page_title: Parliament of Australia
section_title: Both Houses
hierarchical_section_title: Parliament of Australia / Composition and electoral systems / Both Houses
caption_attribution_description: English: Lake Burley Griffin, in the foreground, with Old and New Parliament House in the background viewed from Mount Ainslie, Canberra, ACT.
context_page_description: The Parliament of Australia is the legislative branch of the government of Australia. It consists of three elements: the Crown, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The combination of two elected chambers, in which the members of the Senate represent the states and territories while the members of the House represent electoral divisions according to population, is modelled on the United States Congress. Through both chambers, however, there is a fused executive, drawn from the Westminster system.
  The upper house, the Senate, consists of 76 members: twelve for each state, and two each for the territories, Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory. Senators are elected using the single transferable vote proportional representation system and as a result, the chamber features a multitude of parties vying for power. The governing party or coalition has not held a majority in the Senate since 1981 and usually needs to negotiate with other parties and Independents to get legislation passed.
context_section_description: It is not possible to be simultaneously a member of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, but a number of people have been members of both Houses at different times in their parliamentary career (see List of people who have served in both Houses of the Australian Parliament).
  Only Australian citizens are eligible for election to either house. They must not also hold citizenship of a "foreign power". When the Constitution was drafted, all Australians were British subjects, so the word "foreign" meant non-British. But, in the landmark case Sue v Hill (1999), the High Court of Australia ruled that, at least since the Australia Act 1986, Britain has been a "foreign power", so that British citizens are also excluded.
  Compulsory voting was introduced for federal elections in 1924. The immediate justification for compulsory voting was the low voter turnout (59.38%) at the 1922 federal election, down from 71.59% at the 1919 federal election. Compulsory voting was not on the platform of either the Stanley Bruce-led Nationalist/Country party coalition government or the Matthew Charlton-led Labor opposition. The actual initiative for change was made by Herbert Payne, a backbench Tasmanian Nationalist Senator who on 16 July 1924 introduced a private Senator's bill in the Senate. Payne's bill was passed with little debate (the House of Representatives agreeing to it in less than an hour), and in neither house was a division required, hence no votes were recorded against the bill. The 1925 federal election was the first to be conducted under compulsory voting, which saw the turnout figure rise to 91.4%. The turnout increased to about 95% within a couple of elections and has stayed at about that level since.
  Since 1973, citizens have had the right to vote upon turning 18. Prior to this it was 21.
  Australian Federal Police officers armed with assault rifles have been situated in both chambers of the Federal Parliament since 2015. It is the first time in Australian history that a parliament has possessed armed personnel.
caption: Canberra from Mount Ainslie: across the lake is Old Parliament House and behind it the new Parliament House
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