The House of Representatives is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the upper house being the Senate. Its composition and powers are established in Chapter I of the Constitution of Australia.
The Senate is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the House of Representatives. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Chapter I of the Constitution of Australia. There are a total of 76 senators: 12 are elected from each of the six Australian states regardless of population and 2 from each of the two autonomous internal Australian territories. Senators are popularly elected under the single transferable vote system of proportional representation.
A quorum is the minimum number of members of a deliberative assembly necessary to conduct the business of that group. According to Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised, the "requirement for a quorum is protection against totally unrepresentative action in the name of the body by an unduly small number of persons." In contrast, a plenum is a meeting of the full body. A body, or a meeting or vote of it, is quorate if a quorum is present.
A constitutional amendment is a modification of the constitution of a polity, organization or other type of entity. Amendments are often interwoven into the relevant sections of an existing constitution, directly altering the text. Conversely, they can be appended to the constitution as supplemental additions, thus changing the frame of government without altering the existing text of the document.
The Parliament of Australia is the legislative branch of the government of Australia. It consists of three elements: the Crown, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The combination of two elected chambers, in which the members of the Senate represent the states and territories while the members of the House represent electoral divisions according to population, is modelled on the United States Congress. Through both chambers, however, there is a fused executive, drawn from the Westminster system.
Ratification is a principal's approval of an act of its agent that lacked the authority to bind the principal legally. Ratification defines the international act in which a state indicates its consent to be bound to a treaty if the parties intended to show their consent by such an act. In the case of bilateral treaties, ratification is usually accomplished by exchanging the requisite instruments, and in the case of multilateral treaties, the usual procedure is for the depositary to collect the ratifications of all states, keeping all parties informed of the situation.
A supermajority, supra-majority, qualified majority, or special majority is a requirement for a proposal to gain a specified level of support which is greater than the threshold of more than one-half used for a simple majority. Supermajority rules in a democracy can help to prevent a majority from eroding fundamental rights of a minority. Changes to constitutions, especially those with entrenched clauses, commonly require supermajority support in a legislature. Parliamentary procedure requires that any action of a deliberative assembly that may alter the rights of a minority have a supermajority requirement, such as a two-thirds vote.
The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government, is the national government of Australia, a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Like other Westminster-style systems of government, the Australian Government is made up of three branches: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial.
In Australia, a redistribution is the process of redrawing the boundaries of electoral divisions for the House of Representatives arising from changes in population and changes in the number of representatives. There is no redistribution for the Senate as each State constitutes a division, though with multiple members. The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), an independent statutory authority, oversees the apportionment and redistribution process for federal divisions, taking into account a number of factors. Politicians, political parties and the public may make submissions to the AEC on proposed new boundaries, but any interference with their deliberations is considered a serious offence.
The Congress of the Republic of Texas was the national legislature of the Republic of Texas established by the Constitution of the Republic of Texas in 1836. It was a bicameral legislature based on the model of the United States Congress. It was transformed into the Texas Legislature upon annexation of Texas by the United States in 1846. A vestige of it remains in the name of Austin's main north–south street leading from the State Capitol, Congress Avenue, when it was founded as the intended national capital.
The Executive Council of New South Wales is the cabinet of that Australian state, consisting of the Ministers, presided over by the governor.
The United States House of Representatives, usually referred to as the House, is the lower house of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper house. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
United States v. Ballin, 144 U.S. 1 (1892), is a decision issued on February 29, 1892 by the United States Supreme Court, discussing the constitutional definition of "a quorum to do business" in Congress. Justice David Brewer delivered the opinion of the unanimous Court, analyzing the constitutional limitations on the United States Senate and House of Representatives when determining their rules of proceedings. In particular, the Court held that it fell within the powers of the House and Senate to establish their own rules for verifying whether a majority of their members is present, as required for a quorum under Article I of the Constitution.
Chapter I of the Constitution of Australia establishes the Parliament of Australia and its role as the legislative branch of the Government of Australia. The chapter consists of 60 sections which are organised into 5 parts.
Section 22 of the Constitution of Australia provides that the quorum of the Australian Senate shall be one third of the total number of Senators, until the Parliament otherwise provides.
Section 24 of the Constitution of Australia is titled "Constitution of House of Representatives". It provides that the House of Representatives be "directly chosen by the people of the Commonwealth" and have twice as many seats as the Senate. It also provides a formula for the number of seats in each state, subject to later amendment by the parliament, and guarantees at least five members for each original state.
Section 40 of the Constitution of Australia provides that questions in the House of Representatives shall be determined by majority vote, excluding that of the Speaker.
Section 57 of the Constitution of Australia concerns how deadlocks between the two houses of the Commonwealth Parliament—the House of Representatives and the Senate—should be resolved. If the House of Representatives passes a bill that the Senate rejects, fails to pass, or proposes amendments that the House of Representatives will not agree to, and this repeats itself three months later with regards to the same bill, then the Governor-General can call a double dissolution of the Parliament, so long as the House of Representatives is not six months or less from its expiration.
Western Australia v Commonwealth, also known as the First Territory Senators' Case, was an important decision of the High Court of Australia concerning the procedure in section 57 of the Constitution and the representation of territories in the Senate. The Court unanimously held that legislation providing for the representation of the Northern Territory and the Australia Capital Territory in the Senate had been passed in accordance with section 57 of the Constitution and, by majority, that the representation of the territories was constitutionally valid.
The Constitution Alteration Bill 1988, was an unsuccessful proposal to alter the Australian Constitution to enshrine proportional representation in Australia, also referred to as one vote, one value, including in states and territories. It was put to voters for approval in a referendum held on 3 September 1988.
