Can someone be a member of a State Parliament and Federal Parliament at the same time?

The Australian National flag and Commonwealth Coat of Arms on top of Australian Parliament House.

Parliamentary Education Office (peo.gov.au)

The Australian National flag and Commonwealth Coat of Arms on top of Australian Parliament House.

Parliamentary Education Office (peo.gov.au)

Description

This photograph shows the Commonwealth Coat of Arms and the Australian national flag on top of Australian Parliament House.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

You are free to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work.

Attribution – you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

Non-commercial – you may not use this work for commercial purposes.

No derivative works – you may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

Waiver – any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.

No, a person can only be a member of the Australian Parliament, or a state or territory parliament. They can’t be both at the same time.

The Australian Constitution and the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 set out rules about who can be a member of the Australian Parliament. Someone who is a member of a state or territory parliament would not be able to run for election to the Australian Parliament unless they resigned from this role first.  

There have been many people who have been members of both the Australian Parliament and their state or territory parliament, but not at the same time. For example, Senator Katy Gallagher was a member of the ACT Legislative Assembly before resigning to become a senator representing the ACT. Mr Andrew Gee was a member of the NSW Legislative Assembly. He resigned from this position before being elected to the House of Representatives as the Member for Calare.