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Electorates (also known aselectoral divisions,federal divisions orseats) are the single-memberelectoral districts of theAustralian House of Representatives; the lower house of theParliament of Australia. There are currently 150 federal electorates.

Section 24 of the Constitution of Australia specifies that the total number of members of the Australian House of Representatives shall be "as nearly as practicable" twice as many as the number of members of theAustralian Senate. The section also requires that electorates be apportioned among the states in proportion to their respective populations; provided that each original state has at least 5 members in the House of Representatives, a provision that has givenTasmania higher representation than its population would otherwise justify. There are three electorates in theAustralian Capital Territory and even though theNorthern Territory should have only one electorate based on their population, parliament has legislated that they receive two (by setting the quota for seat allocation using theharmonic mean for territories, meaning only around 1.3 quotas rather than 1.5 quotas are needed to have two seats).

In addition, Section 29 forbids electorate boundaries from crossing state lines, forcing populated areas along state and territory borders to be placed in different electorates, such asAlbury inNew South Wales being part of the electorate ofFarrer, while nearbyWodonga inVictoria is part of the electorate ofIndi. The same restriction does not apply to territories, and several current electoral divisions incorporate electors from multiple territories. This is currently the case for theDivision of Bean (covering part of the ACT and the whole ofNorfolk Island), theDivision of Fenner (covering part of the ACT and the whole ofJervis Bay Territory), and theDivision of Lingiari (covering part of the Northern Territory and the whole ofChristmas Island andCocos (Keeling) Islands).

TheCommonwealth Electoral Act 1918 sets out further provisions.^[1]

TheAustralian Electoral Commission (AEC) determines the number of members of the House of Representatives to which each state and territory is entitled (calledapportionment) and the boundaries of each electorate, in a process known asredistribution. Such apportionment and redistributions apply to the next federal election, but not to any by-elections. The last apportionment determination was made in July 2023. The resulting redistribution was used in the2025 federal election.^[2]

Within each state and territory, electoral boundaries are redrawn from time to time. This takes place at least once every 7 years, or when the state's entitlement to the number of members of the House of Representatives changes. Boundaries are drawn by a Redistribution Committee, and redistributions within a state are on the basis of the number ofenrolled voters, rather than total residents or "population". The number of enrolled voters in each division cannot vary by more than 10% from the average across a state or territory, nor can the number of voters vary by more than 3.5% from the average projected enrolment 3.5 years into the future. However, due to various reasons, larger seats likeCowper inNew South Wales contain 80% more electors than that of smaller seats likeSolomon in theNorthern Territory. In 2018, seats in Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia were also abolished, in order to make way for seats in similar locations but with different names.^[3][4]

At the2025 Australian federal election, based on the 2023 apportionment, there were 150 divisions: 46 in New South Wales, 38 in Victoria, 30 in Queensland, 16 in Western Australia, 10 in South Australia, 5 in Tasmania, 3 in the ACT and 2 in Northern Territory.^[2]

The divisions of the House of Representatives are unusual in that many of them are not named after geographical features or numbered, as is the case in most other legislatures around the world. Most divisions are named in honour of prominent historical people, such as former politicians (oftenPrime Ministers), explorers, artists and engineers. The commission is required to make "every effort" to preserve the names of the 75 seats contested at the first election where possible.^[5]

In some cases where a division is named after a geographical locality, the connection to that locality is sometimes tenuous. For instance, theDivision of Werriwa, created in 1901, was named after the Aboriginal word forLake George in theCanberra region. However, Werriwa has not contained Lake George for many decades, and has steadily moved some 200 km north to the south-western suburbs of Sydney over the past century.^{[citation needed]}

The divisions that existed at the2025 Australian federal election appear in the table below.

These divisions no longer exist:

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