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All 148 seats in theHouse of Representatives 75 seats were needed for a majority in the House 40 (of the 76) seats in theSenate | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Registered | 11,740,568 3.13% | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Turnout | 11,244,017 (95.77%) ( 0.02pp) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Results by division for the House of Representatives, shaded by winning party's margin of victory. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 1996 Australian federal election |
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| National results |
| State and territory results |
The1996 Australian federal election was held to determine the members of the38th Parliament of Australia. It was held on 2 March 1996. All 148 seats of theHouse of Representatives and 40 seats of the 76-seatSenate were up for election. TheLiberal/National Coalition led byOpposition LeaderJohn Howard of theLiberal Party and coalition partnerTim Fischer of theNational Party defeated the incumbentAustralian Labor Party government led byPrime MinisterPaul Keating in alandslide victory. The Coalition won 94 seats in the House of Representatives, the equal-largest number of seats won by a federal government to date (tied with Labor's win in2025), and only the second time a party had won over 90 seats at a federal election; the first occurred in1975.
The election marked the end of the five-term, 13-yearHawke-Keating Government that began in1983. Howard was sworn in as the new prime minister of Australia on 11 March 1996, along with theFirst Howard Ministry. This election was the start of the 11-year Howard Government; the Labor party would spend this period in opposition and would not return to government until the2007 election.
This was the first federal election that future prime ministerTony Abbott contested as a member of parliament, having entered parliament at the1994 Warringah by-election. Future prime ministerAnthony Albanese and future opposition leaderBrendan Nelson also entered parliament at this election.
Future prime ministersKevin Rudd andJulia Gillard were unsuccessful candidates for the House of Representatives and Senate respectively, but were elected to the House of Representatives at the next election, in 1998.
Howard became the first Liberal leader to win an election from opposition sinceRobert Menzies in 1949. (Malcolm Fraser was caretaker prime minister in the1975 election.) The victory also saw the Liberal Party gain enough seats to not require the support of the National Party, though John Howard opted to stay in the Coalition. As of 2025, this is the last time the Liberal Party has won an overall majority of seats in federal parliament. It is also the last where both major party leaders were born prior to1946, the first year of thePost-war era.
John Howard, who had previously led the Liberal Party from 1985 to 1989, returned to the leadership in January 1995 following the party's disastrous eight months under the leadership ofAlexander Downer. Downer and deputy PMPeter Costello had succeededJohn Hewson andMichael Wooldridge early in 1994 and were touted as the leaders of the new-generation Liberals. In the end, the party opted for the seasoned Howard, perhaps an acknowledgement that he was the only one left standing after a decade of party infighting.
Howard approached the campaign with a determination to present as small a target as possible. Throughout 1995 he refused to detail specific policy proposals, focusing the Coalition's attacks mainly on the longevity and governing record of the Labor government. By 1996, however, it was clear that the electorate had tired of Labor and in particular of Paul Keating. The line "The recession we had to have" resonated with deadly force throughout the electorate. Although Keating's big-picture approach torepublicanism,reconciliation with Australia's Indigenous peoples and engagement with Asia galvanised support within Labor's urban constituencies, Howard was able to attract support amongst disaffected mainstream Australians, uniting middle-class suburban residents with traditionally Labor-voting blue-collar workers. He also promised to retainMedicare and holda constitutional convention to decide whether Australia would become a republic.
The election-eveNewspoll reported the Liberal/National Coalition held an estimated 53.5 percenttwo-party-preferred vote.[1]
On election day, the news was dominated by theRalph Willis letter. TreasurerRalph Willis had released a letter purporting to be secret correspondence between Howard and Liberal Premier of Victoria,Jeff Kennett. Howard quickly denounced the letter as a forgery and claims of Labor skulduggery dominated the last day, drowning out anything Keating said. The letter was subsequently revealed to be the work of university students.[citation needed] Left-wing writerBob Ellis claimed that the Ralph Willis letter was the cause of Keating's crushing defeat.
