Democracy
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HRF classifies Australia as democratic.
Australia is a federal parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, with the British monarch as the head of state, represented domestically by the Governor-General. Executive power is exercised by the Prime Minister as the head of government. The legislature is bicameral, consisting of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The judiciary is headed by the High Court of Australia, the final court of appeal. Australia has a long-standing democracy with regular free and fair elections. However, its political history continues to be shaped by unresolved issues relating to Indigenous Australians.
National elections are largely free and fair. Control over government regularly alternates between the former center-right Coalition consisting of the Liberal and National parties, until it disbanded in May 2025, and the center-left Labor Party. Each of them typically wins elections with modest margins. On rare occasions, either of them would win three or more consecutive terms due to shifting political trends. The Electoral Commission, in charge of administering the elections, ensures independent electoral oversight.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and regular people are largely free to openly criticize or challenge the government. Australia has a robust civil society, media, and protest culture. The media landscape is nevertheless marred by high levels of ownership concentration. In recent years, federal and state governments have promulgated a series of laws that restrict the manner in which peaceful protests can be carried out. Many environmental activists have been affected by this law.
Institutions largely serve as a check on the government. Courts are able to effectively preside over cases concerning elections and political dissent, with limited exceptions. The Albanese government has also proposed or implemented key reforms that support the independence and operational effectiveness of the legislature, executive, and independent bodies.
National elections are largely free and fair. Power alternates between Labor and the Coalition, with winning margins being generally modest. While major parties dominate and minor parties face some disadvantages, 2025 marked the first election where independents and minor parties together outpolled a major party. There are ongoing issues regarding misinformation and weak truth-in-advertising laws. Independent oversight by the Electoral Commission ensures equitable public funding across parties, which assists in maintaining an equal electoral playing field.
The government has not skewed the electoral playing field so much so that it generally wins elections with a very high vote share. There are 33 registered parties at the national level as of January 2026. Labor and Coalition – the oldest and largest contenders in these elections – typically take turns winning federal elections. There are rare exceptions. For instance, before being unseated by the incumbent Labor government in the 2022 federal election, the Coalition had won three consecutive polls and ended up being in power for nine years. Importantly, however, the vote shares of past winners never exceeded 60%. Labor’s victory in the 2025 federal election, with 34.56% of the votes and securing 94 of the 150 seats in parliament, was widely viewed as an unprecedented landslide. This success was driven by various factors, including Labor’s popular universal healthcare policy and deficiencies in the Coalition’s campaign strategy. In the aftermath of the elections, the Coalition announced its split due to major policy differences. There are long-standing concerns regarding minor parties and independents being unable to compete on an equal footing as major parties due to local laws affording certain privileges to the latter. Despite this, the 2025 federal election was the first where independent and minor parties combined managed to win more votes than a major party, in this case, the Coalition.
The government has not enjoyed significant campaign advantages over the mainstream opposition. There were nevertheless reported problems regarding misinformation spread by both Labor and Coalition at the 2025 federal election, including accusations that both camps edited their campaign videos in a manner that misled voters. Australia’s federal misinformation laws are limited, and there is no legislation requiring truth in political advertising. A bill aimed at tackling online misinformation and disinformation, which would have partially addressed concerns regarding falsities in political communication, was abandoned in November 2024.
The government has not seriously undermined independent electoral oversight. The Electoral Commission, which is accountable to a multipartisan parliamentary committee, has generally enforced campaign laws and regulations equitably against all parties and candidates. For example, it distributes public funding to parties and candidates running for both the House and Senate based on their performance in the polls. Data spanning 1996 to 2025 shows that Labor and Liberal consistently top the charts, along with some minor yet influential parties such as One Nation and the Greens in more recent years. By aggregating the amounts received by Coalition partners, Liberal and National, the differences in their allocations are also generally negligible.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and regular people are largely free to openly criticize or challenge the government. Australia has a vibrant civil society, with more than 65,000 NGOs and charities active. The media is similarly diverse and generally reports freely. However, high ownership concentration and proposed limits on access to information, along with slow progress on protection for whistleblowers and journalists, have raised concerns over press freedom. Protests are normally allowed, but state-level anti-protests have led to arrests of environmental activists. Marginalized populations are able to dissent, but serious issues remain regarding the overincarceration and treatment of First Nations Australians.
