Federally, 17 of the members of the lower house Members of Parliament, or MPs are not members of major parties, as well as 21 of the 76 members of the upper house senators. The Parliament of Australia has a number of distinctive features including compulsory voting , with full- preference instant-runoff voting in single-member seats to elect the lower house , the Australian House of Representatives , and the use of the single transferable vote to elect the upper house , the Australian Senate.
Other parties tend to perform better in the upper houses of the various federal and state parliaments since these typically use a form of proportional representation , except for in Tasmania where the lower house is proportionally elected and the upper house is made up of single member districts. Two political groups dominate the Australian political spectrum, forming a de facto two-party system.
Formed in , it has been a major party federally since , and has been one of the two major parties since the federal election. The other group is a conservative grouping of parties that are in coalition at the federal level, as well as in New South Wales , but compete in Western Australia and South Australia. It is in government in Tasmania and the Northern Territory. The main party in this group is the centre-right Liberal Party.
The Liberal Party is the modern form of a conservative group that has existed since the combination of the Protectionist Party and Free Trade Party into the Commonwealth Liberal Party in Its modern form was founded by Robert Menzies in The Liberal Party is joined by the National Party , a party that represents rural and agricultural interests. Its ideology is generally more socially conservative than that of the Liberal Party.
In , the National Party made an abortive run for the office of prime minister in its own right, in the Joh for Canberra campaign. On two occasions involving Earle Page in , and John McEwen from December to January , the deputy prime minister , the leader of the National Party then known as the Country Party , became the prime minister temporarily, upon the death of the incumbent prime minister. Arthur Fadden was the only other Country Party prime minister. He assumed office in August after the resignation of Robert Menzies and served as prime minister until October of that year.
