Election for the 45th Parliament of Australia
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The 2016 Australian federal election was a double dissolution election held on Saturday 2 July to elect all 226 members of the 45th Parliament of Australia, after an extended eight-week official campaign period. It was the first double dissolution election since the 1987 election and the first under a new voting system for the Senate that replaced group voting tickets with optional preferential voting.
In the 150-seat House of Representatives, the one-term incumbent Coalition government was reelected with a reduced 76 seats, marking the first time since 2004 that a government had been reelected with an absolute majority. Labor picked up a significant number of previously government-held seats for a total of 69 seats, recovering much of what it had lost in its severe defeat of 2013. On the crossbench, the Greens, the Nick Xenophon Team, Katter's Australian Party, and independents Wilkie and McGowan won a seat each. For the first time since federation, a party managed to form government without winning a plurality of seats in the two most populous states, New South Wales and Victoria. One re-count was held by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) for the Division of Herbert, confirming that Labor won the seat by 37 votes.
The final outcome in the 76-seat Senate took over four weeks to complete. Announced on 4 August, the results revealed a reduced plurality of 30 seats for the Coalition, 26 for Labor, and a record 20 for crossbenchers including 9 Greens, 4 from One Nation and 3 from the Xenophon Team. Former broadcaster and Justice Party founder Derryn Hinch won a seat, while Jacqui Lambie, Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm and Family First's Bob Day retained theirs. The Coalition will require nine additional votes for a Senate majority, an increase of three. Both major parties agreed to allocate six-year terms to the first six senators elected in each state, while the last six would serve three-year terms. Labor and the Coalition each gained a six-year Senator at the expense of Hinch and the Greens, who criticised the major parties for rejecting the "recount" method despite supporting it in two bipartisan senate resolutions in 1998 and 2010.
A number of initially-elected senators were declared ineligible a result of the 2017–18 Australian parliamentary eligibility crisis, and replaced after recounts.
As of 2023 this is the most recent federal election for the major parties to have new leaders when Shorten replaced Kevin Rudd after the 2013 Australian federal election, loss for the latter, as Labor leader after beating Anthony Albanese in the October 2013 Australian Labor Party leadership election a month later, and Turnbull replaced Tony Abbott as Liberal leader and prime minister on 14 September 2015 after a leadership challenge win in the September 2015 Liberal Party of Australia leadership spill ten months prior.
Electoral system.
Elections in Australia use a full-preferential system in one vote, one value single-member seats for the 150-member House of Representatives (lower house) and in time for this election changed from full-preferential group voting tickets to an optional-preferential single transferable vote system of proportional representation in the 76-member Senate (upper house). Voting is compulsory but subject to constitutional constraints. The decision as to the type of election and its date is for the Prime Minister, who advises the Governor-General to set the process in motion by dissolving the lower or both houses and issuing writs for election.
Election date.
Section 13 of the constitution requires that in half-Senate elections the election of state senators must take place within one year before the places become vacant. Since the normal terms of half the senators would have ended on 30 June 2017, the writs for a half-Senate election could not be issued earlier than 1 July 2016, and the earliest possible date for a simultaneous House/half-Senate election would have been 6 August 2016. There is no constitutional requirement for simultaneous elections for the Senate and the House of Representatives, and there are precedents for separate elections; however, governments and the electorate have long preferred that elections for the two Houses take place simultaneously.
A House-only election can be called at any time during a parliamentary term. Whether held simultaneously with a Senate election or separately, an election for the House of Representatives was required to have been held on or before 14 January 2017, which is calculated under provisions of the constitution and the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 (CEA). Section 28 of the Constitution of Australia provides that the term of a House expires three years from the first sitting of the House, unless it is dissolved earlier. The previous federal election was held on 7 September 2013. The 44th Parliament of Australia opened on 12 November 2013 and its term would have expired on 11 November 2016. Writs for an election can be issued up to ten days after a dissolution or expiry of the House. Up to 27 days can be allowed for nominations, and the actual election can be set for a maximum of 31 days after close of nominations, resulting in the latest possible House of Representatives election date of Saturday, 14 January 2017.
A double dissolution cannot take place within six months before the date of the expiry of the House of Representatives. That meant that a double dissolution could not be granted after 11 May 2016. Allowing for the same stages indicated above, the last possible date for a double dissolution election was 16 July 2016.
On 2 November 2015, Prime Minister Turnbull stated: "I would say around September–October [2016] is when you should expect the next election to be." However, in December 2015, ABC News reported that some "senior Liberal MPs" had been seeking an election as early as March 2016. An election held at this time would have required a separate half-Senate election to be held in late 2016 or early 2017.
On 21 March 2016, Turnbull announced that the parliament would be recalled for both houses to sit on 18 April to consider for a third time the bills to reinstate the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). Turnbull also said that if the Senate failed to pass the bill, then there would be a double dissolution of parliament and an election would be held on 2 July. The delivery of the federal budget was also brought forward from 10 May to 3 May. On 18 April, the Senate once again rejected the bills to reinstate the ABCC. On 8 May Malcolm Turnbull attended Government House to advise the Governor-General to issue the writs for a double dissolution on 9 May. This confirmed the date of the election; 2 July 2016. In the weeks after 8 May, there were 132,000 additions to the electoral roll, and a total of 687,000 enrolment transactions, and it was estimated that 95% of eligible Australians were enrolled for the election, with a participation rate of those under 24 of 86.7%.