The government has not heavily manipulated media coverage in its favor. Australian media are generally able to report on the government without serious hindrances. Despite being the only liberal democracy without a constitutional or legislative guarantee of press freedom, the High Court of Australia has played an active role in protecting the media’s function as a check on the government by recognising the implied freedom of political communication that allows the free flow of information regarding politics and government. Concerns remain: Australia ranks second in the world for the most concentrated media, with around 80% of each of the broadcast, newspaper, and radio markets being controlled by only four organizations with various leanings. The government faced backlash for proposing changes to the Freedom of Information Act in September 2025 that significantly increase public servants’ ability to impose blanket refusals on requests for public information from journalists, advocacy groups, and members of the public when the information requires more than 40 hours to compile. The government has also been criticized for its slow progress in strengthening protections for whistleblowers and journalists following the 2019 police raids on the offices of public broadcaster the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the residence of ABC’s journalist Annika Smethurst.
The government has not seriously and unfairly repressed protests or gatherings. Protests are commonplace and can generally be organized without serious interference. There are some limits. All six Australian states have, in recent years, passed a series of laws that bar protesters from interfering with the ordinary conduct of business, traffic, or other lawful activities. The laws have been criticized by observers for lacking specificity and imposing harsh penalties. They have mainly been enforced against environmental and climate justice activists, who have tended to use more disruptive means to express their grievances. A number of these activists have been arrested and charged, and some convicted, based on the provisions of these laws. For example, in November 2023, authorities in New South Wales charged more than 100 people who protested against the government’s climate policy by kayaking around a coal port’s shipping lanes and blocking them. A similar incident took place in November 2025, when 141 climate protesters, including children as young as 15 years old, were arrested for blocking a New South Wales coal export port’s shipping channel.
The government has not systematically and disproportionately undermined marginalized groups’ ability to dissent. However, the government faces staunch criticism for failing to address concerns regarding the maltreatment of First Nations Australians. Rights groups have reported a marked overrepresentation of First Nations Australians in the criminal system, with an average of 2,266 per 100,000 First Nations adults facing incarceration, compared to 149 per 100,000 non-Indigenous Australians. Indigenous children are equally vulnerable and are 24 times more likely than the average Australian to be imprisoned for various offenses. Australia has denied UN representatives access to detention facilities in the Northern Territory and youth detention facilities in Western Australia as part of a probe of the treatment of detained Indigenous peoples and children. The issue of Indigenous rights is politically divisive: in 2023, the Albanese government initiated a referendum, dubbed ‘Indigenous Voice’, to amend the Federal Constitution to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as First Peoples, and to establish an independent, representative advisory body to remove hindrances to Indigenous participation in law and policymaking. It failed by a majority in every state.
Institutions largely serve as a check on the government. Courts have protected electoral fairness and free expression by overturning some restrictions on criticism and protest and reviewing contested donation laws. The Albanese government has introduced reforms to strengthen oversight and institutional independence, including enhanced oversight of intelligence authorities and the creation of a federal National Anti-Corruption Commission.
Courts have not unfairly failed to check the government’s attempts to significantly undermine electoral competition or make the electoral process significantly skewed in its favor. Courts have largely preserved electoral competition when tasked to do so. In 2015, for example, the High Court notably upheld caps on political donations and bans on certain donors at state levels, finding that these limits were valid measures to ‘ensure a level playing field’ for those participating in elections. The issue of political donations has since been revisited, most recently through a High Court challenge brought by two independent candidates in Victoria. The petition sought a review of the state’s law that exempts major parties from strict limits on political donations. The High Court has rejected the Victorian government’s bid to postpone the case. As of December 2025, the proceedings are ongoing, and the government has moved to change the law to loosen restrictions for minor parties and independent candidates.
