Jack Chamberlain in January 1953 opened up an additional vacancy in the Senate, allowing Aylett to return to the ticket. He was ranked fourth on the ticket, behind George Cole, Justin O'Byrne, and Murray.
  Aylett defied the ALP's official campaign material, issuing his own how-to-vote cards telling voters to rank him first. His campaign was successful, as he out-polled both O'Byrne and Murray by significant margins. This resulted in Murray failing to win a seat, and he subsequently wrote privately to Fred Daly that Aylett had won re-election "by treachery, fraud and wilful deception". In June 1953, he was censured by the ALP state executive for his actions. The following month, the federal executive also debated a resolution of censure, moved by the New South Wales delegation, but decided to refer the case back to the state executive. Until the election of Lisa Singh in 2016, Aylett was the only person to have been elected to the Senate ahead of a higher-ranked candidate on the same ticket.
caption: Advertisement used by Aylett at the 1953 election, encouraging voters to give him their first preference despite being ranked fourth on the ALP ticket
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