Division of Solomon

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.

Solomon
Australian House of Representatives Division
Division of Solomon in the Northern Territory, as of the 2016 federal election.
Created2000
MPLuke Gosling
PartyLabor
NamesakeVaiben Louis Solomon
Electors69,336 (2019)
Area337 km2 (130.1 sq mi)
DemographicInner Metropolitan

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 represented the Northern Territory in the South Australian House of Assembly, when it was still part of that state.

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 have made it much more competitive. 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.[1]

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.[2][3] 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 with a reduced majority.

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 2019 Australian federal election in territories § Solomon[edit]
2019 Australian federal election: Solomon[4]
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labor Luke Gosling 22,057 40.04 −0.90
Country Liberal Kathy Ganley 20,962 38.05 +3.61
Greens Timothy Parish 6,521 11.84 +1.58
Independent Sue Fraser-Adams 2,684 4.87 +4.87
United Australia Raj Samson Rajwin 1,583 2.87 +2.87
Rise Up Australia Lorraine Gimini 1,277 2.32 +0.53
Total formal votes 55,084 95.63 +2.58
Informal votes 2,518 4.37 −2.58
Turnout 57,602 83.08 −0.95
Two-party-preferred result
Labor Luke Gosling 29,240 53.08 −3.01
Country Liberal Kathy Ganley 25,844 46.92 +3.01
Labor hold Swing−3.01

References
  1. An independent poll shows Solomon MP Natasha Griggs will struggle to retain her seat at the federal election: NT News (News Ltd) 27 June 2016
  2. Solomon, NT - Tally Room: Australian Electoral Commission Archived 2016-08-12 at the Wayback Machine
  3. "Northern Territory residents turn out to vote in federal election". Northern Territory News. 2 July 2016. Retrieved 2 July 2016.
  4. Solomon, NT, Tally Room 2019, Australian Electoral Commission.

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