The Northern Territory sends two members to the House of Representatives — Lingiari, covering all of the Territory outside Darwin and Palmerston, and Solomon, covering Darwin and Palmerston — and two senators to the Senate. After the 3 May 2025 federal election, Labor holds both House seats, Lingiari held by Marion Scrymgour and Solomon by Luke Gosling, and one of the Territory's two Senate places, held by Malarndirri McCarthy, who has served as Minister for Indigenous Australians since 29 July 2024. The Territory's other senator, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, sits for the Country Liberal Party; her positions are not part of this analysis, which examines only Labor's public conduct in office. This piece asks the same narrow question of Scrymgour, Gosling and McCarthy that this series asks everywhere: on the public record, in their own words and their own votes, what have they said and done on recognising the State of Palestine and on the war in Gaza, and on the size and shape of Australia's migration and humanitarian program?
The honest starting point is that the Northern Territory's federal political story is not the one this series tells in some mainland seats. Lingiari and Solomon are not electorates where a "Muslim vote" campaign or a large Palestinian-Australian community created a local contest over Gaza at the 2025 election — no evidence of any such campaign activity was located in either seat, and the Territory's Muslim population, territory-wide, was recorded at well under 5,000 people (approx.) in the 2021 Census, a small fraction of its roughly 250,000 residents. The Territory's defining demographic fact, Lingiari's in particular, is its very large Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population — a fact about the seat's Census profile, not about any member's own background, stated plainly because forcing a Gaza-electoral-incentive story onto a seat the evidence does not support would be dishonest. Migration is different: the Territory has its own distinct, checkable stake in national migration settings, for reasons that have nothing to do with Gaza, set out below. A companion piece (rep-nt-02) covers the Census detail behind Lingiari and Solomon; this one sticks to what each member has actually said and done.
The strongest case for it
The strongest case for recognising Palestinian statehood does not begin with the current war. Australia's own delegate to the United Nations was part of the 1947 majority that passed General Assembly Resolution 181, partitioning British Mandate Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state; Israel was built on that resolution, the Arab state envisaged alongside it was not. On this view, the government's September 2025 decision extends a settlement Australia helped design seventy-eight years earlier. The Prime Minister framed the move as intended "to contribute to international momentum towards a two-state solution, a ceasefire in Gaza and release of the hostages" (Prime Minister of Australia, media statement, 11 August 2025).
The immediate case is the war itself. Since Hamas's attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, in which roughly 1,200 people were killed and hostages taken, and Israel's subsequent military campaign in Gaza, the United Nations and major aid agencies have repeatedly documented mass civilian casualties, large-scale displacement and, at points, famine-level conditions. Recognition is also not a fringe position: by the time Australia acted, roughly three-quarters of UN member states already recognised Palestinian statehood, moving in September 2025 alongside the United Kingdom and Canada — two of its closest security partners — with France following a day later. The government tied recognition to Palestinian Authority undertakings — reformed governance, an end to prisoner payments, schooling reform, demilitarisation and elections — alongside the PA's restated recognition of Israel's right to exist and the statement that "The terrorist organisation Hamas must have no role in Palestine." (Prime Minister of Australia and Minister for Foreign Affairs, joint statement, 21 September 2025).
On migration, the parallel humanitarian case rests on Australia's own history as a country substantially built by post-war and refugee migration, on the economic contribution skilled and family migration make to the workforce, and on the scale of global need: UNHCR estimated in 2025 that close to three million refugees worldwide required resettlement, against a global system that places only a small fraction of that number each year. Darwin gives that case a local dimension — a city rebuilt after Cyclone Tracy by a migrant workforce, and a Territory with a history, predating federation, of Chinese, Filipino and other Asian migration through the pearling and pastoral industries, followed by post-1975 Vietnamese refugee resettlement. A reader who holds these views is arguing from serious, real premises, not sentiment alone.
What the members have actually said and done
Two formal moments frame the period covered here, and in both, the public record does not extend to an individually attributed vote for any Northern Territory member. In the Senate in December 2023, the Greens sought a vote calling for a Gaza ceasefire; Labor and the Coalition combined to block it, days before Australia voted for the UN General Assembly's own ceasefire resolution (Resolution ES-10/22, 12 December 2023). In the House on 29 May 2024, MPs first voted 80 to five against a Greens procedural motion to immediately "recognise the State of Palestine," then passed, 81 votes to 55, a government-moved alternative endorsing "the Government's position to support the recognition of the State of Palestine as part of a peace process" — reported to have carried with every government MP in support (SBS News, 29 May 2024; The Australian Jewish News, 29 May 2024). Neither report published a named division list, so this piece does not claim to have sighted an individually attributed vote for Scrymgour, Gosling or McCarthy on either occasion; what follows is what each has said or done in their own name.
