WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this paper contains the names of people who have died.

This Quick Guide lists the name, party, chamber, state/electorate, dates in office, significant firsts and identity (where readily available) of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander parliamentarians in federal and state/territory parliaments in Australia.

For the purposes of this Quick Guide, I have included parliamentarians (MPs) who identify as an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander person or as having Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander ancestry.

This information is compiled from a range of publicly available sources including the Parliamentary Handbook, the Biographical Dictionary of the Australian Senate, the websites of Australian state and territory parliaments, political websites and personal biographies. Additionally, I am grateful to the staff at each of the Australian state and territory parliamentary libraries for their assistance in compiling this Quick Guide.

While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this Quick Guide, it cannot be guaranteed to be exhaustive. Note also that all percentages are rounded.

Party and chamber abbreviations

Current representation

There are an estimated 26 MPs in Australian parliaments who identify as an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander (3.1% of all federal, state and territory parliamentarians).

The Australian Parliament is the only jurisdiction in Australia that has more Indigenous parliamentarians than the proportion of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population (1.7% higher).

The NT Legislative Assembly has the highest proportion of Indigenous MPs of any Australian parliament (24.0%), which is perhaps unsurprising given the NT is home to the highest proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia (24.5% of the NT population).

Tasmania has the largest discrepancy (5.3%) between the portion of Indigenous parliamentarians relative to the population who identify as an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, followed by the ACT (2.0%) and NSW (2.0%).

Table 1 lists the number and proportion of parliamentarians who identify as Indigenous or as having Indigenous identity, ordered by the ratio of Indigenous MPs to Indigenous population.

Table 1: Current number of Indigenous parliamentarians in Australia, by parliament

Source: Compiled by the Australian Parliamentary Library. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people: Census and National, state and territory population (Canberra: ABS, 2021).
*Percentages are rounded.
^Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander population percentage is based out of the total population for each jurisdiction. Federal and Australia (total) jurisdictions include other territories.

Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander parliamentarians: significant firsts

First Member of parliament in Australia (Senate, Federal Parliament)

•      Neville Bonner (LIB; IND, Qld) appointed to the Senate in June 1971.

David Kennedy was first elected at a by-election as the ALP member for Bendigo in the House of Representatives in 1969. However, Kennedy’s Indigenous heritage was unknown when he entered parliament, nor did he self-identify as Indigenous at that time. For these reasons Neville Bonner is recorded as the first Indigenous parliamentarian.

First Member of a state/territory parliament

• Hyacinth Tungutalum (CLP), elected to the NT Legislative Assembly in October 1974.

First Member of the House of Representatives

• Ken Wyatt (LIB, Hasluck, WA), elected in August 2010.

First woman in any parliament in Australia (WA Legislative Assembly)

• Carol Martin (ALP), elected to the WA Legislative Assembly in February 2001.

First woman in Federal Parliament (Senate)

• Nova Peris (ALP, NT), elected to the Senate in 2013.

First woman to be elected to the House of Representatives

• Linda Burney (ALP, Barton NSW), elected in July 2016.

First Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander to hold a ministerial and Cabinet role

• Ernie Bridge (ALP; IND, WA Legislative Assembly): (Cabinet) Minister for Water Resources, the North-West and Aboriginal Affairs, appointed July 1986.

First (Cabinet) minister in Federal Parliament

• Ken Wyatt (LIB, Hasluck WA):
• Assistant Minister for Health, appointed 30 September 2015
• Minister for Aged Care, appointed 24 January 2017
• (Cabinet) Minister for Indigenous Australians, appointed 29 May 2019

First woman to hold a (Cabinet) ministerial role (NT Legislative Assembly)

• Marion Scrymgour (ALP; IND; ALP, NT Legislative Assembly): (Cabinet) Minister for Family and Community Services, and Environment and Heritage, appointed December 2003.

First woman to hold a (Cabinet) ministerial role in Federal Parliament

• Linda Burney (ALP, Barton NSW): (Cabinet) Minister for Indigenous Australians, appointed 1 June 2022.

First deputy and head of government

• Marion Scrymgour (ALP; IND; ALP, NT Legislative Assembly) was appointed Deputy Chief Minister of the NT on 26 November 2007 and served until 8 February 2009 (p. 2). In January 2008, Scrymgour also served as Acting Chief Minister.
• Adam Giles (CLP, NT Legislative Assembly) served as Chief Minister of the NT from 14 March 2013 to 26 August 2016 (p. 2).

Presiding Officers

• Chansey Paech (ALP, NT Legislative Assembly) appointed as Speaker in June 2020, shortly before the NT election.
• Ngaree Ah Kit (ALP, NT Legislative Assembly) is the first Aboriginal woman and the first Torres Strait Islander to become a presiding officer, appointed as Speaker in October 2020.

Language

• Aden Ridgeway (AD, NSW) was the first Aboriginal MP to use an Indigenous language (Gumbaynggirr) in federal parliament. In his first speech to the Senate delivered on 25 August 1999, he stated:

On this special occasion, I make my presence known as an Aborigine and to this chamber I say, perhaps for the first time: Nyandi baaliga Jaingatti. Nyandi mimiga Gumbayynggir. Nya jawgar yaam Gumbayynggir. Translated, it means: My father is Dhunghutti. My mother is Gumbayynggir. And, therefore, I am Gumbayynggir.

• On 8 May 2019 (pp. 6081–2), Yingiya Mark Guyula (IND, NT Legislative Assembly) spoke in Djambarrpuyngu, which was interpreted in real-time by the Aboriginal Interpreter Service. It was the first time a pre-prepared speech delivered in an Indigenous language was interpreted live in the Chamber in an Australian parliament.

Political party

• The first registered political party dedicated to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples was the Australia's Indigenous Peoples Party (1993–1999).
• The Indigenous - Aboriginal Party of Australia is the only current registered political party run by Indigenous people and focused on Indigenous issues. It was registered in November 2021.

Australian federal parliament

Table 1: List of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander federal parliamentarians

State/territory parliaments

The information in Table 2 is derived from state/territory parliament websites, as such the data has not been standardised. Parliamentarians are listed under each state/territory in order of date first elected.

Table 2: List of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander state/territory parliamentarians

Source: Compiled by the Parliamentary Library with assistance from the Australian state and territory libraries.
*By-election or selected to fill a casual vacancy, including via a recount/countback.
Note 1: retired parliamentarians are listed as ‘resigned’.
Note 2: The ACT, NT and Queensland are unicameral parliaments.

See also

• Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), Electoral milestones for Indigenous Australians, AEC website, 12 November 2020.
• Michelle Evans and Duncan McDonnell, ‘More partisans than parachutes, more successful than not: Indigenous candidates of the major Australian parties’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 28 April 2022.

• References

  [1] The spelling is sourced from Hansard records or the linked source. The AIATSIS Austlang thesaurus provides alternative spellings.

  [2].    Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory, Members of the Legislative Assembly: 1^st Assembly 1974 to 13^th Assembly, updated 21 August 2020.

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