In the recent federal election, Canberra's voters were badly done by – a vote cast in the territory was worth less than that of other Australians. This is a deplorable situation that has been left hanging for far too long and should now be changed.
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To illustrate this bone of contention, a House of Representatives vote in the ACT is worth half that of a vote in the Northern Territory. This situation comes about due to the maths used to divide the nation into voting blocs. The carve-up is done within states and territories, using quotas. The result is the ACT is limited to two House seats and, due to the ACT's growing population, they are the nation's most populous federal electorates.
While the ACT has 282,000 voters enrolled for its two seats, the Northern Territory has only 137,000. It is nevertheless guaranteed two House seats, thanks to a joint decision by the Coalition and Labor, taken several years ago when the changing spread of population across Australia meant the NT was going to lose one of its two electorates. If the rules had been followed, that would have created one giant electorate. Instead, an exception was made, on a bipartisan basis.
In the ACT, the seat of Canberra, on the southside, had 143,279 voters at the recent election. The renamed seat on the northside, Fenner, had 138,847. Could that be right – more people voting in each of the ACT's electorates than there are in both the Northern Territory's combined? Yes, it is.
For years, the ACT has sat just below the level needed for a third seat. To achieve another seat, the ACT would have to grow its population at a faster rate than the rest of the nation. And how likely is that, when the Coalition is moving hundreds of public servants out of Canberra?
Adding to the frustration of voters wanting to be heard, the ACT did briefly have three lower house seats, but reverted to two as the population growth slowed. One way to rectify this situation of disempowerment would be to allow Queanbeyan to be included with the ACT's population, but such cross-border counting is currently not allowed. Another solution would be for the Coalition and Labor to combine, again, and guarantee the ACT three lower house seats.
If that had occurred before the recent election, Labor would have won another vital seat in its quest to win government. But the collective Labor-leaning tendency of ACT voters is the reason the Coalition would never agree to guaranteeing a third seat – in most elections, it would be delivered to Labor on a platter.
The situation of the ACT voters being treated as second rate – much like all the safe seats around the country – is therefore not going to change in the forseeable future. However, ACT voters can pride themselves on handling their ballot paper seriously – informal votes were proportionally lowest in the ACT and Tasmania but highest in the Northern Territory and NSW.
