The Division of Solomon is an
Australian Electoral Division in the
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Aust ...
. It is largely coextensive with the
Darwin/
Palmerston Palmerston may refer to:
People
* Christie Palmerston (c. 1851–1897), Australian explorer
* Several prominent people have borne the title of Viscount Palmerston
** Henry Temple, 1st Viscount Palmerston (c. 1673–1757), Irish nobleman and ...
metropolitan area. The only other division in the territory, the
Division of Lingiari
The Division of Lingiari is an Australian electoral division in the Northern Territory that covers the entirety of the territory outside of the Division of Solomon, which covers Darwin and surrounding areas. The division also includes the C ...
, covers the remainder of the territory.
Geography
Federal electoral division boundaries in Australia are determined at redistributions by a redistribution committee appointed by the
Australian Electoral Commission
The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is the independent federal agency in charge of organising, conducting and supervising federal Australian elections, by-elections and referendums.
Responsibilities
The AEC's main responsibility is to ...
. 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.
History
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
The premier of South Australia is the head of government in the state of South Australia, Australia. The Government of South Australia follows the Westminster system, with a Parliament of South Australia acting as the legislature. The premier is ...
, 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
The House of Assembly, or lower house, is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of South Australia. The other is the Legislative Council. It sits in Parliament House in the state capital, Adelaide.
Overview
The House of Assembly was crea ...
, 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
The Country Liberal Party of the Northern Territory (CLP) is a centre-right political party in Australia's Northern Territory. In local politics it operates in a two-party system with the Australian Labor Party (ALP). It also contests federal ...
at the territorial level, recent gains by
Labor
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the la ...
have made it much more competitive. It has taken on a character similar to
mortgage belt
The Mortgage belt is a term used in Australian politics to signify residential suburbs which have a high concentration of families mortgaging their homes.
Often the belt covers areas where homes could be considered more affordable yet the cost o ...
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
The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a multi-national coalition in an invasion of Afghanist ...
, then increased his majority in
2004
2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO).
Events January
* January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight ...
before narrowly losing it to
Labor
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the la ...
'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
A coalition is a group formed when two or more people or groups temporarily work together to achieve a common goal. The term is most frequently used to denote a formation of power in political or economical spaces.
Formation
According to ''A Gui ...
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
Swing or swinging may refer to:
Apparatus
* Swing (seat), a hanging seat that swings back and forth
* Pendulum, an object that swings
* Russian swing, a swing-like circus apparatus
* Sex swing, a type of harness for sexual intercourse
* Swing ri ...
.
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.
Gosling 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
File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...
with a reduced majority, and regained some majority in
2022.
Members
Election results
References
External links
Division of Solomon - Australian Electoral Commission
{{DEFAULTSORT:Solomon, Division of
Electoral divisions of Australia
Constituencies established in 2000
2000 establishments in Australia