The federal Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters holds an inquiry into the conduct of each federal election, and they did so in 2023. I had the opportunity to make a submission, and then appear before the committee. Their final report was published in November 2023.
Amongst other topics of interest, the committee recommended that the number of senators representing the ACT and NT be increased from two to four each, and also recommended a further inquiry to specifically consider expanding the number of state senators (and thus the size of the House).
There’s a chance that this could be the last election before we expand the size of the Parliament, but today’s response from the federal government suggests they will need a nudge in the right direction.
It has taken sixteen months, but the government has today provided their response to JSCEM’s recommendations.
On the topic of the size of parliament, the federal government’s response has been underwhelming, saying that “Whilst the Government does not propose to increase the membership of the House of Representatives, this important issue requires further inquiry and consideration”. Their response to the recommendation to increase the number of territory senators is very similar.
The two responses suggests that an inquiry may take place in the next parliament, but the government is far from committed to reform.
While I think there is value in an inquiry to work out the exact details of reform, Australians deserve to know where their politicians stand on this issue.
There is also some urgency to dealing with this soon. An expansion would trigger a major redistribution of seats in the five mainland states, and this would need to start soon after the election. This isn’t a reform that can be batted around for two years and implemented right before the election. Indeed the AEC has had trouble meeting the timeframe for redistribution in this last parliamentary term, having to undergo reasonably significant changes to the boundaries of about two thirds of seats. A redistribution to expand the parliament would be a much bigger job.
I think our politicians should hear from voters that this is an issue that they are concerned about, and you should ask the candidates in your seat where they stand on this issue.
I previously wrote at length about why it is time to expand the parliament in this blog post, but you could mention some of these points:
- The average population per member of the House of Representatives is now more than 177,000, compared to 105,000 after the last expansion in 1984 and 50,000 at the time of Federation.
- The last expansion of parliament took place in 1984, and the previous expansion was in 1949. More time has passed since 1984 than took place between 1949 and 1984.
- Our parliaments are relatively undersized compared to similar countries. Our House of Representatives is only 44% of the size of the Canadian House of Commons, but our population is 67% of the Canadian population. The average seat in the UK House of Commons has a population of about 105,000.
- A larger parliament would bring members of Parliament closer to the people, and would make the chamber more representative and more diverse.
- A larger parliament would reduce the burden on an individual MP’s office to support their local constituents, and would thus reduce the need to employ extra staff in each office.
I would be very interested to hear what answers you get back from your local candidates!
It would require an adjustment to the law for the redistribution. Not a constitution adjustment.
It is actually a pretty simple law change – change the numbers of senators – after that it all flows naturally because of the nexus.
Australia does every second election. Every 7 years, when entitlement changes or when 1/3 or more of the seats deviate by more then 10%
If you were to expand the parliament, that would mean you would have no 7-year changes (at least for the five biggest states) for a while, but it’s entirely possible a state could still have a redistribution at the next election if their seat entitlement changes.
My idea is expand the parliament to certain size then have every second have a nationwide redistribution and the parliament gets expanded in that redistribution to keep up with the population growth (similar to Canada as previously mentioned) which has its advantages of having more (or potentially even most) seats only needing smaller and more gradual redistribution.
*second election
@marh it is not necessary to expand parliament every 2 elections in austraia. people here wiould not be hapy with pollies given themselves more mates to lord over them. but its been 40+ years and it needs to be done every 25 years at minimum is probably more sensible