The election of a new government means an opportunity to fix some of the things that have been going wrong with Australia’s electoral system. Australia has been making it harder to enrol and vote, and easier for private money to influence electoral outcomes. Read the Audit's priorities for electoral reform.

Based on one definition of poverty, 9.3 per cent of all Australians are poor. The poverty rate varies widely between electorates, from 2.1 per cent in Bradfield (NSW) to 15.1 per cent in Braddon (Tas). The poverty rate estimates presented by Tony Kryger in this research note have been derived from experimental estimates of poverty...

This paper was presented as a lecture in the Department of the Senate Occasional Lecture Series at Parliament House.