Australian Politics: The Australian Political System

 

In Australia their parliament is made of the House of Representatives( Lower House) and the Senate (Upper House). There are 150 seats in the House of Representatives and 76 in the Senate (they have three and six year terms respectively), members of both of these are elected by different methods. The first of these is called preferential voting which is used to elect members of the House. The way that it works is that a candidate has to have an absolute majority (more than 50%) of the votes to be elected, in the case that none of the candidates gets the required number of votes then the one with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and his or her votes go to the candidates that the different voters ranked next e.g. the ones they preferred more. This process is repeated until one of the candidates has an absolute majority. The second method is a form of proportional voting called Single Transferable Vote (STV), the way that this works is that a candidate is elected when his or her number of votes is equal to or exceeds the quota. The way the quota works is that if there are 20,000 votes and 8 candidates then the quota would be 20,000 divided by (8+1) + 1= 2,223. So the candidates would need to get 2,223 votes or more to get elected.

Political Parties with Federal Representation in Australia

Coalition (Australia):

Founded: 1945

Leader: Tony Abbot (2009 to present, Prime Minister 2013 to Present)

Number of seats in the Senate: 23

Number of seats in the House of Representatives: 58

Founded: 2008

Leader: Campbell Newman (2011 to present)

Number of seats in the Senate: 6

Number of seats in the House of Representatives: 22

Founded: 1920

Leader: Warren Truss (2007 to present, Deputy Prime Minister 2013 to present)

Number of seats in the Senate: 3

Number of seats in the House of Representatives: 9

Founded: 1974

Leader: Adam Giles (2013 to present)

Number of seats in the Senate: 1

Number of seats in the House of Representatives: 1

Australian Labor Party:

 

Founded: 1901

Leader: Bill Shorten

Number of seats in the Senate: 25

Number of seats in the House of Representatives: 55

Australian Greens:

Founded: 1992

Leader: Christine Milne (2012 to present)

Number of seats in the Senate: 10

Number of seats in the House of Representatives: 1

Palmer United Party:

Founded: 2013

Leader: Clive Palmer

Number of seats in the Senate: 3

Number of seats in the House of Representatives: 1

Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party:

Founded: 2013

Leader: Tony Standfield

Number of seats in the Senate: 1

Number of seats in the House of Representatives: 0

Liberal Democratic Party (Australia):

 

Founded: 2001

Leader: Gabriel Buckley

Number of seats in the Senate: 1

Number of seats in the House of Representatives: 0

Family First Party:

Founded: 2001

Leader: Bob Day

Number of seats in the Senate: 1

Number of seats in the House of Representatives: 0

Democratic Labor Party:

Founded: 1955

Leader: John Madigan

Number of seats in the Senate: 1

Number of seats in the House of Representatives: 0

Katter's Australian Party:

Founded: 2011

Leader: Bob Katter (2011 to present)

Number of seats in the Senate: 0

Number of seats in the House of Representatives: 1