Marion Scrymgour has held Lingiari since 2022, when she won the seat on a 50.95 per cent two-party-preferred vote against the Country Liberal Party's Damien Ryan, succeeding Warren Snowdon, who had held Lingiari and its predecessor seat continuously since the division's creation in 2001 (Australian Electoral Commission, declared results, 2022). She was re-elected in 2025 with a considerably larger 58.13 per cent two-candidate-preferred vote against the Country Liberal Party's Lisa Siebert, a swing of 6.53 points to Labor (Australian Electoral Commission, declared results, 2025), and was appointed Special Envoy for Remote Communities in May 2025 (National Indigenous Times, 12 May 2025). Despite that rising profile, no individually distinct public statement by Scrymgour on Gaza, Palestinian recognition, or the migration and humanitarian intake was located in Hansard, her ministerial or envoy communications, or her electorate media, as at July 2026 — the honest finding for a member whose most consistent public advocacy, on the record reviewed here, has concerned remote community housing, health and employment programs, not foreign policy or migration settings.
Luke Gosling has held Solomon since 2016. His 2025 result was the most competitive of any Northern Territory federal seat: a 51.31 per cent two-candidate-preferred vote against the Country Liberal Party's Lisa Bayliss, a swing of 7.09 percentage points away from Labor (Australian Electoral Commission, declared results, 2025) — a result that puts Solomon within reach for the Country Liberal Party on any further swing of similar size. Gosling served thirteen years in the Australian Army, with postings connected to Papua New Guinea, Malaysia and Timor-Leste, and received the Order of Australia Medal in 2006 for relief work during a humanitarian crisis; he was appointed Special Envoy for Defence, Veterans' Affairs and Northern Australia in July 2024, continuing in that role after the 2025 election (Australian Government Department of Defence, Special Envoy role page). Despite that service and relief background, no individually distinct public statement by Gosling addressing Palestinian recognition, the Gaza war, or migration and humanitarian program planning levels was located in the public record as at July 2026 — a silence worth naming plainly rather than inferring a position the record does not support.
Malarndirri McCarthy has the most extensive sourced public record of the three. As Assistant Minister for Indigenous Australians and Assistant Minister for Indigenous Health, she rose in the Senate during the December 2023 sitting week — as the pause in fighting that had allowed the release of 105 hostages collapsed — to say Australia "deeply regrets that hostilities have resumed in Gaza," calling for the release of remaining hostages, "sustained and unimpeded humanitarian access" and the protection of civilian lives, and noting she had met both Palestinian and Jewish community members in the Territory (Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, reporting Senate Hansard, December 2023 sitting week — a secondary, advocacy-affiliated source, cited for the Hansard content and period it reports). In February 2024, as Israel prepared a ground offensive on Rafah, she raised constituents' questions about what pressure Australia could bring to bear and said, of an offensive, "do not go down this path" (Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, reporting Senate Hansard, February 2024). McCarthy became Minister for Indigenous Australians on 29 July 2024, continuing after the 2025 election (National Indigenous Times, 12 May 2025). No public statement by McCarthy addressing the September 2025 recognition decision itself, or the migration and humanitarian program's planning levels, was located in the material reviewed for this piece.
The drivers: multilateral, humanitarian, electoral
Three forces plausibly explain why Labor's Northern Territory representation sits within a national position that moved from platform aspiration to government policy between 2023 and 2025, even where — as with Scrymgour and Gosling — no individual public advocacy drove it. The first is multilateral alignment: Australia's UN voting record shifted across this period, favouring a humanitarian ceasefire in December 2023 (Resolution ES-10/22, 153 votes in favour), enhanced Palestinian participation rights in May 2024 (Resolution ES-10/23, 143 votes in favour), and formal recognition by September 2025, alongside roughly three-quarters of the UN's membership. The second is the party's own platform: Labor's National Platform has carried language supporting Palestinian statehood; the description of Palestinian territories as "occupied" and Israeli settlements as "illegal" is more reliably tied to Foreign Minister Wong's government-policy announcement of 8 August 2023 than confirmed as platform text reaffirmed at that month's National Conference (ALP National Platform, adopted August 2023). Caucus solidarity binds every Labor MP and senator to conference and cabinet decisions regardless of their own electorate — a Territory member needs no independent local motivation at all to vote with the government.
The third driver — electoral incentive from an electorate's own demographic composition — is the one this series tests directly through phenomena such as the 2025 "The Muslim Vote" campaign in several Western Sydney and Melbourne seats. In the Northern Territory, that driver does not apply. No campaign activity resembling "The Muslim Vote" was identified in either Lingiari or Solomon at the 2025 election, and the Territory's Muslim population — well under 5,000 people (approx.) territory-wide in the 2021 Census, against a national Muslim population of roughly 813,000 (approx.) — is not large enough in either seat to register among its top Census categories. What does define Lingiari's Census profile is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population of 40.3 per cent, the highest of any federal electorate in the country (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2021 Census QuickStats, CED701) — a fact about the seat, not the member who holds it, with no evident bearing on Palestine or Gaza policy specifically. Solomon is more mixed but still modest in scale: 8.5 per cent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (2016 Census; approx.), and a 2021 profile in which "no religion" was the largest single response at 45.5 per cent of those stating a view (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2021 Census QuickStats, CED702). Neither seat's Census profile supplies the demographic pressure this series documents in some mainland electorates.
