Fun facts about democracy in Australia
Did you Know?
- Australia was one of the first countries to let women vote (1902), but Aboriginal people couldn’t vote until 1962
- The longest serving Prime Minister worked for a total of 18 years and 5 months
- Australia is one of the few countries where voting is compulsory
- You can enrol to vote from age 16 (but can’t vote until 18)
- The first Aboriginal person in Federal Parliament was Neville Bonner in 1971
- Parliament House in Canberra has over 4,500 rooms
- The Australian Constitution has been changed only 8 times out of 44 attempts since 1901
- When Parliament House was built, they used Kimberley sandstone for some of the walls
- The Kimberley region often has the highest voter turnout in remote Australia
- Halls Creek Shire was the first in the Kimberley to have a majority of Aboriginal councillors
The youngest person ever elected to a Kimberley shire council was 19 years old.
Voting Facts
- Election day is always on a Saturday
- We use pencils to vote (not pens)
- You can vote from Antarctica if you’re working there
- The shortest time someone was Prime Minister was 7 days
- The youngest person ever elected to Parliament was 22 years old
- Some remote polling places have only 20 voters, while some city ones have over 100,000
Some remote communities in the Kimberley get mobile polling teams - AEC mob come to community.
Democracy in action
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were given the right to vote in Federal elections in 1962
- There are over 7,000 polling places during a federal election
- The first Aboriginal person to sit in WA Parliament was Ernie Bridge from the Kimberley (1980)