Catherine McGowan AO is a former Australian politician who was the independent MP for the rural Victorian seat of Indi from the 2013 federal election, when she defeated Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella, until her retirement before the 2019 federal election.

The 2016 Australian federal election was a double dissolution election held on Saturday 2 July to elect all 226 members of the 45th Parliament of Australia, after an extended eight-week official campaign period. It was the first double dissolution election since the 1987 election and the first under a new voting system for the Senate that replaced group voting tickets with optional preferential voting.