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 set down in Chapter I of the Constitution of Australia.
The Parliament of Australia is the federal legislature of Australia. It consists of three elements: the monarch of Australia, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. It combines elements from the Westminster system, in which the party or coalition with a majority in the lower house is entitled to form a government, and the United States Congress, which affords equal representation to each of the states, and scrutinises legislation before it can be signed into law.
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.
The Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory is the unicameral legislature of Australia’s Northern Territory. The Legislative Assembly has 25 members, each elected in single-member electorates for four-year terms. The voting method for the Assembly is the full-preferential voting system, having previously been optional preferential voting. Elections are on the fourth Saturday in August of the fourth year after the previous election, but can be earlier in the event of a no-confidence vote in the government. The most recent election for the Legislative Assembly was the 2024 election held on 24 August. The next election is scheduled for 26 August 2028.
The South Australian House of Assembly is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of South Australia, the other being the Legislative Council. It sits in Parliament House in the state capital, Adelaide.
The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is the independent statutory authority and agency of the Australian Government responsible for the management of federal Australian elections, by-elections and referendums.
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 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 Franchise Act 1902(Cth) was an Act of the Parliament of Australia which set out who was entitled to vote in Australian federal elections. The Act established, in time for the 1903 Australian federal election, suffrage for federal elections for those who were British subjects over 21 years of age who had lived in Australia for six months. The Act excluded natives of Australia, Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands (other than New Zealand) from the federal franchise, unless they were already enrolled to vote in an Australian state. The Act gave Australian women the right to vote and stand for parliament at the federal level unless they fell into one of the categories of people excluded from the franchise.
A Langer vote was a style of voting in the Australian electoral system designed to avoid the requirement to express preferences for all candidates without the vote being rejected as informal. The title is a tribute to Albert Langer, an Australian political activist, who advocated for the use of this style as a de facto method of optional preferential voting for making a valid vote for the voter's preferred candidates while the deliberate "error" avoided the vote being counted for one of the major political parties.
The voting rights of Indigenous Australians became an issue from the mid-19th century, when responsible government was being granted to Britain's Australian colonies, and suffrage qualifications were being debated. The resolution of universal rights progressed into the mid-20th century.
Herbert James Mockford Payne was an Australian politician. He served as a Senator for Tasmania from 1920 to 1938 and as a member of the Tasmanian House of Assembly from 1903 to 1920.
Women's suffrage in Australia was one of the early achievements of Australian democracy. Following the progressive establishment of male suffrage in the Australian colonies from the 1840s to the 1890s, an organised push for women's enfranchisement gathered momentum from the 1880s, and began to be legislated from the 1890s. South Australian women achieved the right to vote and to stand for office in 1895, following the world first Constitutional Amendment Act 1894 which gained royal assent the following year. This preceded even universal male suffrage in Tasmania. Western Australia granted women the right to vote from 1899, although with racial restrictions. In 1902, the newly established Australian Parliament passed the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902, which gave women equal voting rights to men and the right to stand for federal parliament. By 1908, the remaining Australian states had legislated for women's suffrage for state elections. Grace Benny was elected as the first female local government councillor in 1919, Edith Cowan the first state Parliamentarian in 1921, Dorothy Tangney the first Senator and Enid Lyons the first Member of the House of Representatives in 1943.
Suffrage in Australia is the voting rights in the Commonwealth of Australia, its six component states and territories, and local governments. The colonies of Australia began to grant universal male suffrage from 1856, with women's suffrage on equal terms following between the 1890s and 1900s. Some jurisdictions introduced racial restrictions on voting from 1885, and by 1902 most Australian residents who were not of European descent were explicitly or effectively excluded from voting and standing for office, including at the Federal level. Such restrictions had been removed by 1966. Today, the right to vote at all levels of government is held by citizens of Australia over the age of 18 years, excluding some prisoners and people "of unsound mind".
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.
In Australia, voter registration is called enrolment. Enrolment is a prerequisite for voting at federal elections, by-elections and referendums, as well as all state and local government elections; and it is generally compulsory for enrolled persons to vote unless otherwise exempted or excused. Enrolment is compulsory for Australian citizens over 18 years of age who have lived at their current address for at least one month. Enrolment is not compulsory for persons with no fixed address who are not already enrolled. Residents in Australia who had been enrolled as British subjects on 25 January 1984, though not Australian citizens, continue to be enrolled, and cannot opt out of enrolment. For local government elections, an elector generally does not require to be an Australian citizen. Once enrolled, a person cannot opt out of enrolment. Enrolment is optional for 16- or 17-year-olds, but they cannot vote until they turn 18, and persons who have applied for Australian citizenship may also apply for provisional enrolment which takes effect on the granting of citizenship.
The 2025 Australian federal election will be held on or before 17 May 2025, or be held on or before 27 September 2025 to elect members of the 48th Parliament of Australia. 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, minor parties such as the Greens, and independents.
Fusion: Science, Pirate, Secular, Climate Emergency, commonly known as Fusion Party Australia or simply Fusion, is a political party in Australia. It was created by the merging of the Science Party, Pirate Party, Secular Party, Vote Planet, and Climate Change Justice Party.
