Australia‘s 47th Parliament

Australia’s 47th parliament sat for the first time today.
The new Labor government has an absolute majority in the lower house, the House of Representatives, following the recent election.
The House will have 58 women, including 19 first-term MPs, making 38% of the chamber female. This is the highest proportion of women ever in the lower house.
The upper house Senate reached and exceeded 50% in the last parliament, and will maintain this in the new parliament.

However Labor has just 26 of the 76 seats in the Senate, short of the 39 votes the government needs for a majority.
The Senate crossbench has grown to 18 seats after the recent election.
This means the Labor government will need the support of 13 members of either the crossbench or the Liberal/National Party coalition opposition to pass legislation in the Upper House.
There will obviously be a lot of negotiations going on there over the next three years.
The Australian people also voted in nine new Indigenous representatives in Federal parliament for the current term, alongside two sitting senators. Six members are part of the Labor government, while two are returning senators sitting for the Greens.
For the Liberals it was a case of two in, one out.

The result means an extra four Indigenous voices in parliament between both chambers – three in the House of Representatives and eight in the Senate.
In terms of representation, Indigenous members will account for 10.5 per cent of the 76 Senate seats, and 1.9 per cent of 151 House of Representatives seats.
That leaves total representation at 4.8 per cent, above the Indigenous Australian population of 3.3 per cent.