Courts have not frequently and unfairly failed to check the government’s attempts to repress criticism or retaliate against those who express open opposition to its most prominent, widely publicized policies. Courts are largely able to bar government attempts to repress criticism. This was the case in May 2022, for example, when the Federal Court overturned a lower court’s order against a refugee advocate, Shane Bazzi, to pay AUD 35,000 (approx. USD 22,700) in damages to current opposition leader Peter Dutton over a tweet in which he accused Dutton of being a “rape apologist” posted when Dutton was the defense minister. In August 2025, the Supreme Court of New South Wales rejected an application by the Commissioner of Police to prohibit a planned protest for the Palestinian cause, a politically sensitive subject in Australia. A number of activists who organized disruptive peaceful protests have been convicted based on the anti-protest laws discussed above. Despite this, the laws were successfully challenged through the courts in two of the six Australian states and were partially repealed due to their inconsistency with the implied freedom of political communication under the Australian Constitution.
The government has introduced reforms that strengthen the independence and operational effectiveness of legislative, executive, and independent institutions. The bicameral Australian Parliament independently debates, amends, and passes laws. The opposition actively scrutinizes legislative proposals, which are subject to the approval of both houses. An illustration comes from November 2024, when the Labor government was compelled to withdraw its proposed misinformation bill for the second time following Senate pushback over free speech concerns. Although under the Westminster system that Australia adopts, there is a degree of overlap between the executive and legislative branches, including, for example, sitting lawmakers holding ministerial portfolios, a bicameral parliament with robust committee processes ensures sufficient scrutiny of the executive. The government passed reforms in 2025 that expanded oversight of Australia’s intelligence authorities by strengthening the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, an independent statutory officer tasked with ensuring that Australia’s six intelligence agencies perform their functions within the bounds of the law and in compliance with human rights. The Albanese government has also legislated and established a federal National Anti-Corruption Commission, in line with its election pledge, which became operational on July 1, 2023. It is vested with broad powers to independently investigate serious or systemic corruption in the Commonwealth public sector.
HRF classifies Australia as democratic.
Australia is a federal parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, with the British monarch as the head of state, represented domestically by the Governor-General. Executive power is exercised by the Prime Minister as the head of government. The legislature is bicameral, consisting of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The judiciary is headed by the High Court of Australia, the final court of appeal. Australia has a long-standing democracy with regular free and fair elections. However, its political history continues to be shaped by unresolved issues relating to Indigenous Australians.
National elections are largely free and fair. Control over government regularly alternates between the former center-right Coalition consisting of the Liberal and National parties, until it disbanded in May 2025, and the center-left Labor Party. Each of them typically wins elections with modest margins. On rare occasions, either of them would win three or more consecutive terms due to shifting political trends. The Electoral Commission, in charge of administering the elections, ensures independent electoral oversight.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and regular people are largely free to openly criticize or challenge the government. Australia has a robust civil society, media, and protest culture. The media landscape is nevertheless marred by high levels of ownership concentration. In recent years, federal and state governments have promulgated a series of laws that restrict the manner in which peaceful protests can be carried out. Many environmental activists have been affected by this law.
Institutions largely serve as a check on the government. Courts are able to effectively preside over cases concerning elections and political dissent, with limited exceptions. The Albanese government has also proposed or implemented key reforms that support the independence and operational effectiveness of the legislature, executive, and independent bodies.
National elections are largely free and fair. Power alternates between Labor and the Coalition, with winning margins being generally modest. While major parties dominate and minor parties face some disadvantages, 2025 marked the first election where independents and minor parties together outpolled a major party. There are ongoing issues regarding misinformation and weak truth-in-advertising laws. Independent oversight by the Electoral Commission ensures equitable public funding across parties, which assists in maintaining an equal electoral playing field.
