A record 11 Indigenous representatives recently took their seats in the new federal parliament – three in the House of Representatives and eight in the Senate. Of these, nine are women and just two are men.
It’s worth recalling that after the 2001 federal election, there were no Indigenous members in the House of Representatives, and just one, Aden Ridgeway of the Australian Democrats, in the Senate.
Since then, we have seen the first Indigenous member of the House of Representatives, Liberal Ken Wyatt, elected in 2009; the first Indigenous woman, Labor’s Nova Peris, elected to the Senate in 2013; and the first Indigenous woman elected to the House of Representatives, Labor’s Linda Burney, in 2016.
