A State Electoral District is an electorate within the Lower House or Legislative Assembly of Australian states and territories. Most state electoral districts (except the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania, which have multi-member electorates using a proportional voting method) send a single member to a state or territory's parliament using the preferential method of voting. The area of a state electoral district is dependent upon the Electoral Acts in the various states and vary in area between them. At present, there are 409 state electoral districts in Australia.
State electoral districts do not apply to the Upper House, or Legislative Council, in those states that have one (New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia). In New South Wales and South Australia, MLCs represent the entire state, in Tasmania they represent single-member districts, and in Victoria and Western Australia they represent a region formed by grouping electoral districts together.
There are five electorates for the Legislative Assembly, each with five members each, making up 25 members in total.
There are currently 93 electoral districts in New South Wales.
There are 25 single-member electoral divisions in the Northern Territory, and 17 former divisions.
There are 93 electoral districts in Queensland, for the Legislative Assembly of Queensland. Information about the QLD electoral districts for the 2006 elections can be obtained from the Electoral Commission of Queensland website. [1]
There are 47 single-member electoral districts in South Australia, for the South Australian House of Assembly.
There are 15 electoral divisions in Tasmania for the upper house Legislative Council.
In the lower house the five federal divisions are used, but electing 5 members each
There are 88 electoral districts in Victoria, for the Victorian Legislative Assembly.
There are 59 single-member electoral districts in Western Australia for the Western Australian Legislative Assembly. 42 are in the Perth metropolitan area and 17 are in the rest of the state.
Electoral systems for the legislatures of the individual Australian states and territories are broadly similar to the electoral system used in federal elections in Australia.
The Victorian Legislative Assembly is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of Victoria in Australia; the upper house being the Victorian Legislative Council. Both houses sit at Parliament House in Spring Street, Melbourne.
The Parliaments of the Australian states and territories are legislative bodies within the federal framework of the Commonwealth of Australia.
The New South Wales Legislative Council, often referred to as the upper house, is one of the two chambers of the parliament of the Australian state of New South Wales. The other is the Legislative Assembly. Both sit at Parliament House in the state capital, Sydney. It is normal for legislation to be first deliberated on and passed by the Legislative Assembly before being considered by the Legislative Council, which acts in the main as a house of review.
The House of Assembly, or Lower House, is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of Tasmania in Australia. The other is the Legislative Council or Upper House. It sits in Parliament House in the state capital, Hobart.
The Tasmanian Legislative Council is the upper house of the Parliament of Tasmania in Australia. It is one of the two chambers of the Parliament, the other being the House of Assembly. Both houses sit in Parliament House in the state capital, Hobart. Members of the Legislative Council are often referred to as MLCs.
Elections in Australia take place periodically to elect the legislature of the Commonwealth of Australia, as well as for each Australian state and territory and for local government councils. Elections in all jurisdictions follow similar principles, although there are minor variations between them. The elections for the Australian Parliament are held under the federal electoral system, which is uniform throughout the country, and the elections for state and territory Parliaments are held under the electoral system of each state and territory.
In Australia, electoral districts for the Australian House of Representatives are called divisions or more commonly referred to as electorates or seats. There are currently 151 single-member electorates for the Australian House of Representatives.
The Parliament of Tasmania is the bicameral legislature of the Australian state of Tasmania. It follows a Westminster-derived parliamentary system and consists of the Governor of Tasmania, the Tasmanian House of Assembly, and Tasmanian Legislative Council. Since 1841, both Houses have met in Parliament House, Hobart. The Parliament of Tasmania first met in 1856.
In Australia, one vote, one value is a democratic principle, applied in electoral laws governing redistributions of electoral divisions of the House of Representatives. The principle calls for all electoral divisions to have the same number of enrolled voters, within a specified percentage of variance. The electoral laws of the Commonwealth for the House of Representatives and all states follow the principle with some exceptions. The principle does not apply to the Senate, as each state is entitled under the constitution to the same number of senators irrespective of the population of the state.
The Western Australian Legislative Council is the upper house of the Parliament of Western Australia, a state of Australia. It is regarded as a house of review for legislation passed by the Legislative Assembly, the lower house. The two Houses of Parliament sit in Parliament House in the state capital, Perth.
The Legislative Assembly of Queensland is the sole chamber of the unicameral Parliament of Queensland established under the Constitution of Queensland. Elections are held every four years and are done by full preferential voting. The Assembly has 93 members, who have used the letters MP after their names since 2000.
A member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) is a representative elected by the voters of a constituency to a legislative assembly. Most often, the term refers to a subnational assembly such as that of a state, province, or territory of a country. Still, in a few instances, it refers to a national legislature.
The 1901 Australian federal election for the inaugural Parliament of Australia was held in Australia on Friday 29 March and Saturday 30 March 1901. The elections followed Federation and the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. All 75 seats in the Australian House of Representatives, six of which were uncontested, as well as all 36 seats in the Australian Senate, were up for election.
Parliament House, Hobart, located on Salamanca Place in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, is the meeting place of the Parliament of Tasmania. The building was originally designed as a customs house but changed use in 1841 when Tasmania achieved self-government. The building served both purposes from 1841 to 1904, when the customs offices were relocated.
The following is the Australian Table of Precedence.
The states and territories are federated administrative divisions in Australia, ruled by regional governments that constitute the second level of governance between the federal government and local governments. States are self-governing polities with incomplete sovereignty and have their own constitutions, legislatures, departments, and certain civil authorities that administer and deliver most public policies and programmes. Territories can be autonomous and administer local policies and programmes much like the states in practice, but are still constitutionally and financially subordinate to the federal government and thus have no true sovereignty.
A political family of Australia is a family in which multiple members are involved in Australian politics, particularly electoral politics. Members may be related by blood or marriage; often several generations or multiple siblings may be involved.
Suffrage in Australia refers to the right to vote for people living in Australia, including all its six component states and territories, as well as local councils. The colonies of Australia began to grant universal male suffrage from 1856, with women's suffrage following between the 1890s and 1900s. Some jurisdictions introduced racial restrictions on voting from 1885. Such restrictions had been eradicated by the 1960s. Today, the right to vote at federal, state and local levels of government is enjoyed by citizens of Australia over the age of 18 years.
The electoral division of Clark is one of the five electorates in the Tasmanian House of Assembly, it is located in Hobart on the western shore of the River Derwent and includes the suburbs below Mount Wellington. Clark is named after Andrew Inglis Clark, a Tasmanian jurist who was the principal author of the Australian Constitution. The electorate shares its name and boundaries with the federal division of Clark.