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.
The Parliament of South Australia is the bicameral legislature of the Australian state of South Australia. It consists of the 47-seat House of Assembly and the 22-seat Legislative Council. General elections are held every 4 years, with all of the lower house and half of the upper house filled at each election. It follows a Westminster system of parliamentary government with the executive branch required to both sit in parliament and hold the confidence of the House of Assembly. The parliament is based at Parliament House on North Terrace in the state capital of Adelaide.
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.
Linda Jean Burney is an Australian politician who is an Australian Labor Party member of the Australian House of Representatives, representing Barton since the 2016 federal election. She is Minister for Indigenous Australians in the Albanese ministry, and the first woman who identifies as Aboriginal to serve in that position.
Nyunggai Warren Stephen Mundine is an Australian businessman, political strategist, advocate for Indigenous affairs, and former politician. Starting his political career in 1995, Mundine became the first Indigenous person to serve on the City Council of Dubbo in New South Wales. He was the national president of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) from 2006 to 2007 but quit the party in 2012. In 2013, Mundine was appointed chairman of the Coalition government's Indigenous Advisory Council by then-prime minister, Tony Abbott. Mundine was the Liberal Party's unsuccessful candidate for the marginal seat of Gilmore on the south coast of New South Wales in the 2019 Australian federal election.
Kenneth George Wyatt is an Australian former politician. He was a member of the House of Representatives from 2010 to 2022, representing the Division of Hasluck for the Liberal Party. He is the first Indigenous Australian elected to the House of Representatives, the first to serve as a government minister, and the first appointed to cabinet.
Peter Bryden Malinauskas is an Australian politician serving as the 47th and current premier of South Australia since March 2022. He has been the leader of the South Australian branch of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and a member of the House of Assembly (MHA) for the division of Croydon since April 2018. He was previously the Leader of the Opposition from 2018 until he led his party into government in the 2022 state election.
Kyam Joseph Maher is an Australian politician and lawyer who has been Attorney-General of South Australia and the Leader of the Government in the Legislative Council since March 2022. He was appointed to a casual vacancy in the South Australian Legislative Council for the South Australian Branch of the Australian Labor Party on 17 October 2012. He previously served in the Cabinet of South Australia between 2015 and 2018 and was the Leader of the Government in the Legislative Council between 2016 and 2018.
The 2018 South Australian state election to elect members to the 54th Parliament of South Australia was held on 17 March 2018. All 47 seats in the House of Assembly or lower house, whose members were elected at the 2014 election, and 11 of 22 seats in the Legislative Council or upper house, last filled at the 2010 election, were contested. The record-16-year-incumbent Australian Labor Party (SA) government led by Premier Jay Weatherill was seeking a fifth four-year term, but was defeated by the opposition Liberal Party of Australia (SA), led by Opposition Leader Steven Marshall. Nick Xenophon's new SA Best party unsuccessfully sought to obtain the balance of power.
Indigenous treaties in Australia are proposed binding legal agreements between Australian governments and Australian First Nations. A treaty could recognise First Nations as distinct political communities, acknowledge Indigenous Sovereignty, set out mutually recognised rights and responsibilities or provide for some degree of self-government. As of 2023, no such treaties are in force, however the Commonwealth and all states except Western Australia have expressed support previously for a treaty process. However, the defeat of the Voice referendum has led to a reversal by several state liberal and national parties in their support for treaty and a much more ambigious expressed position by state Labor parties and governments.
The 2019 Victorian First Peoples' Assembly election was held between 16 September to 20 October 2019 to elect 21 members to the First Peoples' Assembly in the Australian state of Victoria. The election filled seats to the body, which was charged with the responsibility of preparing for negotiations with the Victorian Government about a treaty with the state's Aboriginal population.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, also known as the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, the First Nations Voice or simply the Voice, was a proposed Australian federal advisory body to comprise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, to represent the views of Indigenous communities.
Constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians refers to various proposals for changes to the Australian Constitution to recognise Indigenous Australians in the document. Various proposals have been suggested to symbolically recognise the special place Indigenous Australians have as the first peoples of Australia, along with substantial changes, such as prohibitions on racial discrimination, the protection of languages and the addition of new institutions. In 2017, the Uluru Statement from the Heart was released by Indigenous leaders, which called for the establishment of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament as their preferred form of recognition. When submitted to a national referendum in 2023 by the Albanese government, the proposal was heavily defeated.
The next Australian federal election will be held on or before 27 September 2025 to elect members of the 48th Parliament of Australia. All 150 seats in the House of Representatives and likely 40 of the 76 seats in the Senate will be contested. It is expected that at this election, the Labor government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will be seeking re-election to a second term in office, opposed by the Liberal/National Coalition under Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton.
Sarah Game is an Australian politician. She has been a member of the South Australian Legislative Council since the 2022 state election, representing Pauline Hanson's One Nation.
The 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum was a constitutional referendum held on 14 October 2023 in which the proposed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice was rejected. Voters were asked to approve an alteration to the Australian Constitution that would recognise Indigenous Australians in the document through prescribing a body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice that would have been able to "make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples". The proposal was rejected nationally and by a majority in every state, thus failing to secure the double majority required for amendment by section 128 of the constitution. The Australian Capital Territory was the only state or territory with a majority of "yes" votes.
Australian Indigenous advisory bodies are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advisory bodies established or proposed to be established by the Commonwealth and state and territory governments. Calls for such bodies, especially for a Commonwealth level Voice to Parliament, became prominent following the release of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, however similar bodies of various levels of independence have existed since the official end of assimilationist policies in the 1970s and the promotion of self-determination and reconciliation. Such bodies generally advise governments on policies and programmes that affect Indigenous Australians, and represent Indigenous interests in public debate. Other advisory bodies have been established in the context of state treaty process, to advise governments and Indigenous groups to prepare for upcoming negotiations.
The 2024 South Australian First Nations Voice election will be held on 21 March 2026 to elect the First Nations Voice to Parliament, an advisory body for Indigenous Australians in the Parliament of South Australia. The election will be held on the same day as the South Australian state election.
