The Member for Canberra, Bob McMullan, has come up with an ingenious plan to add to the official number of people in the ACT so that the ACT can retain three seats in the Federal Parliament. He wants the people of Norfolk Island counted in the ACT total for the purposes of determining how many seats in the House of Representatives should be allocated to each state and territory.
Under present law seats are allocated as follows. A quota is struck by dividing the total population of the six states by twice the number of Senators. Most recent figures put that quota at 123,275 people. The quota is divided into the population of each state and territory to give the number of seats. A remainder over a half is rounded up and a remainder under half is rounded down.
On the most recent figures, the ACT has an entitlement of 2.49 quotas which would be rounded down to two seats. Just before the last election the figures entitled the ACT to a third seat, but only just. Since then the ACT’s population has not kept pace with that of other states, but if the 2000 or so inhabitants of Norfolk Island are added, the ACT stays over 2.5 and retains the third seat.
Mr McMullan is right to suggest that cutting representation from three to two is a major readjustment, compared with, say taking one of several dozen seats in a large state, the more so because when one considers all three tiers of government, the people of the ACT have among the lowest levels of representation.
However, the principle of one vote one value for House of Representatives elections must be paramount and the addition of Norfolk Island’s population has to be justified on merit, not just to make up the numbers.
There is little natural affinity between Norfolk Island and the ACT, but there is perhaps even less affinity with other parts of Australia. Norfolk Islanders are entitled to vote in federal elections and the federal parliament has power to make laws over them. Norfolk Islanders are entitled to choose an electorate they were born in or have other affinity with, failing that they can vote in the ACT or the Northern Territory. It means that much of the burden of representing Norfolk Islanders falls upon ACT and Northern Territory MPs, in the same way that the burden or representing Christmas Island falls upon the Northern Territory MP and the people of Christmas Island are added to the Northern Territory for quota purposes.
As things stand only those Norfolk Islanders who enrol in the ACT are counted for quota purposes … about 100. There are moral grounds for increasing that because an MP represents everyone, not just those on the rolls. Norfolk is an odd case because not everyone is on the roll. Given some Norfolk Islanders are enrolled elsewhere, however, the ACT has a weak case for counting every Norfolk Islander, particularly as they voted overwhelmingly in 1990 not to be part of the mainland electoral system. But there seems a clear moral case for dividing the total population of Norfolk Island up and assigning it in proportion to the numbers on the roll to the places where they have enrolled. It may be that the ACT would then get only about half of Norfolk Island’s population, which would put its third seat on a knife edge.
But the sound moral argument for meeting Mr McMullan half way is unlikely to succeed. The change would require a change to the Electoral Act and it is difficult to see the Coalition doing anything to help keep what is likely to be a Labor seat in the ACT, and the task of rejecting a change has been made easier by Mr McMullan’s unjustified claim to include all Norfolk Islanders, not just a reasonable portion of them, in the ACT.