The Coalition's confected outrage over a proposal that would double the number of senators from the ACT and the Northern Territory conveniently ignores the truth that if this reform had been made before the 2022 election Zed Seselja would still be in the upper house.
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Those LNP MPs who were quick to claim the proposal would give candidates of the left a stranglehold on the Senate in perpetuity appear happy to accept that the ACT's Liberal voters have no representation in either chamber.
That's right. The almost 64,000 Canberrans who voted for the Liberals in 2023 have no direct representation in the Australian Parliament.
Surely if the Coalition had any regard for its own supporters it would be supportive of a proposal that would give them a far better than an even chance of winning a Senate seat.
While Mr Seselja's remarkable achievement of coming third in what has traditionally been a two-horse race was all his own work, his task was made harder than it had to be.
That's because with only two Senate seats in contention the quota is set far higher here than, for example, Tasmania where a state population of 541,071 returns 12 members to the upper house.
That is one senator for every 45,000 Tasmanians. Tasmania also returns five lower house MPs compared to the ACT's three.
Under the current regime the ACT has one senator for every 215,000 Canberrans. If that number was to double this would reduce to one senator for every 107,803 residents.
Or, as the ACT government's submission to the joint standing committee on electoral matters stated: "Tasmania ... has 3.4 times the representation in the Federal Parliament than that of the ACT, despite having a population which is only 1.2 times larger than that of the ACT".
Senator David Pocock, the independent senator who toppled Zed Seselja in 2023 - in large part on the issue of territory rights - has been quick to support the committee's recommendation.
"People who live in the ACT and NT [are] being dudded because we don't have people standing up for us here in Canberra," he said.
The Northern Territory, which also only has two senators, would also benefit from the proposed reform.
Instead of the current one senator for 123,000 residents the Northern Territory would have one senator for every 61,625 people. It is worth noting that South Australia, the second least populous state, has one senator for every 147,583 residents.
While, as the Coalition was quick to point out on Monday, if NSW, the most populous state, were to have the same per capita Senate representation as the ACT, it would have 24 members in the upper house, that is largely moot for two reasons.
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The first is that the ACT is most directly comparable to the smaller states, not the largest. And, even more importantly, NSW is much more strongly represented in the lower house with a total of 47 MPs compared to the territory's three.
Putting these issues to one side, however, the most alarming feature of the Coalition's opposition to giving the territories more equitable representation is that they don't like the way people in the two jurisdictions vote.
That is the type of thinking that helped fuel the American revolution when, chanting "no taxation without representation", Bostonians tossed crates of tea into the city harbour.
It is to be hoped that the Albanese government will quickly pick up this recommendation and implement it before the next election.
