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. 

Why More Reps Would Be Good

1. Reducing malapportionment

In the 2022 election JSCEM sessions an inquiry into the size of parliament was explicitly framed in terms of "one vote one value".  In general the House of Representatives is very well apportioned on this criteria but we can do better and an expansion would mean that we would do better.

Firstly, Tasmania as a federation State is entitled to a minimum of five Representatives, but on a population basis it doesn't deserve that many. Increasing the size of the House will add seats in the mainland states but not in Tasmania, making Tasmania less proportionally overrepresented.  

The Northern Territory is also malapportioned.  Its population is such that with one seat it would be severely underrepresented, while with two seats it is severely over.  The Parliament changed the formula for the Northern Territory to enable it to retain two seats in a situation where it otherwise would have lost one, but an expansion elsewhere would also reduce the representation gap between the NT electorates and everywhere else.

There is also a minor benefit in expanding the size of the House in terms of redistributions elsewhere, in terms of slightly reducing the impact of rounding.  For instance if South Australia has enough population for about 10 seats, from time to time that might be 9.5 or 10.5 (a rounding error of about 5%).  If following an expansion SA is entitled from time to time to 11 or 12 seats (or with a more ambitious expansion even more), the rounding errors are slightly smaller.  

2. Better electorate services

Electorates with enrolments of on average around 122,000 just aren't the same for representation as they were in 1984 when average enrolment was about 67,000 (not 75,000 as stated by Seven).  There's a noticeable difference between the Tasmanian electorates which now have about the voter base of the typical 1984 seat and many of the mainland state electorates in terms of the degree of community connection to the MP.  With an expansion of the House of Reps, the number of voters per seat would come down and servicing electorates would become a bit easier.  This applies especially to spatially large electorates, but increasing the chance that a given constituent with a problem can be helped by their MP is a good thing everywhere. It's not nearly as big a gain as would occur if politicians actually just fixed more of the obvious problems voters need help with everywhere but it's something.  I also think that having slightly smaller electorates will give more of the electorates a clearly defined character, which makes it easier for major party MPs to represent their distinctive qualities.  

A simple populist response to any proposal for more politicians is that politicians are bad so why would we pay extra for more of them.  But having more will enable those politicians who try to do a good job for their electorates to do it better.  

3. Better representation

Something that was very obvious in the 2025 election (and also in 2022) was that as the major party vote declines, more electorates are struggling to find an MP who is uncomplicatedly the most wanted person for the seat.  More seats are being determined by complex three cornered distributions where a case can be made that at least two candidates were the most preferred candidate by the electorate.  There were three cases in 2025 (Forrest, Grey and Bullwinkel) where it's possible the candidate excluded in third was actually preferred to the top two by most voters in the electorate (ie they were the "Condorcet winner") and there were also cases in the Brisbane seats in 2022 where this was true of the Labor candidate but they were pipped at the 3-candidate stage by the Greens.  New independents were desperately unlucky in many seats where some could have won had the swings between the major parties been either higher or lower.  The Greens' most intense support area in the city of Melbourne ended up split between part of Wills and part of Melbourne (seat) and they won neither.  And so on. 

Beyond the argument about whether the House of Representatives should be more proportional I think there can be wider agreement that the 2025 election was a missed opportunity in terms of turning another record non-major-party vote into an increase in the diversity of voices that have any presence at all in the Reps.  And while expanding the parliament wouldn't get rid of the three-cornered seat contests that are fun for psephologists but testing strategically for some voters (we could even get more of them) I think that making the electorates a little smaller, a little less geographically and demographically diverse could make it easier for the non-major forces to effectively target more seats they can win.  

Who would expansion favour?

There was a particularly silly op ed by George Brandis arguing that expansion would favour Labor in the Reps and the Greens in the Senate.  Fortunately Ben Raue has completely demolished it and saved me from having to do so.  The current six seats per state is actually optimal for the Greens because even off, say, 10% of the vote they have great prospects of winning a sixth of the state Senate seats.  Or at least it would be if they could reliably preselect Senators who didn't defect.  Increasing the number of half-Senate seats per election to seven or eight doesn't assist the Greens at all, except during double dissolutions which are a rare species nowadays.  Proportionally, an expansion reduces their Senate power but gives them better prospects in the Reps.

