Solomon Australian House of Representatives Division | |||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() Division of Solomon in the Northern Territory, as of the 2016 federal election | |||||||||||||||
Created | 2000 | ||||||||||||||
MP | Luke Gosling | ||||||||||||||
Party | Labor | ||||||||||||||
Namesake | Vaiben Louis Solomon | ||||||||||||||
Electors | 71,888 (2022) | ||||||||||||||
Area | 337 km2 (130.1 sq mi) | ||||||||||||||
Demographic | Inner metropolitan | ||||||||||||||
Territory electorate(s) | |||||||||||||||
|
The Division of Solomon is an Australian Electoral Division in the Northern Territory. It is largely coextensive with the Darwin/Palmerston metropolitan area. The only other division in the territory, the Division of Lingiari, covers the remainder of the territory.
Federal electoral division boundaries in Australia are determined at redistributions by a redistribution committee appointed by the Australian Electoral Commission. Redistributions occur for the boundaries of divisions in a particular state or territory, and they occur every seven years, or sooner if a state or territory's representation entitlement changes or when divisions of a state or territory are malapportioned. [1]
The division was one of the two established when the former Division of Northern Territory was redistributed on 21 December 2000. It is named for Hon Vaiben Louis Solomon, a Premier of South Australia, a delegate to the second Constitutional convention and member of the first Australian Parliament. He had represented the Northern Territory in the South Australian House of Assembly, when it was still part of that colony.
The Division was first contested at the 2001 federal election. Although the Darwin/Palmerston area had historically been a stronghold for the Country Liberal Party at the territorial level, recent gains by Labor made it much more competitive by the time the seat was created. It has taken on a character similar to mortgage belt seats. As such, for most of its history, it has been a marginal seat usually held by the party of government.
The CLP's Dave Tollner very narrowly won the seat in 2001, then increased his majority in 2004 before narrowly losing it to Labor's Damian Hale at the 2007 election, where Labor won a landslide victory. At the 2010 election, the CLP's Natasha Griggs won Solomon back with a two-party-preferred margin of 1.75 percent from a 1.94 percent swing. She therefore became the first opposition member in the seat's history. Griggs was re-elected with a reduced two-party margin of 1.4 percent at the 2013 election as the Coalition won government.
A MediaReach seat-level opinion poll in Solomon of 513 voters conducted 22−23 June during the 2016 election campaign unexpectedly found Labor heavily leading the Liberals 61–39 on the two-party vote from a large 12.4 percent swing. [2]
Griggs and the CLP lost Solomon to Labor's Luke Gosling, at the 2016 election held on 2 July, with Gosling becoming the first Labor candidate to win the primary vote and defeating Griggs on a 56–44 two-party vote from a record 7.4 percent swing—in both cases, the strongest result in the seat's history. [3] [4] Gosling, who had previously run in 2013, is the second opposition member to hold the seat. This was later seen as a forerunner to the CLP's disastrous performance at the NT general election held later that year, where the party won just 2 seats out of 25, including only one in the Darwin area. Gosling retained the seat in 2019 with a reduced majority, but won in 2022 by a margin just under the threshold for making Solomon a safe Labor seat.
Image | Member | Party | Term | Notes | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() | Dave Tollner (1966–) | Country Liberal | 10 November 2001 – 24 November 2007 | Lost seat. Later elected to the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly seat of Fong Lim in 2008 | |
![]() | Damian Hale (1969–) | Labor | 24 November 2007 – 21 August 2010 | Lost seat | |
![]() | Natasha Griggs (1969–) | Country Liberal | 21 August 2010 – 2 July 2016 | Lost seat | |
![]() | Luke Gosling (1971–) | Labor | 2 July 2016 – present | Incumbent |
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labor | Luke Gosling | 21,775 | 39.50 | −0.54 | |
Country Liberal | Tina Macfarlane | 13,771 | 24.98 | −13.07 | |
Greens | Aiya Goodrich Carttling | 8,164 | 14.81 | +2.97 | |
Liberal Democrats | Kylie Bonanni | 5,839 | 10.59 | +10.59 | |
One Nation | Emily Lohse | 2,948 | 5.35 | +5.35 | |
United Australia | Tayla Selfe | 2,628 | 4.77 | +1.90 | |
Total formal votes | 55,125 | 96.48 | +0.85 | ||
Informal votes | 2,011 | 3.52 | −0.85 | ||
Turnout | 57,136 | 79.53 | −3.55 | ||
Two-party-preferred result | |||||
Labor | Luke Gosling | 32,726 | 59.37 | +6.29 | |
Country Liberal | Tina Macfarlane | 22,399 | 40.63 | −6.29 | |
Labor hold | Swing | +6.29 |
![]() | Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org. |
![]() | Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org. |
The Country Liberal Party of the Northern Territory (CLP), commonly known as the Country Liberals, is a centre-right political party in Australia's Northern Territory. In territory politics, it operates in a two-party system with the Australian Labor Party (ALP). It also contests federal elections as an affiliate of the Liberal Party of Australia and National Party of Australia, the two partners in the federal coalition.
