Member-only story
Australian Parliamentarians & diversity: 1996–2022 (Part 1 of 3)
Watching many of the speeches by first time elected Australian Parliamentarians was powerful viewing— combined with the public commentary that the latest election is the most diverse to date.
It had me thinking about the composition over time. I wanted to understand how many women, how many people of colour and how many women of colour there have been — when and where I am represented in the ultimate place of power and where decisions are made?
So I did what I do best and had a look at data from the last 10 election results — 1996 to 2022.
Data, assumptions and definitions
Data: The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is the independent federal agency in charge of organising, conducting and supervising federal Australian elections, by-elections and referendums.
There are many downloadable (raw) election datasets going back decades — this was the primary source of my analysis. I analysed election results from 1996 to the most recent election held earlier this year in May 2022. I’ve graphed the data according to the election cycles which are held every ~3 years.
Australian federal parliament has two elected chambers — the House of Representatives (lower house) and the Senate (upper…
