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	69,938 (2016)
Area	337 km2 (130.1 sq mi)
Demographic	Inner Metropolitan

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.

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. For most of its history, it has been a marginal seat usually held by the party of government. 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; it is usually held by the party of government.

The CLP's Dave Tollner held the seat for its first two terms of existence before narrowly losing it to Labor's Damian Hale at the 2007 election. At the 2010 election, the CLP's Natasha Griggs won Solomon 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.