Redistribution (Australia)
Section 24 of the Constitution of Australia requires that the total number of members of the Australian House of Representatives shall be "as nearly as practicable" twice as many as the number of members of the Australian Senate. There is presently a total of 76 senators: 12 senators from each of the six states and two from each of the two autonomous internal territories (the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory). There are 150 members of the Australian House of Representatives.
Federalism in Australia
However, the Constitution makes almost no provisions as to the role of the territories within the federation. For example, the Senate was to be composed of equal numbers of Senators from each state. A particularly troublesome matter was whether this excluded territories from participation in the Senate. The issue has now been settled by allocating two seats to each of the mainland territories, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory, while each of the states has twelve. Two of the three inhabited external territories, namely Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, are represented by the senators and representatives of the Northern Territory. Norfolk Island, however, has no representatives in the Senate or the House of Representatives, as it has a higher degree of autonomy than any other part of Australia.