The Northern Territory's Muslim population, well under 5,000 people across the whole Territory, is not the defining fact of Lingiari's or Solomon's Census profile. Lingiari's is a 40.3 per cent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population — the highest of any electorate in the country — a fact about the seat's Census record, not an explanation of any member's own views.
Migration is where the Territory's circumstances genuinely diverge from the rest of this series — but not in the way the Gaza-electorate-incentive framework anticipates. The Territory has recorded negative net interstate migration for a sustained period, losing residents to every other state and territory, while its population growth depends on natural increase and net overseas migration to offset that loss. In the September 2025 quarter, net overseas migration added 994 people and natural increase 455, against a loss of 548 residents to net interstate migration — annual growth of 1.4 per cent, below the national 1.6 per cent (Australian Government Centre for Population, National, State and Territory Population, September 2025). On this reading, the Territory has a genuine, checkable interest in migration settings that is about population arithmetic, not Gaza or the Humanitarian Program's refugee intake specifically — that program's 20,000 places are a small fraction of the 185,000-place Migration Program that does most of the work in that arithmetic. It is reasonable to ask whether this gives Territory members a distinct reason to favour generous migration settings generally; it would not be reasonable to infer, from the record reviewed here, that any of the three has made that specific argument in those terms.
The national-interest question
Steel-manning the government's case does not settle whether it serves the national interest, and a fair critique has to be put on the government's own terms. The Prime Minister framed recognition as conditional on Palestinian Authority reforms, an end to Hamas's role, demilitarisation and elections — not unconditional. As at July 2026, none of those conditions had been independently verified as met: no PA elections had been held, Gaza had not been demilitarised, and Hamas's exclusion from Gazan governance remained unresolved. On the government's own test, recognition can fairly be read as a statement of diplomatic alignment with allies rather than a change of conditions on the ground — a point critics are entitled to make without disputing the sincerity of the humanitarian motive behind it. The alliance cost is real: the United States opposed the move, and Australia chose alignment with the UK, Canada and France over that objection, a trade-off the government judged worth making but one a national-interest test has to weigh.
On migration, the same test applies to the numbers rather than the rhetoric, and here the Territory's own population arithmetic complicates a simple story. The Humanitarian Program planning level was held at 20,000 places for a third consecutive year in 2025-26, even as UNHCR put global resettlement need at close to three million people — a gap refugee and humanitarian organisations argued, in their own 2025-26 program submissions, should be closed, not held (Department of Home Affairs, Australia's Humanitarian Program 2025-26 Discussion Paper). The broader Migration Program was held flat at 185,000 places, 71 per cent to the skilled stream and 28 per cent to family reunion (Department of Home Affairs, 2025-26 Migration Program planning levels) — settings shaped by labour-market and housing-capacity considerations nationally, not the Territory's particular need for population growth. If the Territory's population arithmetic makes a genuine case for sustained or higher intake, it is a case about the Migration Program's skilled and family streams, which do most of the work in that arithmetic, not the Humanitarian Program specifically — and it is a case none of Scrymgour, Gosling or McCarthy has been shown, on this record, to have made explicitly in the Territory's own name.
For the Territory specifically, the driver analysis above cuts against the usual accountability concern raised about electorate-level pressure. Because Lingiari and Solomon carry no meaningful Gaza-specific electoral leverage, and because the Territory's genuine migration interest has not been distinctly argued by any of its Labor members, voters in both seats have limited grounds to hold their member individually accountable for either the recognition decision or the migration settings taken in their name.
What to watch
What would change this picture is specific and checkable. On Palestine: whether the Palestinian Authority holds the elections and demilitarisation the government made conditions of recognition, and whether McCarthy, the Territory's senior Labor voice on this question so far, speaks again now that recognition is government policy rather than an aspiration. On migration: whether the 2026-27 Humanitarian Program level moves from 20,000, and — the genuinely Territory-specific question this piece surfaces — whether any Northern Territory Labor member makes an explicit, population-arithmetic case for the Migration Program's skilled and family streams, tying national settings to the Territory's own net-overseas-migration dependency rather than leaving the connection implicit. Solomon is also now a seat to watch in its own right: a 51.31 per cent margin, down 7.09 points in one election, is not a safe buffer, and how Gosling and Labor respond over the current term will say more about the seat's future than anything on the record on Gaza or Palestine to date.