Australian House of Representatives
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 out in Chapter I of the Constitution of Australia.
The term of members of the House of Representatives is a maximum of three years from the date of the first sitting of the House, but on only one occasion since Federation has the maximum term been reached. The House is almost always dissolved earlier, usually alone but sometimes in a double dissolution alongside the whole Senate. Elections for members of the House of Representatives have always been held in conjunction with those for the Senate since the 1970s.
A member of the House may be referred to as a "Member of Parliament", while a member of the Senate is usually referred to as a "senator". Under the conventions of the Westminster system, the government of the day and the prime minister must achieve and maintain the confidence of this House in order to gain and remain in power.
The House of Representatives currently consists of 150 members, elected by and representing single member districts known as electoral divisions. The number of members is not fixed but can vary with boundary changes resulting from electoral redistributions, which are required on a regular basis. Prior to the 1984 election, the number of members increased from 125 to 148. It was reduced to 147 for the 1993 election, returned to 148 for the 1996 election, increased to 150 for the 2001 election, and stood at 151 for the 2022 Australian federal election. The 2025 election saw 150 seats contested.
The House of Representatives chamber is designed to seat up to 172 members, with provision for an ultimate total of 240 to be accommodated.
Each division elects one member using full-preferential voting. This voting system was put in place after the 1918 Swan by-election, which Labor unexpectedly won when two conservative parties of that era split a substantially larger conservative vote between themselves. The Nationalist government of the time changed the lower house voting system from first-past-the-post to full-preferential voting, effective from the 1919 general election.
Origins and role
The Constitution of Australia of 1900 established the House of Representatives in a newly federated Australia. The House is presided over by the speaker. Members of the House are elected from single member electorates.One vote, one value legislation requires all electorates within each state to have approximately the same number of voters. In 2022 there was an average of just over 117,000 electors per seat. However, the baseline quota for the number of voters in an electorate is determined by the number of voters in the state in which that electorate is found. The electorates of the smallest states and territories tend to have more variation from the mean in terms of numbers of electors. Each state is guaranteed a minimum of five seats in the Constitution, which has the effect of granting Tasmania more seats than they would otherwise be entitled to due to their population size. Federal electorates have their boundaries redrawn or redistributed whenever a state or territory has its number of seats adjusted, if electorates are not generally matched by population size or if seven years have passed since the most recent redistribution. Full preferential voting is used in elections. A full allocation of preferences is required for a vote to be considered formal. This allows for a calculation of the two-party-preferred vote.
Under section 24 of the Constitution, each state is entitled to members based on a population quota determined from the "latest statistics of the Commonwealth". These statistics arise from the census conducted under the auspices of section 51. Until its repeal by the 1967 referendum, section 127 prohibited the inclusion of Aboriginal people in section 24 determinations as including the Indigenous peoples could alter the distribution of seats between the states to the benefit of states with larger Aboriginal populations.
The total number of seats representing states in the House of Representatives must be "as nearly as practicable, twice the number of the senators", according to section 24 of the Constitution. This requirement is known as the "nexus provision". This requirement was included in the Constitution in order to maintain the power of the Senate relative to the House of Representative: both due to the belief by the drafters of the Constitution that a numerically weaker Senate would inherently lead to a lower "influence, prestige, and dignity" and to ensure the influence of the Senate in case of a joint sitting after a double dissolution. Another reason was to make it harder politically for the House of Representatives to be increased, thereby maintaining the smaller states over representation in the lower house due to their constitutional minimum of five seats. The requirements for territory seats are set via legislation, which currently requires that the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory have at least one member each.
According to the Australian Constitution, the powers of both Houses are nearly equal, with the consent of both Houses needed to pass legislation. The difference mostly relates to taxation legislation. In practice, by convention, the person who can control a majority of votes in the lower house is invited by the governor-general to form the government. The leader of that party becomes the prime minister, who then can nominate other elected members of the government party in both the House and the Senate to become ministers responsible for various portfolios and administer government departments.
Bills appropriating money can only be introduced or amended in the lower house and thus only the party with a majority in the lower house can govern. In the current Australian party system, virtually all contentious votes are along party lines, with relatively few members crossing the floor to vote against their party's position; thus the party able to form government usually has a majority and is able to reliably win votes in the lower house.
The opposition party's main roles in the House are to present arguments against the government's policies and legislation where appropriate, and to attempt to hold the government accountable as much as possible by asking questions of ministers during question time and during debates on motions and legislation.
The preferential voting system of the lower house has resulted in a single party or coalition almost always having a majority of seats in the chamber. After the first decade of Federation, the only time when this did not occur was following the 1940 and 2010 elections. By contrast, the only period in recent times during which the government of the day has had a majority in the Senate was from July 2005 to July 2008. Hence, results of votes in the Senate are usually more contested and closely watched.
In a reflection of the United Kingdom House of Commons, the predominant colour of the furnishings in the House of Representatives is green. However, the colour was lightened and given a uniquely Australian cast in the new Parliament House, suggesting the colour of eucalyptus tree leaves. Also, unlike the House of Commons, the seating arrangement of the crossbench is horse-shoe shaped, a hybrid of oppositional arrangements of the House of Commons and hemicycle arrangements preferred by legislatures of in Europe and the United States.
Australian parliaments are notoriously rowdy, with MPs often trading colourful insults. As a result, the speaker frequently has to use the disciplinary powers vested in them under standing orders.
Since 2015, Australian Federal Police officers armed with assault rifles have been present in both chambers of the federal Parliament.
Electoral system
From the beginning of Federation until 1918, first-past-the-post voting was used in order to elect members of the House of Representatives but since the 1918 Swan by-election which Labor unexpectedly won with the largest primary vote due to vote splitting amongst the conservative parties, the Nationalist Party government, a predecessor of the modern-day Liberal Party of Australia, changed the lower house voting system to full preferential voting, as of the subsequent 1919 election. This system has remained in place ever since, allowing the Coalition parties to safely contest the same seats. Full-preference preferential voting re-elected the Hawke government at the 1990 election, the first time in federal history that Labor had obtained a net benefit from preferential voting.From 1949 onwards, the vast majority of electorates, nearly 90%, are won by the candidate leading on first preferences, giving the same result as if the same votes had been counted using first-past-the-post voting. The highest proportion of seats won by the candidate not leading on first preferences was the 1972 federal election, with 14 of 125 seats not won by the plurality candidate.
Allocation process for the House of Representatives
The main elements of the operation of preferential voting for single-member House of Representatives divisions are as follows:- Voters are required to place the number "1" against their first choice of candidate, known as the "first preference" or "primary vote".
- Voters are then required to place the numbers "2", "3", etc., against all of the other candidates listed on the ballot paper, in order of preference. Every candidate must be numbered, otherwise the vote becomes "informal"
- Prior to counting, each ballot paper is examined to ensure that it is validly filled in.
- The number "1" or first preference votes are counted first. If no candidate secures an absolute majority of first preference votes, then the candidate with the fewest votes is excluded from the count.
- The votes for the eliminated candidate are re-allocated to the remaining candidates according to the number "2" or "second preference" votes.
- If no candidate has yet secured an absolute majority of the vote, then the next candidate with the fewest primary votes is eliminated. This preference allocation is repeated until there is a candidate with an absolute majority. Where a second preference is expressed for a candidate who has already been eliminated, the voter's third or subsequent preferences are used.