Samaras' argument as further advanced on Twitter was that the Coalition represents seats that are shrinking as Labor wins growing outer city seats that lag in redistributions.  Therefore, a redistribution of every mainland seat at once favours Labor.  But the problem with this is that NSW, Victoria and WA are not currently lagging in redistributions because they all had forced redistributions in the last cycle, in the case of Victoria and WA as a result of their seat entitlement changing and not because one was due.  This leaves Queensland where most of the over-quota peripheral seats in need of reduction are LNP-held (Longman, Wright, Fisher, Fadden - an exception is Blair) while many of the under-quota inner to middle urban seats are not (eg Ryan, Moreton, Bonner, Rankin).  Partly as a result of Queensland, average enrolment in the mainland state seats nationwide is currently higher (124,699 at end of September) in Coalition-held seats than non-Coalition (122,043).  Even after removing Queensland it is still higher (123,855 to 121,907), as several NSW rural/regional seats, far from being depopulated, are around 5% over quota.  So the idea that redistributing everywhere at once is bad news for the Coalition is just not true at all.  They stand to benefit.  (Note that Queensland will be redistributed this term anyway.)

There is another way in which expansion can help the Coalition.  This is that unless the expansion is a big one, the ACT won't be getting more seats, and Tasmania and the NT won't in any case.  This means the area where expansions can occur is the mainland states where the Coalition currently holds 30.7% of all seats compared to 28.7% overall.  (The Coalition currently holds nothing in the non-expanding states and territories, and only one is even now marginal on a 2PP basis).  

Thirdly, expansion will help the Coalition by creating more vacant seats.   Labor made large seat gains at the 2025 election including winning 13 Coalition-held seats, 10 of which were occupied.  As it stands, Labor will have personal vote advantages in those seats (especially the ones that were occupied) that will make it more difficult to recover those seats with a modest 2PP swing.  It will be easier for the Coalition to pick up newly created notionally Labor seats that don't actually have an occupant.  

This dynamic was visible in the 1984 expansion.  The Coalition won 44.6% of the seats at that expansion (66/148).  Had there been no expansion from the 1983 election, the same 2PP swing would have resulted in them winning only 54/125 seats (43.2%) but because of personal vote effects it could well have been one or two less than that.  The Coalition won eight seats that were notionally Labor, but six of them were unoccupied new seats or vacancies, and one of the others was to the former Chief Minister of the Northern Territory.  The 1984 expansion in fact slightly helped the Coalition in proportional terms, though there was a reason it might not have as a mild form of potential malapportionment that could favour it (protection for rural seats against on average falling below quota) was abolished.  

Given that an expansion is more likely to slightly help the Coalition than Labor, and might also assist non-majors, the question is why would Labor do it?  One answer is that when a government has a large majority, a swing back can cause it to lose many seats.  But if the parliament is expanded, the likelihood is that, as in 1984, losses will be mainly in new or vacant seats and the government will retain more of its sitting MPs.  

Senate expansion and Territory Senators

Expansion of the House of Representatives will trigger an expansion of the Senate per the nexus provision.  In the 1984 expansion this was done by having the next half-Senate election for seven seats per State with the last elected Senator assigned to a short term, so we could in theory see eight-seat half-Senate elections as part of an expansion of the Senate to 14 Senators per state and the Reps to about 174 MPs.  There are other approaches and which solution is best is outside the scope of this article.  I will note that giving Tasmania more Senators is never going to be popular elsewhere and that it is absurd that every State gets the same number irrespective of population, but there's no chance of a referendum to change that ever passing in every affected state as required by the Constitution.  At least an expansion of the Reps reduces the extent to which Tasmania is overrepresented there.  

Expansion of the Reps does not automatically create new Territory Senators, which is a matter for separate legislation.  During the previous Parliament there was support for expanding the ACT and NT to four Senators each (elected all in all out).  I've been cast as opposing this expansion, which I don't mind but which isn't strictly accurate, since what I do oppose is increasing the number of Territory Senators for bad reasons.  One vote one value is a bad reason since the Territories are already overrepresented in the Senate and would become more so.  "But Tasmania has ..." is also a bad reason since Tasmania is already a bad case of malapportionment and one doesn't fix malapportionment by adding more of it.  Good possible reasons include improving the electoral experience of voters in the Territories and increasing the chance that both major parties will at any time have some representation from each Territory in parliament.  (I say "increasing the chance" not "ensuring" because the ACT Liberals' Senate result was so atrocious this year that if the election had been for four Senators not two the Liberals would have only defeated the second Labor candidate for the fourth seat by 1587 votes (0.54%).)