The government has not skewed the electoral playing field so much so that it generally wins elections with a very high vote share. There are 33 registered parties at the national level as of January 2026. Labor and Coalition – the oldest and largest contenders in these elections – typically take turns winning federal elections. There are rare exceptions. For instance, before being unseated by the incumbent Labor government in the 2022 federal election, the Coalition had won three consecutive polls and ended up being in power for nine years. Importantly, however, the vote shares of past winners never exceeded 60%. Labor’s victory in the 2025 federal election, with 34.56% of the votes and securing 94 of the 150 seats in parliament, was widely viewed as an unprecedented landslide. This success was driven by various factors, including Labor’s popular universal healthcare policy and deficiencies in the Coalition’s campaign strategy. In the aftermath of the elections, the Coalition announced its split due to major policy differences. There are long-standing concerns regarding minor parties and independents being unable to compete on an equal footing as major parties due to local laws affording certain privileges to the latter. Despite this, the 2025 federal election was the first where independent and minor parties combined managed to win more votes than a major party, in this case, the Coalition.
The government has not enjoyed significant campaign advantages over the mainstream opposition. There were nevertheless reported problems regarding misinformation spread by both Labor and Coalition at the 2025 federal election, including accusations that both camps edited their campaign videos in a manner that misled voters. Australia’s federal misinformation laws are limited, and there is no legislation requiring truth in political advertising. A bill aimed at tackling online misinformation and disinformation, which would have partially addressed concerns regarding falsities in political communication, was abandoned in November 2024.
The government has not seriously undermined independent electoral oversight. The Electoral Commission, which is accountable to a multipartisan parliamentary committee, has generally enforced campaign laws and regulations equitably against all parties and candidates. For example, it distributes public funding to parties and candidates running for both the House and Senate based on their performance in the polls. Data spanning 1996 to 2025 shows that Labor and Liberal consistently top the charts, along with some minor yet influential parties such as One Nation and the Greens in more recent years. By aggregating the amounts received by Coalition partners, Liberal and National, the differences in their allocations are also generally negligible.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and regular people are largely free to openly criticize or challenge the government. Australia has a vibrant civil society, with more than 65,000 NGOs and charities active. The media is similarly diverse and generally reports freely. However, high ownership concentration and proposed limits on access to information, along with slow progress on protection for whistleblowers and journalists, have raised concerns over press freedom. Protests are normally allowed, but state-level anti-protests have led to arrests of environmental activists. Marginalized populations are able to dissent, but serious issues remain regarding the overincarceration and treatment of First Nations Australians.
The government has not heavily manipulated media coverage in its favor. Australian media are generally able to report on the government without serious hindrances. Despite being the only liberal democracy without a constitutional or legislative guarantee of press freedom, the High Court of Australia has played an active role in protecting the media’s function as a check on the government by recognising the implied freedom of political communication that allows the free flow of information regarding politics and government. Concerns remain: Australia ranks second in the world for the most concentrated media, with around 80% of each of the broadcast, newspaper, and radio markets being controlled by only four organizations with various leanings. The government faced backlash for proposing changes to the Freedom of Information Act in September 2025 that significantly increase public servants’ ability to impose blanket refusals on requests for public information from journalists, advocacy groups, and members of the public when the information requires more than 40 hours to compile. The government has also been criticized for its slow progress in strengthening protections for whistleblowers and journalists following the 2019 police raids on the offices of public broadcaster the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the residence of ABC’s journalist Annika Smethurst.
The government has not seriously and unfairly repressed protests or gatherings. Protests are commonplace and can generally be organized without serious interference. There are some limits. All six Australian states have, in recent years, passed a series of laws that bar protesters from interfering with the ordinary conduct of business, traffic, or other lawful activities. The laws have been criticized by observers for lacking specificity and imposing harsh penalties. They have mainly been enforced against environmental and climate justice activists, who have tended to use more disruptive means to express their grievances. A number of these activists have been arrested and charged, and some convicted, based on the provisions of these laws. For example, in November 2023, authorities in New South Wales charged more than 100 people who protested against the government’s climate policy by kayaking around a coal port’s shipping lanes and blocking them. A similar incident took place in November 2025, when 141 climate protesters, including children as young as 15 years old, were arrested for blocking a New South Wales coal export port’s shipping channel.
