Division of Solomon

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)	List Blain Brennan Casuarina Drysdale Fannie Bay Fong Lim Johnston Karama Nelson Nightcliff Port Darwin Sanderson Spillett Wanguri
Electorates around Solomon: Pacific Ocean Pacific Ocean Pacific Ocean Pacific Ocean Solomon Lingiari Pacific Ocean Lingiari Lingiari

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.

Geography

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.

History

Vaiben Louis Solomon, the division's namesake

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.

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, 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.

Members

	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

Election results

Main article: Electoral results for the Division of Solomon

This section is an excerpt from Results of the 2022 Australian federal election in territories § Solomon.[edit]

2022 Australian federal election: Solomon

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

Primary vote results in Solomon (Parties that did not get 5% of the vote are omitted)

  Country Liberal

  Labor

  Greens

  Australian Democrats

  Palmer United/United Australia Party

  Liberal Democrats

  Independent

Two-candidate-preferred results in Solomon

External links

• Division of Solomon - Australian Electoral Commission