If there is to be a Territory Senate expansion in the form suggested I would like to see it made on the grounds that the Parliament recognises that this increases malapportionment of the Senate and would ideally be avoided, but that it has the benefits noted above in improving the Senate representation and electoral experience of Territory voters, and also providing the Territories with some measure of the overprotection afforded (in my view excessively) to the small states.  The High Court only barely allowed Territory Senators in the first place and I think there should be care that any rationale advanced for having more of them is sound and can't convincingly be challenged as an attempt to stack the Senate to the left's benefit.  (Whether a challenge on such a basis could ever succeed is another question.) JSCEM's handling of the Territory Senators matter in the last term was an unsatisfactory display in which submitters were invited to comment in the specific context of one vote one value then in effect criticised for doing so.  I hope the debate in this cycle will be better.

2025-2028 2PP Aggregate Methods Page

Because I have way too many things to do right now I decided in my usual fashion to do one more that isn't any of them!  Introducing my 2025-2028 federal 2PP polling aggregate, which at this very early stage sits at 56.3 to Labor, with an overall pattern of basically no 2PP movement since it had enough data to wake up on 29 June.  The above is a 7-day smoothed aggregate though it has been as high as 57.2 on individual daily readings, and as low (a 0.8 point outlier lasting one day only!) as 55.5.  By the end of the term who knows if 2PP will even still exist the way the Australian right are going after this year's drubbing, but for the meantime, here we are.  Differences will be detected with aggregates that use pollster-released 2PPs (these tend to have Labor losing support more quickly) and also my estimate is currently running about a point below Bludger Track but with a similarly flat trajectory.  

The aim of the aggregate is to present a frequently updated figure for what the current polls should be taken as saying collectively about the state of the two-party preferred contest.  This is never a prediction or a statement that the polls are right, it is just putting a number on where they're at. 

This aggregate works quite differently from previous aggregates that had a simple 5-3-2-1 week of release formula, and does so mainly because of the increasing frequency of polls with long in field periods or late releases.  The mathematics are kept simple enough that I should be able to understand if something is going wrong (edit: indeed I fixed one glitch overnight after two August polls were found to have been entered as July; it made very little difference), but are no longer readily hand calculable to make my treatment of data less chunky and arbitrary.  The working of this year's aggregate is below:

Poll Roundup: Liberal Crisis As Honeymoon 2.0 Rumbles On

 Cross-poll estimate 56.3 to Labor (+1.0 since election)

I'm some way off putting out a 2025-8 term polling aggregate, partly because I am hoping that when the dust settles from the Bradfield court challenge in coming months we might get revised 2PP flow figures for Bradfield to enable more exact 2025 election preference flow estimates.  And partly just for sheer lack of time.  But this week's federal polls have been notable and there are a number of themes I think are worth covering off on quickly to put what is going on in historic context.

Newspoll

This week's Newspoll came in at 58-42 to Labor off primaries of ALP 36 L-NP 27 Green 13 One Nation 10 others 14.  The Coalition primary is the worst in Newspoll history by two points.  The previous worst was two polls ago in July and it was then the worst in Newspoll history by two points.  The Coalition primary is now four points lower than it had been in any previous term.   

No Government has led 58-42 since Kevin Rudd's led 59-41 in October 2009, and the last Newspoll this lopsided was Julia Gillard's Labor trailing 42-58 shortly before Gillard was removed in June 2013.  No Government beyond its first term has ever led 58-42 in a released Newspoll 2PP.  I convert one poll in June 1987 as 58-42 to the Hawke Government, one in Sep 1994 as 57-43 to Keating and there was a published 57-43 to the Howard government in September 2001.  One of these was a rally round the flag for the government after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the other two were the opposition disasters that were the Joh for Canberra Coalition split and Alexander Downer.  

How Labor Won 94 Seats Off A Modest Primary Vote. It Mostly Wasn't Preferences

Example of a 2025 election whinge meme seen on social media

In the unhinging that has followed Labor's massive victory in the 2025 federal election, there has been a lot of scapegoating of preferential voting.  Some of this may be because the landslide seat result was unexpected.  In polls this mostly looked like a close election in terms of whether Labor could get a majority or not.  Many voices in the media made it worse by claiming Labor definitely or very probably would not get a majority, and continuing to claim it after the polls (such as they were) no longer supported that view.

