The 47th parliament of Australia will have more female MPs and senators than ever before. Read that again. We crossed our hearts and hoped this would happen after parliament’s own #MeToo reckoning under the Coalition in 2021 and by golly the times seem to be a-changin’.
Votes from Saturday’s federal election are still being counted and about a dozen seats remain in doubt, but so far the numbers are ‘yuge.
In the House of Representatives, the lower house, we’ve seen at least a 30 per cent increase in the number of female MPs.
It’s looking like we’ll have at least 59 women out of the 151 seats which means women will represent 39 per cent of the house. The previous parliament had just 48 women out of 151, or 31.7 per cent.
The number of female Labor MPs jumped from 29 to 36 and the number of women on the cross bench tripled from three to 11 (almost all of which are teal independents).
Women will hold at least 39 of the 76 seats in the Senate (AKA the upper house), four more than the previous senate. Labor’s women senators outnumber men 18 to 9. The Coalition is likely to hold 30 senate seats — 17 by men and 13 by women — and the Greens could get spots, eight of which are women.
This means a record of more than 41 per cent of the 227 seats across both houses will be held by women.
Some key #ausvotes stats
– 47th parliament will make history with a record number of women – at least 95
– number of female Libs & Nats has gone backwards
– Labor has more than double the number of women to LNP (53 to 24)
– crossbench has 20+ women including at least 8 Greens— Alice Workman (@workmanalice) May 22, 2022
For the curious: There were 10 seats held by Liberal men that are now held by women. Flinders and Hughes went to Liberal women – Zoe McKenzie and Jenny Ware. Six went to “teal” independents. And two – Hasluck and Pearce in WA – went to Labor women.
Goodnight now!
— Annabel Crabb (@annabelcrabb) May 22, 2022
Interestedly while the number of Labor in parliament increased from 29 to at least 36, the number of elected Liberal MPs dropped from 13 to seven.
This also means there are as many Libs named Andrew as there are Lib women in parliament which is my new favourite election anecdote.
It looks like there will be as many men named Andrew in the House of Reps as there will be Liberal women- seven.
— Annabel Hennessy (@AnnabelHennessy) May 22, 2022
We also a record number of First Nations women elected too with at least six. Huge. A few First Nations candidates are still hoping to pick up seats in both houses so we’ll know the total number of First Nations parliamentarians soon.
👏 A record number of Aboriginal women in parliament 👏 And our first ever Aboriginal woman as our Indigenous Affairs minister 👏👏😍 #ausvotes #auspol
— Dr Blair Williams🏳️🌈♀️💉💉💉 (@BlairWilliams26) May 21, 2022
In the meantime ain’t nothing gonna break my stride, this election is the gift that keeps on giving.
