The Australian Senate is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the House of Representatives.
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 Legislative Council, or upper house, is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of South Australia. Its central purpose is to act as a house of review for legislation passed through the lower house, the House of Assembly. It sits in Parliament House in the state capital, Adelaide.
The Family First Party was a conservative political party in Australia which existed from 2002 to 2017. It was founded in South Australia where it enjoyed its greatest electoral support. Since the demise of the Australian Conservatives into which it merged, it has been refounded in that state as the Family First Party (2021), where it contested the state election in 2022, but failed to win a seat.
A group voting ticket (GVT) is a shortcut for voters in a preferential voting system, where a voter can indicate support for a list of candidates instead of marking preferences for individual candidates. For multi-member electoral divisions with single transferable voting, a group or party registers a GVT before an election with the electoral commission. When a voter selects a group or party above the line on a ballot paper, their vote is distributed according to the registered GVT for that group.
The state election for the 51st Parliament of South Australia was held in the Australian state of South Australia on 18 March 2006 to elect all members of the South Australian House of Assembly and 11 members of the South Australian Legislative Council. The election was conducted by the independent State Electoral Office.
Nick Xenophon is an Australian politician and lawyer who was a Senator for South Australia from 2008 to 2017. He was the leader of two political parties: Nick Xenophon Team federally, and Nick Xenophon's SA-BEST in South Australia.
Independent No Pokies, also known as No Pokies or Independent Nick Xenophon's No Pokies Campaign, was an independent South Australian Legislative Council ticket that ran upper house candidates at the 1997, 2002 and 2006 state elections. Poker machines or "pokies" are the Australian version of slot machines. It was replaced by the Nick Xenophon Team in 2014.
The Climate Change Coalition (CCC), briefly known as 4Change, was an Australian political party, which was formed in 2007 with a view to accelerate action by politicians from all parties on global warming and climate change. Its position on working towards addressing climate change stressed cooperation with big business in order to achieve significant progress on the issue. The party therefore advocated a close working relationship between environmentalists and the business community. The CCC was registered as a political party with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) on 4 September 2007 and deregistered on 25 March 2010.
John Andrew Darley is a former member of the South Australian Legislative Council and a former valuer-general.
The 2010 Australian federal election was held on Saturday, 21 August 2010 to elect members of the 43rd Parliament of Australia. The incumbent centre-left Australian Labor Party led by Prime Minister Julia Gillard won a second term against the opposition centre-right Liberal Party of Australia led by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and Coalition partner the National Party of Australia, led by Warren Truss, after Labor formed a minority government with the support of three independent MPs and one Australian Greens MP.
The following tables show state-by-state results in the Australian Senate at the 2007 federal election, 37 Coalition, 32 Labor, five Green, one Family First, and one independent, Nick Xenophon. Senators are elected for six-year terms, and took their seats from 1 July 2008, but senators representing the territories have three-year terms and take their seats immediately.
The following tables show state-by-state results in the Australian Senate at the 2013 Australian federal election.
On 5 April 2014, an Australian Senate special election in Western Australia was held. The special election was held six months after the 2013 Australian federal election. The result of that 2013 election for the Australian Senate in Western Australia was voided on 20 February 2014 by the High Court of Australia, sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns, because 1,375 ballot papers were lost during an official recount in November 2013. The High Court ruled that because the number of lost ballots exceeded the margin for the two remaining Senate seats, the only acceptable remedy was to void the results and hold a special election.
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.
An independent politician is a person who has served in a political office while not affiliated to any political party. Many of these have either resigned or been expelled from membership in political parties, and some have gone on to form their own political parties over time. In some cases members of parliament sit as an Independent while still holding party leadership. This can be for a multitude of reasons including Expulsion from party room, deregistration of party and suspension of membership.
Centre Alliance (CA), formerly known as the Nick Xenophon Team (NXT), is a centrist Australian political party based in the state of South Australia. It currently has one elected representative, Rebekha Sharkie in the House of Representatives.
Stirling Griff is an Australian former politician who was a Senator for South Australia from 2016 to 2022, representing the Nick Xenophon Team and Centre Alliance. His party changed its name from Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) led by Senator Nick Xenophon to Centre Alliance in April 2018 after Xenophon ceased to be connected with the party. He served as deputy leader of the party in the Senate until April 2018, when it adopted its current name. He was also the NXT spokesperson for health, immigration and communications. He was defeated at the 2022 federal election, having only secured 3% of the vote. His term expired on 30 June 2022.
SA-Best, formerly known as Nick Xenophon's SA-BEST, is a political party in South Australia. It was founded in 2017 by Nick Xenophon as a state-based partner to his Nick Xenophon Team party. After an unsuccessful 2022 South Australian state election, the party has one representative in the South Australian Legislative Council, Connie Bonaros, whose term expires in 2026.
Timothy Raphael Storer is a former Australian politician who served as a Senator for South Australia from February 2018 to June 2019. Following the disqualification of Skye Kakoschke-Moore during the parliamentary eligibility crisis, the Court of Disputed Returns declared Storer elected on a countback. He had been ranked below Kakoschke-Moore on the Nick Xenophon Team's ticket at the 2016 federal election. However, by the time he was declared elected he had left the party. He sat in the Senate as an independent and did not recontest his seat at the 2019 election.