Labor won 94/150 (62.67%) of seats with a primary vote of 34.56%.  Many people are saying this was caused by preferential voting.  In fact, it mostly wasn't.  This article explains how this 28.11% gap between Labor's seat share and their vote share was mostly caused by other factors.   I find it deeply unfortunate and concerning that many people are in response attacking our very fair voting system and supporting instead the pointless abomination that is first past the post without bothering to understand the arguments in favour of preferences and the extent to which the result was caused by other things.  If they really care about parties getting vote shares that match their seat shares, they should support multi-member electorates.  

Hare-Clark! Why Do We Have It? Are There Any Alternative Approaches?

It had to happen and was always going to happen sooner or later after the 2025 election; in fact I'm surprised it has taken so long.  The Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, or at least its chief executive Michael Bailey, has seen fit to call for the abolition or modification of Tasmania's Hare-Clark system.  I could just as easily see fit to bluntly suggest that they stay in their own lane.  I wouldn't expect to be taken seriously if I declared myself an expert in business regulation so I'm not sure why they expect to be so on this subject.

In the article in question, which is paywalled, the call is made to either replace Hare-Clark with single-member preferential voting or to switch from five seats of seven to seven seats of five.  

7x5, a zombie bad electoral take

Seven seats of five is an old chestnut that was roundly disposed of during the process of restoring the House from 25 to 35 members.  As the concept of restoring the House to 35 seats gained traction in the 2021-4 term there was some support for doing it by going to seven five-member electorates instead of going back to five seven-member electorates.  There was at the time only one Independent elected as such in the parliament, so the main motivation was to make things hard for the Greens.  Anyone who is remotely familiar with that debate would be aware of the TEC's discussion paper that showed significant problems with the 7x5 model.  One thing wrong with it is that it would require Tasmania to uncouple from the federal electoral boundaries and have its own state electoral boundaries process at an expense estimated at $2.5 million plus $300,000 per election.  Being almost as large as the federal divisions and overlapping with them extensively the state boundaries would then cause a lot of voter enrolment confusion; the TEC also suggests it would be difficult to avoid severely splitting up communities of interest by drawing a line through Hobart City.  (This said, it would get rid of the across-river divide in Franklin for state but not federal purposes, and drawing the boundaries of Clark in a completely sensible manner is getting more tricky anyway; more on this down the track).  

EMRS: What Doesn't Kill Rockliff Just Makes Him Stronger

EMRS: Lib 38 ALP 24 Green 13 IND 19 others 6
As Tasmanian polling overstates Independents, poll suggests no change from election
Lowest ALP primary since Feb 2014

Jeremy Rockliff has been through a lot of drama as Premier in the last two and a half years.  In May 2023 two Liberals quit the party and moved to the crossbench, putting his government into minority.  In September 2023 the government went further into minority following Elise Archer's forced resignation from Cabinet and Rockliff threatened to call an election to ward off the risk of Archer sitting as an independent without providing confidence and supply.  In February 2024 Rockliff called an early election after the relationship with the two ex-Liberals deteriorated further.  There was a large swing against the Liberals but they managed to form a minority government with confidence and supply agreements from four crossbenchers.  In August 2024 the Lambie Network collapsed and in the fallout Rockliff no longer had reliable confidence and supply guarantees.  In October 2024 Deputy Premier Michael Ferguson resigned over the long-running Spirit of Tasmania saga to ward off a no-confidence motion.  In November 2024 a crossbench no-confidence motion in Rockliff failed after Labor voted against it when their attempt to remove the crossbench's preferred reasons for it failed.  In June 2025 Labor moved their own no-confidence motion, which passed, and in theory Labor could have taken over government mid-term but they did not seek to do so, and an election was held, with a looming deficit crisis now more evidence for critics of the government to run on.  The Government somehow got a 3.2% swing in its favour.  The newly elected parliament (with very similar numbers overall) still included 17 seats worth of previous no-confidence voters plus two new MPs who were highly critical of the government, and could in theory easily have backed Labor.  

Not-A-Poll: Australia's Worst Opposition!

I've started a new Not-A-Poll in the sidebar where readers can vote on who is Australia's worst Opposition.  The exasperating behaviour of Tasmanian Labor over the last few days (weeks, months, several years ...) has drawn comparisons to the Canberra Liberals and Victorian Liberals and suggestions they are now a forever opposition.  I was thinking about this as I struggled for words to explain to some rusties just how unready for government Tasmanian Labor have just shown themselves to be.  It suddenly occurred to me in a flash that we are living in a golden age of dreadful Oppositions.  Not all Australia's nine current Oppositions stick out as terrible but in any normal time most of these would go straight to the bottom of the pile, if not the sea.  

