Labor repeats support for territory Senator increase – revisits missed opportunity from last term
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Labor says it will push to double the number of senators for the ACT if re-elected. Finance Minister Katy Gallagher told ABC Canberra: “it’s certainly something we all support”.
The ACT and the NT have had two senators each since 1975.
The Liberal–National Coalition opposed the territories getting Senate representation, but the Liberals reliably won one Senate seat in each territory until David Pocock won the second ACT Senate seat in 2022.
When the ACT and NT elected their first senators, their populations were only 197,623 and 97,090 people respectively. Since then, the population of both has more than doubled.
While there is one ACT Senator per 227,000 Canberrans, the ratio in Tasmania is 1 Senator per 46,000 Tasmanians.
A multi-party parliamentary inquiry recommended in 2023 that the number of territory Senators be doubled to 4 per territory.
The Australia Institute has previously advocated for a ‘simple formula’ that would make territory Senate representation ‘proportionate to Tasmania’s population’.
Doubling the ACT’s Senate seats would not achieve this, but it would be a big step in the right direction.
An increase in territory Senators is part of the 10 reforms proposed in The Australia Institute’s Democracy Agenda for the 48th Parliament.
The Albanese Government was planning to increase territory Senator numbers in its first term but dropped the reform after the Coalition said it was opposed. Instead, the Labor and Liberal parties did a deal to pass rushed and unfair changes to Australian electoral laws.
A question for Senator Gallagher and the Albanese Government more broadly is: if they are going to continue to let the Opposition decide whether the territories are entitled to more Senators, it doesn’t matter whether the Labor Party “all support” the reform if they give the Liberal Party a veto over whether it happens.
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