The government has not systematically and disproportionately undermined marginalized groups’ ability to dissent. However, the government faces staunch criticism for failing to address concerns regarding the maltreatment of First Nations Australians. Rights groups have reported a marked overrepresentation of First Nations Australians in the criminal system, with an average of 2,266 per 100,000 First Nations adults facing incarceration, compared to 149 per 100,000 non-Indigenous Australians. Indigenous children are equally vulnerable and are 24 times more likely than the average Australian to be imprisoned for various offenses. Australia has denied UN representatives access to detention facilities in the Northern Territory and youth detention facilities in Western Australia as part of a probe of the treatment of detained Indigenous peoples and children. The issue of Indigenous rights is politically divisive: in 2023, the Albanese government initiated a referendum, dubbed ‘Indigenous Voice’, to amend the Federal Constitution to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as First Peoples, and to establish an independent, representative advisory body to remove hindrances to Indigenous participation in law and policymaking. It failed by a majority in every state.
Institutions largely serve as a check on the government. Courts have protected electoral fairness and free expression by overturning some restrictions on criticism and protest and reviewing contested donation laws. The Albanese government has introduced reforms to strengthen oversight and institutional independence, including enhanced oversight of intelligence authorities and the creation of a federal National Anti-Corruption Commission.
Courts have not unfairly failed to check the government’s attempts to significantly undermine electoral competition or make the electoral process significantly skewed in its favor. Courts have largely preserved electoral competition when tasked to do so. In 2015, for example, the High Court notably upheld caps on political donations and bans on certain donors at state levels, finding that these limits were valid measures to ‘ensure a level playing field’ for those participating in elections. The issue of political donations has since been revisited, most recently through a High Court challenge brought by two independent candidates in Victoria. The petition sought a review of the state’s law that exempts major parties from strict limits on political donations. The High Court has rejected the Victorian government’s bid to postpone the case. As of December 2025, the proceedings are ongoing, and the government has moved to change the law to loosen restrictions for minor parties and independent candidates.
Courts have not frequently and unfairly failed to check the government’s attempts to repress criticism or retaliate against those who express open opposition to its most prominent, widely publicized policies. Courts are largely able to bar government attempts to repress criticism. This was the case in May 2022, for example, when the Federal Court overturned a lower court’s order against a refugee advocate, Shane Bazzi, to pay AUD 35,000 (approx. USD 22,700) in damages to current opposition leader Peter Dutton over a tweet in which he accused Dutton of being a “rape apologist” posted when Dutton was the defense minister. In August 2025, the Supreme Court of New South Wales rejected an application by the Commissioner of Police to prohibit a planned protest for the Palestinian cause, a politically sensitive subject in Australia. A number of activists who organized disruptive peaceful protests have been convicted based on the anti-protest laws discussed above. Despite this, the laws were successfully challenged through the courts in two of the six Australian states and were partially repealed due to their inconsistency with the implied freedom of political communication under the Australian Constitution.
The government has introduced reforms that strengthen the independence and operational effectiveness of legislative, executive, and independent institutions. The bicameral Australian Parliament independently debates, amends, and passes laws. The opposition actively scrutinizes legislative proposals, which are subject to the approval of both houses. An illustration comes from November 2024, when the Labor government was compelled to withdraw its proposed misinformation bill for the second time following Senate pushback over free speech concerns. Although under the Westminster system that Australia adopts, there is a degree of overlap between the executive and legislative branches, including, for example, sitting lawmakers holding ministerial portfolios, a bicameral parliament with robust committee processes ensures sufficient scrutiny of the executive. The government passed reforms in 2025 that expanded oversight of Australia’s intelligence authorities by strengthening the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, an independent statutory officer tasked with ensuring that Australia’s six intelligence agencies perform their functions within the bounds of the law and in compliance with human rights. The Albanese government has also legislated and established a federal National Anti-Corruption Commission, in line with its election pledge, which became operational on July 1, 2023. It is vested with broad powers to independently investigate serious or systemic corruption in the Commonwealth public sector.