What we have at present is surely the worst average quality of oppositions that has been seen for decades, and this is bad for democracy as some of the governments they are up against (by no means all) are very mediocre.  So in round 1 of this Not-A-Poll, which will run for two months in the sidebar, voters can vote on which of the current Oppositions is the worst.  In round 2 we will vote on how many of them are actually going to win!  A reminder, if viewing on mobile you can scroll down and click "view web version" to see the sidebar and participate in Not-A-Polls.

In considering the dreadfulness of a state or territory Opposition, this poll is mainly about their performance in state and territory politics, but efforts of the local branch in screwing up federal and local performance can also be considered.  

Our contenders, sorted by time in opposition ...

Tasmania 2025: The Endgame Live

RESUMPTION OF PARLIAMENT FOLLOWING JULY 19 ELECTION

Labor has moved constructive no-confidence motion to transfer confidence of the House from Jeremy Rockliff to Dean Winter

Motion failed 10-24, attracting no crossbench support.

WEDNESDAY: Labor leadership now under consideration (UPDATE: Josh Willie replaces Dean Winter)

----

This is an updates thread for what should be, for now, the end of the 2025 Tasmanian election aftermath with the resumption of Parliament today.  The result is likely to be decided either by Labor moving a foreshadowed motion of no-confidence that fails to pass, or by Labor deciding not to move it.  In either of these cases the Rockliff government will have survived for now and won a fifth consecutive election.  However I am keeping an eye on things in case something unusually unusual happens.  (This is Tasmanian politics.  Normality is relative.)

Over the last few days David O'Byrne, the Greens and Kristie Johnston have all announced that they will not support Labor's proposed motion to express no confidence in Jeremy Rockliff and confidence in Dean Winter (see my confidence position tracker).  The Greens have also said that they will not abstain.  On this basis if the motion is put it will get at most 14 votes.  Labor would need three out of George Razay, Peter George, Craig Garland and Carlo Di Falco to demonstrate that the Greens' decision to back the Liberals had decided government, rather than the crossbench being so averse to Labor's attempt that the Greens could not have put Labor in government anyway.  This seems unlikely. [Update: George has just said no as well.]

Based on the order of business there will not be action on Labor's motion (if it goes ahead) until after 2 pm (I am not sure if the motion can go ahead between 2-3).  If the motion does go ahead there is potential for the debate to go for several hours and perhaps go into tomorrow though this will depend on how many MPs want to speak and for how long, and also whether the House chooses to adjourn around 6 pm or continue into the evening until it is finished.  

At this stage there is no sign of it being likely that anything will happen with Labor's motion (if it goes ahead) other than it being put, debated and lost - but there is always the scope for amendments and procedural motions.  There has been speculation on social media and talkback about the two parts of Labor's motion being uncoupled but I think we all know where that could end up.  (I also covered this idea in the introduction to my historic recap of the first day of Parliament in 1989).

Tasmania 2025: What Went Down When Gray Met The House In 1989

The State Of Play

It's been a rather slow lead-in to Tuesday's resumption of parliament following the as-yet not-firmly-resolved 2025 Tasmanian state election.  Although it has been known for eleven days now that parliament will be resuming on Tuesday, it took til today for any of the seven crossbench units (David O'Byrne for Rockliff) to clearly state support for one side or the other.  Three (the Greens re Labor, Craig Garland and Carlo di Falco re Liberals) have so far said at some stage that they weren't backing one side or the other unless something changes, but all have left the door open for the target of their disappointment to come good.  (See my confidence position tracker for a summary of who has said what.)

An apparently major issue for Labor's foreshadowed constructive no-confidence motion that would be designed to replace Jeremy Rockliff with Dean Winter is the position of the Greens, although it's not clearcut that the motion will pass even if the Greens support it.  There is an impass here in that the Greens are saying they cannot support Labor's motion without concessions on key policy areas but Labor is saying it won't provide any because it went to the election with a clear platform of doing no deals with the Greens.  I'd suggest that the two parties badly need a neutral mediator here except it's not clear these positions can be mediated, and presumably Labor would consider any outcome of a mediation to be a deal with the Greens.  (I have devised a magnificent scheme in which it would actually be a deal with the mediator, which the margin of this page is too small to contain etc ...)