WESTERN AUSTRALIAN LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

'Seats Won by Party at Western Australian Elections'

Seats Won
Election	''ALP''	''LIB''	''NAT''	Other	Total
1950	23	15	9	3	50
1953	26	15	9	..	50
1956	29	11	8	2	50
1959	23	17	8	2	50
1962	24	18	8	..	50
1965	21	21	8	..	50
1968	23	19	9	..	51
1971	26	17	8	..	51
1974	22	23	6	..	51
1977	22	27	6	..	55
1980	23	26	3	3	55
1983	32	20	3	2	57
1986	32	19	6	..	57
1989	31	20	6	..	57
1993	24	26	6	1	57
1996	19	29	6	3	57
2001	32	16	5	4	57
2005	32	18	5	2	57

The 'Legislative Assembly', or lower house, is one of the two chambers of parliament in the Australian state of Western Australia. It sits in Parliament House in the state capital, Perth.
The Legislative Assembly today has 57 members, elected for four-year terms from single-member electoral districts. Members are elected using the preferential voting system. As with all other Australian states and territories, voting is compulsory for all those over the legal voting age of 18.
Most legislation is initiated in the Legislative Assembly. The party or coalition with the most seats in the lower house is invited by the Governor to form government. The leader of that party subsequently becomes Premier of Western Australia, and their senior colleagues become ministers responsible for various portfolios. As Australian political parties traditionally vote along party lines, most legislation introduced by the governing party will pass through the House of Assembly.
Western Australia uses a zonal electoral system for both its houses of parliament and is the only Australian state or territory to do so. In short, this means that the vote of a person in Perth is worth less than a rural voter. Although the difference is less apparent in the Legislative Assembly than in the Legislative Council, city electorates are nevertheless artificially set to contain more voters than rural electorates. As a result, the 74% of the state's population who live in Perth elect only 60% of the Legislative Assembly. This also allows major disparities that would not be allowed to occur in other states - the largest city electorates may have up to four times as many voters as the smallest rural electorates. This may change in the near future, as the current government's "One Vote, One Value" legislation is currently before the High Court of Australia.
While the Liberal Party of Australia and Australian Labor Party are both advantaged and disadvantaged by this system, it strongly benefits the National Party of Australia. During the 1990s, Liberal Premier Richard Court considered changing the system along the lines of that in place in South Australia, but backed down in the face of National Party oppositon.
The Legislative Assembly was the first elected legislature in Western Australia, having been created in 1891, when Western Australia gained self-government. It initially consisted of 30 members, all of who were elected although only male landowners could vote. This replaced a system where the Governor was responsible for most legislative matters, with only the appointed Legislative Council to guide him.
Suffrage was extended to all adult males in 1893, although Indigenous Australians were specifically excluded. Women gained the right to vote in 1899, making Western Australia the second of the Australian colonies (behind South Australia) to do so. In 1921, Edith Cowan became the first woman to be elected to parliament anywhere in Australia when she won the Legislative Assembly seat of West Perth for the Nationalist Party.

Contents

2005 - Distribution of Assembly seats

See also

2005 - Distribution of Assembly seats

'Party'	'Seats held'	'2006- Assembly'
Australian Labor Party	30
Liberal Party of Australia	18
National Party of Australia	5
Independents	4

See also

★ Electoral districts of Western Australia

★ Western Australian Legislative Council

★ Parliaments of the Australian states and territories

★ Members of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly, 2005-2009