The ACT Electoral Commission has now started the process of drawing new electoral boundaries for the 2016 ACT election, and I have previously written about this impending redistribution.
This redistribution is particularly interesting because the number of seats in the ACT Legislative Assembly is increasing from 17 to 25, which will require a wholescale redrawing of the three existing electorates into five equal-sized electorates.
As part of the redistribution, the Electoral Commission has now released enrolment figures for each suburb in Canberra, and a nifty tool that allows members of the public to allocate suburbs to electorates to create your own electoral map, and then officially submit it directly to the commission.
The main point of interest for me is that the enrolment for Belconnen and Gungahlin is collectively large enough to justify exactly two electorates. This should mean that the Gungahlin seat will not have to include parts of the inner north of Canberra.
While there is still room for different boundaries, it seems reasonably clear where the seats will be drawn. There will be a seat entirely within Belconnen, and a second seat covering Gungahlin and the remaining suburbs of Belconnen. A third seat will pretty much just cover the inner north and the inner south, and the south of Canberra will be split into two seats – probably one focused on Tuggeranong and another focused on Woden.
Here is one scenario I have plotted out – what do you think?
Your suggestion looks sensible to me. Canberra Times seemed to suggest that Gunghalin would have to stretch into the inner north.
Without looking at the figures my impression would be that the Greens have a reasonable chance of seats in the Inner North/South, Woden-Weston Creek and Belconnen.
Yes the Canberra Times article didn’t make sense to me – it was accompanied by their own version of the Elections ACT map so you could see what they did.
They also had a seat entirely in Belconnen, but the remainder of Belconnen was paired up with the inner north/inner south seat, and then they brought Gungahlin up to quota by adding northern parts of the inner north. It seems to be completely unnecesary disruption.
Your plotting makes a great deal of sense. The only sensible change I could really think of might be leaving Bruce in the Belconnen electorate and giving the Gungahlin spot some of the suburbs along the North of Belconnen – McKellar, Evatt, Spence…. But I think what you propose works better.
Pretty great tool!
Just had a play with this – easy to come up with 5 electorates that meet the requirements and are pretty good on community of interest. the only difficulty is along the Gungahlin – Brindabella border – one major Belconnen suburb needs to go into the Gungahlin electorate. Easy otherwise
I guess going proportional for the whole territory is out of the question. It would make even more sense in the ACT than it already does for the states
Hare-Clark works well – enables the electorate to turf out members while still voting for their party. The ACT system would be better with 7 member electorates. Mind you the ALP originally wanted single member electorates which would have just about guaranteed permanent majority government. Five member electorates were designed to try and squeeze out the Greens.
Doug – I’m pretty sure the ACT had five member electorates well before the Greens were an electoral force. Unless you’re talking about the new arrangements, in which case they were supported by the Greens.
I understand the Greens would have preferred seven member electorates – either 21 seats or 28 seats.
There are both ups and downs from the Greens from this change. On the one hand, the abolition of the seven-seat Molonglo is bad, but on the other hand, the likely central Canberra seat will include very strong Greens-voting suburbs while shucking off Woden, Weston Creek and Gungahlin, so that electorate will probably be just as safe for the Greens as the seven-seater now is.
Outside of that area, the number of 5-seaters has doubled from two to four, so I think that increases the Greens’ chances of reaching quotas in any of those regions.
I’ve swapped Mackellar for North Lyneham in the Gungahlin-based seat (which you can’t actually show on their maps because it’s technically part of Lyneham….that’s weird…). That just means you can use more major roads and clearer ‘on the ground’ boundaries. Mackellar’s suburb boundary just runs along back streets.
Apart from that, it’s pretty much what I’ve done. Works out quite easily, really.
PJ original structure was two 5 member electorates and one 7 member electorate – I was referring to the original debates about the electorate structure. ALP party operators were keen on single member seats – not surprisingly
The Submissions are out now:
http://elections.act.gov.au/electoral_boundaries/redistributions/2015_redistribution
Doesn’t seem to be much difference between any of them, really, which is to be expected. It’s only 5 seats, and only a couple of logical ways to arrange them.
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