The Tally Room

Ben was joined by Frank Bongiorno and Chris Monnox to discuss the history of Australia's federal parliament being expanded, in 1949 and 1984. We discuss the motivations for these changes, the positions taken by the parties and why it happened when it did. We...

There has been a great deal of focus this week on the events of the Dismissal of Gough Whitlam's Labor government, fifty years ago last Tuesday. I have been particularly drawn to examining how the role of the Senate has changed since 1975, but also...

Today's post is the latest chapter in my series analysing the history of previous parliamentary expansions at a federal level. In my last post, I analysed how the pendulum changed during the 1948 redistribution. For this post, I am going to look at how...

The first expansion of parliament was passed in 1948, and came into force at the 1949 election. It was also the largest increase we've seen, either proportionally or in raw numbers. The House and Senate were each expanded by two thirds - the House...

Yes, it's very early, but I've launched my partial guide to the next Australian federal election, due in 2028. This guide covers the 102 House seats in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. These jurisdictions won't have a redistribution (barring an...

When the new electoral map was published in 1984, it kicked off a game of musical chairs, but with a difference - this time there were more seats than players. Some of these seats were more attractive than others, but it wasn't simply a...

If there is a substantial expansion of the size of the federal Parliament, it will be a rare event. It has only happened twice before since federation, and hasn't happened at all in my lifetime. About two thirds of Australian voters hadn't cast their...

As part of my efforts to prepare election guides for all of the upcoming elections, I have now published a guide to the 2027 NSW state election. While that election is still almost a year and a half away, the lack of redistributions in...

The Australian Electoral Commission yesterday published the official statistics that will be used for federal redistributions in South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT. This gives us a bit more insight into what is likely to happen in those redistributions. Electorates must be drawn so each...

New Zealand will go to the polls next year at their next general election, and the electoral map of New Zealand has been redrawn in advance of that election. New Zealand's parliament is elected via mixed member proportional, with a majority of MPs elected to...