Who's who in Parliament?

Find your Member in the House of Representatives

The House of Representatives (HOR) of the Australian Federal Parliament is also known as the Lower House. The House has 151 members, with one member elected per constituency (also referred to as an electorate). You will have voted for your Member of Parliament (MP) using a preferential vote, where you had to number every single box. The person who is elected as your MP has to get more than 50% of the vote in your electorate, once preferences are distributed.

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Your MP will have an office at Parliament House, but they will also have an office in your electorate. Click on the link below to find your MPs mailing address and other contact details, using the official Parliament website.

Note: If you know the name of your MP, it is easy to guess their email address. Just type in the first letter of their name, then full stop, then their last name, then ".MP@aph.gov.au". For example, "A.Albanese.MP@aph.gov.au".

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Find your Member in the Senate

The Senate of the Australian Parliament is also known as the Upper House. Australia's Upper House is based on the US-model, which designates the Senate as the "States house". Instead of having one representative per electorate, with electorates all approximately covering the same size population, the Senate has an equal number of Senators per State. There are 76 senators in total, 12 from each of our six States and two each from the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory. Senators are elected via one constituency which covers your entire State/territory.

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The 12 Senators that represent your State will have an office at Parliament House, but they will also have an office somewhere in your State.  Their offices will likely be spread around, depending on where they personally come from. Click on the link below to find your Senators contact details.

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Note: If you know the name of the Senator you want to write to, it is easy to guess their email address. Just type in "Senator", then full stop, then their last name, then "@aph.gov.au". For example, "Senator.Lambie@aph.gov.au".

Cross bench

In our Senate, we have a number of Senators from the two big parties, but we also have some Senators from smaller parties, who are "unaligned" with those bigger parties. These Senators are often called the "cross-bench", because they sit in the middle of the two main parties. Because neither of the big parties have a majority in the Senate, it is crucially important that they are able to attract votes from the cross-bench in favour of their proposed laws.

The details of the small cross-bench are listed below because this small group has a huge amount of power to work together to block or encourage proposed legislation, proposed rules and parliamentary committee inquiries. If you write to no-one else, i strongly encourage you to write to the cross-bench because influencing their views could have an enormous effect on what our Parliament agrees to - or does not.