Liberals resisting expanded Senate

Simon Birmingham has called on Anthony Albanese to rule out an expansion of the number of upper-house seats for the ACT and Northern Territory.

Opposition Senate leader Simon Birmingham. Picture: Kelly Barnes

Plans to increase Senate seats and enhance the parliamentary influence of both the ACT and the Northern Territory are being opposed by the Liberals, who are urging Anthony Albanese to rule out expanding the size of parliament in this term.

Labor agreed at its national conference to address “historic proportional under-representation of the ACT and NT, and commits to increasing its representation in the Senate”.

The Labor MP for Solomon, Luke Gosling, last week said each territory could get four more senators at the next election – taking the number of Senate seats for both the NT and ACT to six.

Opposition Senate leader Simon Birmingham said: “Anthony Albanese should rule out seeking to change our parliament, the electoral system or creating more MPs without first taking (it) to an election.

“The last thing Australia needs right now is for the Albanese ­government to make government even bigger and costs even greater by increasing the size of the parliament.”

The motion passed at Labor’s national conference in Brisbane also said Labor believed other constitutional reforms including “fixed, four-year terms for the House of Representatives and the Senate” should be progressed through a “new, independent Australian Consti­tution­al Commission”.

“Labor will review our current system of electoral representation, noting Australia’s growing and increasingly diverse population, increasing demands on elected representatives, and our commitment to integrity and transparency,” it said.

Liberal Party federal director Andrew Hirst has opposed increasing the number of Senate seats for both the NT and the ACT in his submission to the joint standing committee on electoral matters. “The ACT currently has more senators per capita than three states,” he said. “The NT has more senators per capita than five states.

“Were NSW to have the same number of senators per capita as the ACT currently has, the number of senators from NSW would need to rise to 24.

“The Labor Party … does not have a mandate to increase the size of the Australian parliament.”

The committee on electoral matters will hand down its final report into the 2022 federal election campaign later this year.

ACT Labor senator and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said she wanted to see her local community “represented fairly in the federal parliament and I look forward to reading the report when its finalised”.