Yes Federal Parliament Should Be Expanded And No It Isn't A Partisan Fix

Federal JSCEM season is upon us and who knows I might manage to write a submission soon.  But for now on this site I want to comment on one issue that has been generating a fair amount of commentary, too little of it accurate.  The fact that JSCEM is again inquiring into the size of parliament has resulted in speculation that Labor is pursuing it for partisan benefit; some have even absurdly alleged the potential expansion is a form of gerrymander.  Nonsense from an already unhinged online right that fails to understand what even happened at the election has been fuelled by a Seven interview with pollster and strategist Kos Samaras that claims that because Labor is doing so well in the cities, an expansion will greatly benefit Labor and put the Coalition to the sword for good.

The fact is that while there is an internal harmony advantage for Labor in expanding the parliament now, it is not likely there will be any advantage for Labor proportionally. Indeed, if anything, there are very good reasons to suspect Labor will be getting a slightly lower House of Reps seat share for a given vote share with an expansion than without.  There are many good reasons for expanding the House of Representatives and I strongly support passing legislation to expand the Parliament in this term.  As with Senate reform in 2016 (an excellent and necessary change that Labor to its shame opposed with embarrassingly bad arguments) we again see nonsense arguments being made by the Opposition against something that is actually a good idea.  James McGrath has claimed that an expansion doesn't pass any sort of test let alone the "pub test".  Well it easily passes mine, and I am not known as an easy marker.  

There are not such strong reasons for expanding the Senate, but nor is there anything in particular wrong with doing so (but see below re Territory Senators), and that will come with any substantial increase in the House via the nexus provision, which I don't think is going away anytime soon.  

For the purposes of this article I am assuming the Coalition survives til the next election as a largely intact Opposition and electoral politics in this country carries on as normal.  I cannot at this time be completely sure this will be so. 

JSCEM's Strange Case For Extra Territory Senators

Yesterday saw the release of the final version of the Joint Standing Committee into Electoral Matters report into the 2022 election.  Following the somewhat lightweight and culture-war afflicted 2019 report it was good to see a return to substance, but that is not to say that everything is wonderful.  There are various welcome aspects of JSCEM's findings and proposals that I may comment on later but for now I wanted to deal with JSCEM's recommendation to increase the number of Senators for the ACT and Northern Territory from two to four apiece.  (I'm also considering a longer article about the current push for "truth in electoral advertising" laws, and the extent to which that movement is being fanned by naive support arising from the Voice failure and the rise of Donald Trump style candidates.)

Increasing the number of Territory Senators can be done by legislation and could in theory very well happen before the next election, while an increase in the House of Representatives is likely to be a second-term project for the Albanese Government, assuming that it gets a second term.   As the support of Labor, the Greens and David Pocock for expansion appears highly likely, the Government would only, for instance, need the support of either Lidia Thorpe or the Lambie Network (or even someone to abstain or be away) to pass the change.  In theory an expansion could be challenged in the High Court but the prospects for any challenge would seem dim.  The Constitution allows the Parliament to create Territory representation on whatever terms it likes and so long as there's some reasonable argument rather than it just being an out-and-out stack, it's hard to see on what basis the Court could say no.