Five minutes, plain English, and every card on The Floor will make sense.
The House of Representatives has 150 members, one per local area (your electorate). Whoever commands a majority here forms the government — which is why the government wins almost every House vote, and why a loss there is an earthquake.
The Senate has 76 senators — 12 per state, 2 per territory — elected proportionally. That maths means the government almost never holds a Senate majority. To pass anything, it must win over the opposition or the crossbench (independents and small parties). This is where bills get amended, delayed, bargained over, and blocked — the Senate is called the house of reviewfor a reason. When you see a knife-edge vote on The Floor, it's usually a Senate one.
A bill is a proposed law. On a bill's page you'll see its timeline — those steps are the real procedure:
1. Introduced (first reading — the paperwork moment, no debate). 2. Main debate (second reading — the argument about the idea; this is where most of the speeches you read happen). 3. Amendments debated (consideration in detail / committee — the text gets picked apart line by line and changed). 4. Final vote(third reading — the chamber's last word).
Then the whole thing happens again in the other chamber. If the second chamber changes anything, the bill bounces back — you'll see “the other chamber's amendments considered” on the timeline — until both have passed exactly the same text. Only then does the Governor-General sign it (Royal Assent) and it becomes law. One special rule: bills that spend or raise money must start in the House, and the Senate can't amend them — only send back requests.
Most questions are decided by shouting “aye” or “no” (“on the voices”). But if enough members demand a real count, the bells ring for four minutes across the building, the doors are locked, and every member walks to one side of the chamber or the other — ayes to the right, noes to the left. That is a division, and it's the only moment every individual's position goes on the record. That's the roll-call behind “the seats that voted” on The Floor — and when someone sits with the other side against their own party, that's crossing the floor: rare, career-risky, and always worth noticing.
Question Time— every sitting day at 2pm, ministers face questions. Opposition questions attack; government “Dorothy Dixers” invite ministers to boast. No vote — you judge: answered or dodged.
Debate only (MPIs)— a party tables a charge (“the government is failing on X”) and both sides argue for an hour. Parliament never voteson these — your Back it / Reject it is the only tally there'll ever be.
Motions — a chamber deciding something on the spot: urgency debates, censures, sending a bill to a committee inquiry, or disallowance— the Senate's power to cancel regulations a minister made without a new law. These DO get divisions, so your vote sits right beside Parliament's.
The status banner on every bill page tells you where it really is: before its first chamber → passed one chamber · before the other → passed both chambers → now law. A government bill sailing through the House can still die in the Senate — watching a bill cross that gap is watching the actual contest of Australian politics.
How we choose and write what you see — and what we'll never do — is on the methodology page.