The electoral system of Australia comprises the laws and processes used for the election of members of the Australian Parliament and is governed primarily by the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918. The system presently has a number of distinctive features including compulsory enrolment; compulsory voting; majority-preferential instant-runoff voting in single-member seats to elect the lower house, the House of Representatives; and the use of the single transferable vote proportional representation system to elect the upper house, the Senate.
Electoral systems of the Australian states and territories are broadly similar to the electoral system used in federal elections in Australia.
The parliaments of the Australian states and territories are legislative bodies within the federal framework of the Commonwealth of Australia.
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. An election day is always a Saturday, but early voting is allowed in the lead-up to it.
The Parliament of Queensland is the legislature of the Australian state of Queensland. As provided under the Constitution of Queensland, the Parliament consists of the King, represented by the governor, and the Legislative Assembly. It has been the only unicameral state legislature in the country since the upper chamber, the Legislative Council, was abolished in 1922. The Legislative Assembly sits in Parliament House in the state capital, Brisbane.
In Australia, referendums are public votes held on important issues where the electorate may approve or reject a certain proposal. In contemporary usage, polls conducted on non-constitutional issues are known as plebiscites, with the term referendum being reserved solely for votes on constitutional changes, which is legally required to make a change to the Constitution of Australia.
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.
The Division of Maranoa is an Australian electoral division in Queensland.
The Libertarian Party (LP), formerly known as the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), is an Australian political party founded in Canberra in 2001. The party espouses smaller government and supports policies that are based on classical liberal, libertarian principles, such as lower taxes, opposing restrictions on civil liberties, decentralisation, uranium mining, and the relaxation of smoking laws.
The New Zealand parliamentary electoral system has been based on the principle of mixed-member proportional (MMP) since the 1996 election. MMP was introduced following a referendum in 1993. It replaced the first-past-the-post (FPP) system New Zealand had previously used for most of its history. Under the MMP system, New Zealanders have two secret ballot votes to elect members of Parliament (MPs). The first vote is for a candidate from an electorate, a geographic electoral district. The second is the party vote for the political party the voter wants to form the government.
The Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 is an Act of the Australian Parliament which continues to be the core legislation governing the conduct of elections in Australia, having been amended on numerous occasions since 1918. The Act was introduced by the Nationalist Party of Billy Hughes, the main purpose of which was to replace first-past-the-post voting with instant-runoff voting for the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Labor Party opposed the introduction of preferential voting. The Act has been amended on several occasions since.
A term of office, electoral term, or parliamentary term is the length of time a person serves in a particular elected office. In many jurisdictions there is a defined limit on how long terms of office may be before the officeholder must be subject to re-election. Some jurisdictions exercise term limits, setting a maximum number of terms an individual may hold in a particular office.
Daylight saving time was trialled in the state of Queensland, Australia, during the 1989/90 season, with the trial extended for a further two years—1990/91 and 1991/92. The last full day of daylight saving in Queensland was Saturday 29 February 1992, with clocks officially wound back an hour on Sunday 1 March at 3am.
Daylight saving time (DST) is currently observed in the Australian states of New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania, and Victoria, as well as the Australian Capital Territory, Jervis Bay Territory and Norfolk Island. Other Australian jurisdictions – the states of Queensland and Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Australia's other external territories – do not observe daylight saving time.
The 1981 New South Wales referendum was held on 19 September 1981, the same day as the state election. The referendum contained two questions:
- Do you approve a Bill for an Act to extend the maximum period between general elections for the Legislative Assembly from 3 years to 4 years?
- Do you approve a Bill for an Act to require Members of Parliament to disclose certain pecuniary interests and other matters?
The 2017 Queensland state election was held on 25 November 2017 to elect all 93 members of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland, the unicameral Parliament of Queensland.
Section 13 of the Constitution of Australia provides for three aspects of the terms of members of the Australian Senate: the timing of elections, the commencement date of their terms and for the Senate to allocate long (six-year) and short (three-year) terms following a double dissolution of the Parliament of Australia. While members of the House of Representatives and territory senators have a maximum three-year term, state senators have a fixed six-year term, subject only to the parliament being dissolved by a double dissolution.
The 2016 Queensland fixed four-year terms referendum was a one-question referendum held in the Australian state of Queensland on 19 March 2016, in conjunction with the state's local government elections. Electors were asked if they approved of a bill to amend the Constitution of Queensland 2001 and the Constitution Act Amendment Act 1934 to legislate for fixed-term elections for the Legislative Assembly of Queensland, to be held in the last week of October every four years. The referendum was conducted by the Electoral Commission Queensland (ECQ).
The 2019 Australian federal election was held on Saturday 18 May 2019 to elect members of the 46th Parliament of Australia. The election had been called following the dissolution of the 45th Parliament as elected at the 2016 double dissolution federal election. All 151 seats in the House of Representatives and 40 of the 76 seats in the Senate were up for election.
The 2024 Queensland state election was held on 26 October 2024 to elect all members to the Legislative Assembly of Queensland pursuant to the Constitution Amendment Act 2015. As a result of the 2016 Queensland term length referendum, the term of the parliament will run for four years.
