Electronic voting will come to the lower house of the Australian Federal Parliament by 2019, the leader of the House of Representatives, Christopher Pyne, has announced.

A statement said the Department of Parliamentary Services would soon invite tenders from Australian businesses to handle the job.

Pyne said: “The implementation of electronic voting will reduce significantly the time required for each vote in the chamber.

“Voting outcomes will be transparent, accurate, and known immediately freeing up more time for important parliamentary business to be conducted each day the House sits.

“Electronic voting will also provide an electronic solution for recording division voting and improve online accessibility to division process and results.”

The statement said in April 2016, the bipartisan House of Representatives Standing Committee on Procedure had recommended that electronic voting be implemented in the lower house.

And it added that the World e-Parliament Report 2016 produced by the Inter-Parliamentary Union indicated that 67% of respondent parliaments used some form of IT system to support voting in the plenary chamber.