What new federal electoral laws will mean for the NT Lower House in the future

Crucial new electoral laws will ensure the NT gets to keep its two Lower House MPs for years to come, and even make it easier to add an extra seat as it develops economically.

CRUCIAL electoral laws that are expected to be set in stone by the end of next week will ensure the NT gets to keep its two Lower House MPs for years to come, and even make it easier to add an extra seat as it develops economically.

The government’s version of laws to save the NT’s besieged Lower House seats, pushed through in response to Labor’s private members’ bill, was passed in the Senate on Thursday and will make its way to the House of Representatives next week.

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Labor introduced the private members’ Bill earlier this year in preparation for an Australian Electoral Commission ruling that due to the Territory’s shrinking population, it would lose one of its Lower House MPs at the next election. The government, following a committee report, opted to introduce its own version of the Bill known as the Electoral Amendment (Territory Representation) Bill 2020.

This Bill sets aside the AEC’s determination in July, providing the NT with two seats at the next election, which is due to be held by early 2022.

It also changes the mathematics used to decide how many MPs the NT and the ACT are entitled to by moving to a method known as the “harmonic mean” – which has been championed by ABC’s election analyst Antony Green.

Senator Anne Ruston said harmonic mean rounding was recognised by electoral systems experts as the “most fair and suitable approach” for assigning parliamentary seats between different geographic areas, to fix the unduly heavy constituent workload that can arise in the smallest areas.

“This not only allows the NT to hold its ground … but makes it easier to achieve growth of its parliamentary representation to three seats as it develops economically,” she said.

NT Senator Malarndirri McCarthy said she was “enormously proud” that changes would be made to secure representation “to make sure the voices of the people of the NT and the people of the Indian Ocean territories grow louder in strength, not softer”.