Halving NT representation in federal parliament a ‘travesty’ academic says

It would be a “travesty” for the NT to lose half its federal MPs due to the “arbitrariness” of population estimate statistics among other reasons, a leading law and politics academic has said.

NT’s two federal electorates could become one under planned redistribution.

IT would be a “travesty” for the Northern Territory to lose half its federal MPs due to the “arbitrariness” of population estimate statistics among other reasons, a leading law and politics academic has said.

University of Queensland professor Graeme Orr says it also would be a “serious thing” to abolish Lingiari, one of the handful of electorates in Australia that has a significant number of Indigenous voters.

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The NT’s Lower House seats of Lingiari and Solomon are under threat due to planned redistributions by the Australian Electoral Commission, unless parliament passes a private members Bill put forward by NT Labor senator Malarndirri McCarthy and her colleague Senator Don Farrell.

Lingiari MP Warren Snowdon, and Solomon MP Luke Gosling.

The AEC is due to hand down its report within weeks, though recently released population statistics paint a grim picture for the NT.

Prof Orr, in a submission to the joint committee looking at the Bill, said the NT would be “massively under-represented” if it had just one MP.

He argued the reduction of seats due to fluctuations in estimate statistics was arbitrary and having just one MP would make federal elections less competitive in the NT as both seats were currently marginal.

Prof Orr said the NT’s size and Indigeneity meant it had “special characteristics” that needed to be addressed.

“Respecting, even only minimally, the Uluru Declaration on Indigenous Voice, it would be a serious thing to abolish one of a handful of electorates with significant proportions of Indigenous voters,” he said.

Prof Orr said the Federal Government needed to enshrine in law a minimum number of MPs in both territories, saying the NT should have two and the ACT three, and said he also supported adding a “suitable statistical measure” to smooth future rounding of MP numbers in each jurisdiction.

“The drafters of our constitution did not employ statistical niceties. They plumped on a floor of five for each original state,” he said.

This means Tasmania, which is 20 times smaller than the NT with barely twice the population, has five MPs.

Reducing the NT’s seats to one would mean a single MP covering more than 1.4 million sq km, including the remote Indian Ocean territories of Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands.

The parliamentary committee is accepting submissions until July 10.