The Australian Senate is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the House of Representatives.
The Australian Greens (AG), commonly referred to simply as the Greens, are a confederation of green state and territory political parties in Australia. As of the 2022 federal election, the Greens are the third largest political party in Australia by vote and the fourth-largest by elected representation. The leader of the party is Adam Bandt, with Mehreen Faruqi serving as deputy leader. Larissa Waters currently holds the role of Senate leader.
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.
In the Parliament of Australia, a casual vacancy arises when a member of either the Senate or the House of Representatives:
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.
Kathryn Jean Martin Sullivan AM is an Australian former politician. A member of the Liberal Party, she was a Senator for Queensland from 1974 to 1984 and a member of the House of Representatives from 1984 to 2001, holding the seat of Moncrieff. She broke Dorothy Tangney's record for the longest period of service in federal parliament by a woman, which was later surpassed by Bronwyn Bishop. She was the first woman to have served in both houses of parliament.
Dame Dorothy Margaret Tangney DBE was an Australian politician. She was a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and served as a Senator for Western Australia from 1943 to 1968. She was the first woman elected to the Senate and one of the first two women elected to federal parliament, along with Enid Lyons.
Dame Annabelle Jane Mary Rankin was an Australian politician and diplomat. She was the first woman from Queensland elected to parliament, the first woman federal departmental minister, and the first Australian woman to be appointed head of a foreign mission.
Agnes Robertson Robertson was an Australian schoolteacher, community worker and politician who served as a Senator for Western Australia from 1950 to 1962. She was originally elected to parliament as a member of the Liberal Party at the 1949 federal election. In 1955, she was dropped from her party's ticket due to her age, but instead won the endorsement of the Country Party and was re-elected to a second term at the 1955 election; her final term ended a month before her 80th birthday. She was the first woman to represent the Country Party in federal parliament.
Government in Australia is elected by universal suffrage and Australian women participate in all levels of the government of the nation. In 1902, the newly formed Commonwealth of Australia became the first nation on earth to enact equal suffrage, enabling women to both vote and stand for election alongside men Women have been represented in Australian state parliaments since 1921, and in the Federal Parliament since 1943. The first female leader of an Australian State or Territory was elected in 1989, and the first female Prime Minister took office in 2010. In 2019 for the first time, a majority of members of the Australian Senate were women. At the time of its foundation in 1901, and again from 1952 to 2022, Australia has had a female monarch as ceremonial Head of State, while the first female Governor of an Australian State was appointed in 1991, and the first female Governor-General of Australia took office in 2008.
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.
The 1974 Australian federal election was held in Australia on 18 May 1974. All 127 seats in the House of Representatives and all 60 seats in the Senate were up for election, due to a double dissolution. The incumbent Labor Party led by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam defeated the opposition Liberal–Country coalition led by Billy Snedden. This marked the first time that a Labor leader won two consecutive elections.
The 1943 Australian federal election was held in Australia on 21 August 1943. All 74 seats in the House of Representatives and 19 of the 36 seats in the Senate were up for election. The incumbent Labor Party, led by Prime Minister John Curtin, defeated the opposition Country–UAP coalition led by Arthur Fadden in a landslide.
This is a list of members of the Australian Senate from 1941 to 1944. Half of its members were elected at the 23 October 1937 election and had terms starting on 1 July 1938 and finishing on 30 June 1944; the other half were elected at the 21 September 1940 election and had terms starting on 1 July 1941 and finishing on 30 June 1947. The process for filling casual vacancies was complex. While senators were elected for a six-year term, people appointed to a casual vacancy only held office until the earlier of the next election for the House of Representatives or the Senate.
This article provides information on candidates who stood for the 1974 Australian federal election. The election was held on 18 May 1974.
This article provides information on candidates who stood for the 1975 Australian federal election. The election was held on 13 December 1975.
The 2013 Australian federal election to elect the members of the 44th Parliament of Australia took place on Saturday 7 September 2013. The centre-right Liberal/National Coalition opposition led by Opposition leader Tony Abbott of the Liberal Party of Australia and Coalition partner the National Party of Australia, led by Warren Truss, defeated the incumbent centre-left Labor Party government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in a landslide. It was also the third time in history that a party won 90 or more seats at an Australian election. Labor had been in government for six years since being elected in the 2007 election. This election marked the end of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Labor government and the start of the 9 year long Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Liberal-National Coalition government. Abbott was sworn in by the Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, as Australia's new prime minister on 18 September 2013, along with the Abbott Ministry. The 44th Parliament of Australia opened on 12 November 2013, with the members of the House of Representatives and territory senators sworn in. The state senators were sworn in by the next Governor-General Peter Cosgrove on 7 July 2014, with their six-year terms commencing on 1 July.
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.
Western Australia politics takes place in context of a constitutional monarchy with a bicameral parliamentary system, and like other Australian states, Western Australia is part of the federation known as the Commonwealth of Australia.
The Statues of Dorothy Tangney and Enid Lyons are located near Old Parliament House in Canberra, Australia. The bronze statues honour the women's contributions to Australia: Dorothy Tangney was Australia's first woman senator, and Enid Lyons was the first woman elected to the House of Representatives. The statues are the first statues of women to be erected in the parliamentary zone in Canberra.