Double dissolution triggers.
By 18 April 2016 there were four bills that met the requirements of Section 57 of the constitution for a double dissolution. 
On 19 April the Prime Minister confirmed that, following the 2016 federal budget set for 3 May, he would advise the Governor-General to call a double dissolution election on Saturday 2 July. Any or all of these four bills could have been cited in his advice. On Sunday 8 May 2016, Turnbull visited Government House and formally advised Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove to dissolve both Houses of Parliament and issue the writs for a double dissolution election to be held on 2 July 2016. The advice was based on Parliament's inability to pass the following three bills:
The Governor-General accepted the advice and dissolved both houses of the Parliament the following day, 9 May 2016.
Constitutional and legal provisions.
The constitutional and legal provisions which impacted on the choice of election dates include:
Election timeline.
On 8 May 2016, the office of the Governor-General released documents relating to the calling of the election. The documents set out a timeline of key dates for the election.
Background.
The Coalition won the 2013 federal election with 90 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives, on a swing of 17 seats or 3.6 points on a two-party basis, defeating the six-year Labor government. Labor held 55 seats, and crossbenchers held the remaining five. The Abbott government was sworn into office on 18 September 2013.
Kevin Rudd resigned as Labor's leader following the defeat of the party. Chris Bowen became the interim leader in the approach to a leadership election. Two candidates, Anthony Albanese and Bill Shorten, declared their candidacy; Shorten was declared the winner on 13 October 2013.
As a result of lost ballot papers, on 18 February 2014 the High Court of Australia, sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns, ordered a new half-Senate election for Western Australia, which was held on 5 April 2014.
Senator John Madigan resigned from the Democratic Labour Party and became an independent Senator in September 2014, citing long-term internal party tensions.
On 24 November 2014, Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie resigned from the Palmer United Party and on 13 March 2015, Queensland Senator Glenn Lazarus also announced his resignation from the Palmer United Party; both then sat as independents.
On 14 September 2015, the incumbent Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, was challenged for the leadership of the Liberal Party and thus the prime ministership by Malcolm Turnbull, the Minister for Communications. Turnbull won the vote 54–44 and on 15 September was sworn in as prime minister, starting the Turnbull government. On 11 February 2016 Warren Truss, the Deputy Prime Minister, announced his decision to retire from politics at the 2016 federal election and immediately stood aside as Leader of the Nationals. Barnaby Joyce was elected as Leader and was sworn as the Deputy Prime Minister, and Fiona Nash was elected as Deputy Leader of the Nationals. Truss also resigned from the Turnbull Ministry.
Ian Macfarlane attempted to defect from the Liberal to the National party room with accompanying demands for additional Nationals cabinet representation, and the Mal Brough–James Ashby diary controversy deepened in the last week of the campaign. Along with the unexpected by-election swing and Turnbull's significantly lessened personal ratings in the concurrent December Newspoll, some News Corp Australia journalists claimed that Turnbull's honeymoon was over.
The Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) listed many candidates throughout Australia, with ABC psephologist Antony Green indicating NXT had a "strong chance of winning lower house seats and three or four Senate seats".
Liberal Senator Michael Ronaldson announced on 18 December 2015 that he would leave parliament before the next election, after moving from the outer ministry in the Abbott government to the backbench in the Turnbull government. He resigned on 28 February 2016, and the casual vacancy was filled by James Paterson on 9 March 2016.
Labor Senator Joe Bullock announced on 1 March 2016 that he would be resigning from the Senate after the autumn sittings of parliament, citing—among other reasons—his opposition to same-sex marriage being at odds with the Labor Party's platform to bind its members in a supporting vote after 2019. Bullock tendered his resignation to Senate President Stephen Parry on 13 April 2016. The casual vacancy was filled by Pat Dodson on 28 April 2016.
Palmer United Party leader Clive Palmer announced on 4 May 2016 that he would not recontest his seat of Fairfax at the election. On 23 May he also ruled out running for a Senate seat.
In the lower house seat of Brisbane, both the Liberal-National and Labor candidates were openly gay; a first in Australian federal political history.
By-elections.
In the 44th Parliament, there were three by-elections. Rudd resigned from Parliament on 22 November 2013, triggering the 2014 Griffith by-election, which was held on 8 February, with Terri Butler retaining the seat for Labor.
On 21 July 2015, Liberal Don Randall died, triggering the 2015 Canning by-election, which was held on 19 September. Andrew Hastie retained the seat for the Liberal Party, having to rely on preferences after suffering a substantial swing to the Labor candidate.
Joe Hockey was not retained as Treasurer in the Turnbull Ministry, and announced his resignation from Parliament shortly afterwards, triggering the 2015 North Sydney by-election which was held on 5 December. The seat was retained for the Liberal Party by Trent Zimmerman. Zimmerman won with 48.2% of the primary vote after a larger-than-predicted 12.8-point swing against the Turnbull Coalition government. This was only the