The 2001 Australian federal election was held in Australia on 10 November 2001. All 150 seats in the House of Representatives and 40 seats in the 76-member Senate were up for election. The incumbent Liberal Party of Australia led by Prime Minister of Australia John Howard and coalition partner the National Party of Australia led by John Anderson defeated the opposition Australian Labor Party led by Kim Beazley. Future Opposition Leader Peter Dutton entered parliament at this election. As of 2023 this was the most recent federal election to have a rematch in 11 years, and the most recent repeated election when Howard beat Beazley just 3 years earlier and until 2013 to have both major party leaders running in previous federal elections as major party leaders when in 2013, and the last for both major party leaders to appear in consecutive federal elections in 24 years.
David William Tollner is an Australian politician. He was the Country Liberal Party member for Solomon in the Australian House of Representatives from 2001 to 2007, and then served in the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly as the member for Fong Lim from 2008 to 2016. He was the Deputy Chief Minister of the Northern Territory under chief minister Adam Giles from 2013 to 2014. During his time in federal parliament, he sat with the Liberal Party.
A general election was held in the Northern Territory, Australia, on 18 June 2005. The centre-left Labor Party, led by Chief Minister Clare Martin, won a second term with a landslide victory, winning six of the ten seats held by the opposition Country Liberal Party in the 25-member Northern Territory Legislative Assembly, bringing their total to 19. It was the second largest victory in any Northern Territory election. The only larger majority in the history of the Territory was in the first election, in 1974. In that contest, the CLP won 17 of the 19 seats in the chamber, and faced only two independents as opposition.
Port Darwin is an electoral division of the Legislative Assembly in the Northern Territory of Australia. It was first created in 1974. It is an entirely urban electorate, covering only 5 km² and taking in the Darwin central business district, as well as the suburb of Larrakeyah and part of Stuart Park. There were 5,699 people enrolled in the electorate as of August 2020.
Blain is an electoral division of the Legislative Assembly in Australia's Northern Territory. It was first created in 1997 and is named after Adair Blain, the second member for the federal Northern Territory electorate, and the only Australian sitting federal MP to ever become a prisoner of war. Blain is an urban electorate, covering 4 km² and taking in Palmerston suburbs of Bellamack and Woodroffe and the suburb of Moulden. There were 5,695 people enrolled within the electorate as of August 2020.
Drysdale is an electoral division of the Legislative Assembly in Australia's Northern Territory. It was first created in 1997, and is named after Fred Drysdale, a former member of the Legislative Council. It is an urban electorate covering 5 km2 in north-western Palmerston including the CBD and the suburbs of Driver, Gray, Yarrawonga and most of Moulden. There were 5,828 people enrolled within the electorate as of August 2020.
The Northern Territory Greens are a green party in the Northern Territory, a member of the federation of the Australian Greens party. It is the only branch of the Australian Greens to have never had any parliamentary representation, as well as the only one that does not run candidates in every single seat. The party is the most progressive registered party in the Northern Territory.
General elections were held in the Northern Territory of Australia on 9 August 2008. Of the 25 seats in the Legislative Assembly, 23 were contested; two safe Labor seats were uncontested. The incumbent centre-left Labor Party (ALP), led by Chief Minister Paul Henderson won a narrow third term victory against the opposition centre-right Country Liberal Party (CLP), led by Terry Mills. Labor suffered a massive and unexpected swing against it, to hold a one-seat majority in the new parliament.
Fong Lim is an electoral division of the Legislative Assembly in Australia's Northern Territory.
Adam Graham Giles is an Australian former politician and former Chief Minister of the Northern Territory (2013–2016) as well as the former leader of the Country Liberal Party (CLP) in the unicameral Northern Territory Parliament. Giles is the first Indigenous Australian to serve as a head of government in Australia.
A general election was held in the Northern Territory on Saturday 25 August 2012, which elected all 25 members of the Legislative Assembly in the unicameral Northern Territory Parliament.
The 2016 Northern Territory general election was held on Saturday 27 August 2016 to elect all 25 members of the Legislative Assembly in the unicameral Northern Territory Parliament.
Natasha Louise Griggs is an Australian former politician and the administrator of the Australian Indian Ocean Territories from 2017 to 2022.
Lia Emele Finocchiaro is an Australian politician. She has been a Country Liberal Party member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly for the seat of Spillett since her election in 2016. She became Leader of the Opposition in the Northern Territory after the resignation of Gary Higgins on 1 February 2020. She was previously the member for Drysdale from 2012 to 2016.
Luke John Anthony Gosling, is an Australian politician and a retired Australian Army officer. Gosling has been the Australian Labor Party member for the Australian House of Representatives seat of Solomon in the Northern Territory since the 2016 federal election.
Spillett is a division of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly in Australia. It was created in 2016, for the 2016 general elections, and surrounds Palmerston. It is named for Peter Spillett, a historian and former member of Darwin City Council.
Eva Dina Lawler is an Australian politician who is currently the 13th Chief Minister of the Northern Territory from the 21st of December 2023. She is a Labor member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly since 2016, representing the electorate of Drysdale. She was Minister for Education in the Gunner Ministry from September 2016 until June 2018, when she was made Minister for Environment and Natural Resources and Minister for Infrastructure, Planning and Logistics.
The 2020 Northern Territory general election was held on 22 August 2020 to elect all 25 members of the Legislative Assembly in the unicameral Northern Territory Parliament.
The 2024 Northern Territory general election is scheduled to be held on 24 August 2024 to elect all 25 members of the Legislative Assembly in the unicameral Northern Territory Parliament.