Redistribution (Australia)
Section 24 of the Constitution of Australia requires that the total number of members of the Australian House of Representatives shall be "as nearly as practicable" twice as many as the number of members of the Australian Senate. There is presently a total of 76 senators: 12 senators from each of the six states and two from each of the two autonomous internal territories (the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory). There are 150 members of the Australian House of Representatives.
Australian Senate committees
Senate committees can be affected by the party composition of the Senate. The Clerk of the Senate, Harry Evans, argued that a government majority of seats in the Senate resulted in limitations on what the committees inquired into, and how readily governments responded to their queries and requests for information. Statistics published by centrist political party the Australian Democrats have been used to support the contention that committee operations have been inhibited by government control of the Senate, particularly in respect of selection of topics for committee inquiry. However Senator Minchin, the leader of the government in the Senate in the mid-2000s, pointed out that their political rivals had previously cut off debate on more bills in the Senate than had his government.