Joint meetings of the Australian Parliament

This article is about Joint meetings of the Australian Parliament.

Australia has a bicameral federal parliament, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Subject to the Constitution of Australia, each House has its own rules, standing orders and procedures; its own presiding officer; and meets separately, at dates and times it alone decides.

However, there are some occasions when the two Houses have come together as a single body.

The reasons for joint meetings have included:

The Constitution makes provision for a joint sitting as part of a procedure to resolve legislative deadlocks between the House of Representatives and the Senate. Section 57 provides that, under certain circumstances where there is a deadlock over a bill, both houses may be dissolved in a double dissolution. This is followed by a general election, and the bill may be put to the separate Houses of the newly elected parliament for reconsideration. If this still fails to resolve the deadlock, the bill may be considered by a joint sitting, convened as a single legislative body. If passed by the joint sitting, the bill will be treated for all purposes as if it had been separately passed by the two Houses.

The only time such a joint sitting has occurred was on 6-7 August 1974.

Between 1975, when the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and the Northern Territory (NT) gained direct representation in the Senate, and 1989, when the ACT gained self-government (the NT had gained self-government in 1978), the choice of a replacement ACT or NT senator to fill a casual vacancy was made by a joint sitting of both Houses. This occurred twice:

Casual vacancies for ACT or NT senators are now filled by the ACT Legislative Assembly or the NT Legislative Assembly respectively, under Section 44 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918.

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