Does Federal Parliament Need More MPs? A majority of Australians don’t think so

Majority of Australians disagree with push for more MPs

Less than a quarter of Australians would support increasing the number of MPs in federal parliament, despite claims electorate population sizes have grown too large, new polling from DemosAU has revealed.

A poll of 1000 respondents conducted as part of DemosAU’s TrustWatch series from June 13 to 14, revealed 53% of Australians would not support increasing the number of MPs, compared to 24% who would support an increase.

Australian electorates now average about 120,000 voters per MP, well ahead of global peers like the UK, Canada and New Zealand. Some organisations, such as the Australia Institute, have argued this limits Members abilities to effectively represent their communities.

DemosAU Head of Research George Hasanakos said while the Albanese government had signalled a willingness to consider increasing the number of MPs, these poll results suggested there was more work to do in terms of convincing Australians such a change is needed. 

“This research suggests that many Australians hold a default position against expanding the federal parliament, which is something the government would need to keep in mind if it decided to go down this road.”

The latest edition of TrustWatch also reveals some interesting insights into Australian’s attitudes towards our voting system, and the most recent election, including:

  • 75% of Australians believe their vote was counted fairly at the 2025 federal election, compared to 13% who disagreed.
  • 72% of Australians believe democracy is the best political system available to us
  • 69% of Australians believe Australian democracy is something to be proud of, up from 67% in February.
  • 67% of Australians trust the Australian Electoral Commission
  • 19% Believe Australia needs a Prime Minister like Donald Trump

As part of the Trustwatch report, we also utilised our Conversational AI capabilities to conduct detailed discussions with 714 participants about their attitudes towards democracy, to generate deeper, qualitative insights. Please read the report for more information. 

You can also access the previous report here.

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