RESULTS of the 2025 Federal Election have been finalised and the writs returned to the Governor-General Sam Mostyn.
This marks the end of the electoral process for the House of Representatives and Senate and paves the way for the opening of the 48th Parliament on 22 July.
Acting Electoral Commissioner Jeff Pope said the election count was the largest and most complex the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) had ever delivered.
It took over a month for clear results in the 40 Senate seats being contested.
New and returning Senators will now sit alongside the continuing 36 Senators elected in 2022.
The Australian Senate consists of 76 seats, comprising 12 Senators per state, and two per territory (ACT, NT).
State Senators are elected for six-year terms while the election of territory Senators coincides with the House of Representatives.
This is in contrast to the US Senate, upon which Australia’s system was partly modelled, which has only two senators per state.
Australia has more due to Section 24 of the Australian Constitution, which states that the number of members in the House of Representatives “shall be, as nearly as practicable, twice the number of senators”.
The House of Representatives has 151 seats, which can continue to change as the population grows and electoral boundaries are redrawn.
Senate positions will increase as a result.
Senators cannot introduce any bills that involve money or taxation – these being the exclusive domain of the House of Representatives – but they have the power to block or refuse any Bill.
The NSW Senators elected in the 2025 federal election are: Tony Sheldon and Tim Ayres (Labor); Andrew Bragg and Jessica Collins (Liberal); Mehreen Faruqi (The Greens); and Warwick Stacey (Pauline Hanson’s One Nation).
Nationals Deputy Leader Perin Davey was a notable loss.
Her seat was secured by One Nation’s Mr Stacey through preference flows.
The Senate composition is now: ALP (28 seats), Liberal-National Coalition (27 seats), Australian Greens (11 seats), and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation (four seats), with minor parties accounting for the remainder.
The Labor and Greens majority allows them to pass legislation on which they both agree without the support of crossbenchers.
By Thomas O’KEEFE
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