Electoral reform was pioneered by the Australian colonies well before the first federal election in 1903. The first parliamentary election was held in Australia for the New South Wales(NSW) Legislative Council in 1843 and adult males who fulfilled certain property qualifications were granted the right to vote. During the 1850's, all other colonies except Western Australia(WA) introduced part-elected Legislative Councils and allowed similar property based suffrage.
By 1859, self-government and full parliamentary democracy had been granted to all colonies except WA(1860) and male suffrage (21 years of age ) applied to elections. The secret ballot was introduced first in South Australia(SA) and Victoria(VIC) in 1856, followed by NSW in 1858, Queensland(QLD) in 1859, WA in 1893 and Tasmania in 1896. During 1894, SA became the second government in the world after New Zealand to allow full adult suffrage(male and female) for the lower house of parliament and by 1908(VIC), women in all states had been granted the right to vote.
At federation in 1901, voluntary enrolment and voluntary voting applied to national elections held under state laws. In 1908, permanent electoral rolls were established for national elections and in 1911, compulsory enrolment was introduced. Queensland was the first state to introduce compulsory voting in 1914 but the law in reality introduced compulsory attendance - voters were required to attend a polling place and register their attendance. Compulsory attendance is known as 'compulsory voting' as voters cannot actually be forced to vote. In 1925, compulsory voting was applied for the federal election and 91.3 % of eligible Australian electors turned out to vote.
In Australia, translating votes into seats has been the subject of experimentation and innovation on the part of governments. The 1918 federal elections saw the first-past-the-post system being replaced with preferential voting (1919 for the Senate). The House of Representatives elections required electors to indicate their preferences for all candidates while the Senate allowed optional preferences after recording numbers for one more than twice the number to be elected. In 1948, the election system for the Senate was changed to proportional representation and Aborigines who were entitled to vote in state elections or who had served in the defence forces were granted the right to enrol and vote in federal elections.
In 1973, the qualifying age for enrolment, voting and candidature was lowered from 21 years of age to 18 and the Australian Electoral Office was established as a statutory authority to administer elections. Enrolment and voting was made compulsory for Aborigines in 1984. In the same year, group ticket voting was introduced in the Senate, public funding and disclosure was introduced as was registration of political parties and the independent Australian Electoral Commission was created to administer elections.
Image of teenagers Commonwealth of Australia copyright reproduced by permission from Democracy, Australian Electoral Commission, Canberra, ACT, 1995.
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