| Party | Votes | % | Swing | Seats | Change | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal | 4,210,689 | 38.69 | +1.92 | 75 | 26 | |||
| National | 893,170 | 8.21 | +1.04 | 18 | 2 | |||
| Country Liberal | 38,302 | 0.35 | +0.02 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Liberal/National Coalition | 5,142,161 | 47.25 | +2.98 | 94 | 29 | |||
| Labor | 4,217,765 | 38.75 | −6.17 | 49 |  31 | |||
| Democrats | 735,848 | 6.76 | +3.01 | |||||
| Greens [a] | 317,654 | 2.92 | +1.09 | |||||
| Independents | 262,420 | 2.41 | −0.73 | 5 | 3 | |||
| Others | 208,004 | 1.91 | +1.05 | |||||
| Total | 10,883,852 | 148 | 1 | |||||
| Two-party-preferred vote | ||||||||
| Liberal–National coalition | Win | 53.63 | +5.07 | 94 | 29 | |||
| Labor | 46.37 | −5.07 | 49 | 31 | ||||
| Labor | 38.75% | |||
| Liberal | 38.69% | |||
| National | 8.21% | |||
| Democrats | 6.76% | |||
| Greens | 1.74% | |||
| CLP | 0.35% | |||
| Independents | 2.27% | |||
| Other | 3.23% | |||
| Coalition | 53.63% | |||
| Labor | 46.37% | |||
| Coalition | 63.51% | |||
| Labor | 33.11% | |||
| Independents | 3.38% | |||
| Party | Votes | % | Swing | Seats won | Seats held | Change | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal–National joint ticket | 2,669,377 | 24.49 | +0.09 | 6 | N/A | |||
| Liberal | 1,770,486 | 16.24 | +0.65 | 12 | 31 | 2 | ||
| National | 312,769 | 2.87 | +0.15 | 1 | 5 | 1 | ||
| Country Liberal | 40,050 | 0.37 | +0.04 | 1 | 1 |  | ||
| Liberal–National coalition | 4,792,682 | 43.97 | +0.92 | 20 | 37 | 1 | ||
| Labor | 3,940,150 | 36.15 | −7.35 | 14 | 29 | 1 | ||
| Democrats | 1,179,357 | 10.82 | +5.51 | 5 | 7 | | ||
| Greens [b] | 345,513 | 3.17 | +0.67 | 1 | 2 | | ||
| Others [c] | 641,335 | 5.88 | 0 | 1 | | |||
| Total | 10,899,037 | 40 | 76 | |||||
| Invalid/blank votes | 395,442 | 3.5 | ||||||
| Turnout | 11,294,479 | 96.2 | ||||||
| Registered voters | 11,740,568 | |||||||
| Source:Federal Elections 1996 | ||||||||
Overall the coalition won 29 seats from Labor while the ALP won 4 seats from the Liberals. These 4 seats wereCanberra andNamadgi in theACT andIsaacs andBruce in Victoria. The ACT seats, which had been won by the Liberals in a by-election, fell to Labor due to a strong return to the ALP in a traditional Labor town by public servants fearing conservative cuts. The division ofBrendan Smyth's seat of Canberra into the two new (of the three) ACT seats limited his campaign to the southernmostTuggeranong seat of Namadgi where the ACTLabor right wing stood former MLAAnnette Ellis who ran a tightgrassroots campaign. Isaacs and Bruce fell to Labor due to demographic changes due to a redistribution of electoral boundaries.
Labor lost five percent of its two-party vote from 1993, and tallied its lowest primary vote since 1934 (an additional eight percent coming from preferences). The swing against Labor would not normally have been enough in and of itself to cause a change of government. However, Labor lost 13 of its 33 seats in New South Wales, and all but two of its 13 seats in Queensland. The 29-seat swing was the second-largest defeat, in terms of seats lost, by a sitting government in Australia. Three members of Keating's government – including Attorney-GeneralMichael Lavarch – lost their seats. Keating resigned as Labor leader on the night of the election, and was succeeded by former deputy prime minister and Finance MinisterKim Beazley.
Due in part to this large swing, Howard entered office with a 45-seat majority, the second-largest in Australian history (behind only the 55-seat majority won byMalcolm Fraser in1975). The Liberals actually won a majority in their own right at this election with 75 seats, the most the party had ever won. Although Howard had no need for the support of the Nationals, the Coalition was retained. As of 2025[update], this was the last time the Liberals have won a majority in their own right at a federal election.
Exit polling showed the Coalition winning 47 percent of the blue-collar vote, compared with Labor's 39 percent; there was a 16-point drop in Labor's vote among members of trade unions. The Coalition won 48 percent of the Catholic vote and Labor 37 percent, a reversal of the usual figures.[3]
