Australians are warming to minority governments – but they still prefer majority rule

Minority governments have been part of Australia’s political history since Federation.

In the country’s early decades, Prime Ministers Edmund Barton, Alfred Deakin, Chris Watson, George Reid and Andrew Fisher all led without commanding a majority in the House of Representatives. Since the second world war, majority governments have become the norm at the national level, underpinned by the two-party system of Labor and the Liberal-National Coalition.

Minority government has been rare, with the notable exception of Julia Gillard’s Labor government from 2010 to 2013. However, at the state/territory level, minority governments are far more common.