More politicians better than undermining Aboriginal interests with cut to single Northern Territory MP, experts say

Calls for more politicians amid fears a single MP representing the Northern Territory could see indigenous interests subordinated to those of Darwin residents.

People at a mobile polling booth at Warruwi on Goulburn Island east of Darwin on the first day of mobile polling for a federal election.

A single federal MP will represent the entire Northern Territory — an area about the size of France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Italy combined — unless the parliament intervenes to change a forthcoming electoral redistribution.

The determination, announced by the Australian Electoral Commission on Friday, has sparked fears that Aboriginal interests could be swamped by those of Darwin residents, amid calls for both the House of Representatives and the Senate to be enlarged.

Charles Darwin University public policy professor Rolf Gerritsen said the AEC’s determination, which follows existing rules, was “a disaster for Aboriginal people”.

“The NT as a single seat will become Darwin and the NT government,” Professor Gerritsen said.

How much is each vote worth

Defence spending would restart the territory’s stagnant population growth, justifying the second seat a few months after it was abolished, he added.

NT Chief Minister Michael Gunner wrote to Scott Morrison in May warning that moving to a single federal seat would be “unfair, unrepresentative and unworkable”.

“Our size, our diversity, our demographics and our unique challenges need proper representation in the nation’s capital,” he wrote.

The Labor MPs holding both NT lower house seats are supporting a private NT Labor senator’s bill seeking to impose a floor under democratic entitlement. Submissions to a parliamentary committee examining the plan have been mixed, with some supporting it and others arguing that special treatment would be unfair.

Distribution rules were changed in the early 2000s to give the NT a better chance of retaining its two seats when it appeared likely to lose one.

Psephologist Malcolm Mackerras wrote in his submission that recent figures “show clearly that the NT is the second most privileged jurisdiction” in terms of representation.

University of Queensland law professor Graeme Orr supported the “spirit of the bill” but urged the committee to consider further adjustments to distribution formulae.

Griffith University public policy and law professor AJ Brown said it was a mistake to increase one jurisdiction’s democratic representation at the expense of another, and a better idea would be expanding the entire parliament.

“It might be unpopular just now to be suggesting increasing the number of politicians, but the reality is that we are not over-governed,” he said

“We are not going to make the quality of political representation better by limiting ourselves to a small number of politicians.”

A constitutional “nexus” means if the lower house grows, then the Senate must grow too.