We’re now one year out from the next Queensland state redistribution. Queensland was the last state to extend its parliamentary terms to four years, and probably doesn’t hold redistributions often enough for the new term lengths.
State redistributions are typically held in Victoria and New South Wales after every second election. Redistributions are held after every election in Western Australia, South Australia, the ACT and the Northern Territory. Federal redistributions must be held at least once every seven years, but can theoretically be held after every election if a state’s seat entitlement changes. Tasmania’s lower house boundaries are redrawn on the federal schedule, while Tasmania’s upper house generally undergoes a redistribution roughly once a decade.
Throughout the 21st century, Queensland state redistributions have generally taken place after every three elections. The first redistribution applied in 2001, 2004 and 2006. The next covered 2009, 2012 and 2015. The current boundaries were used for the 2017 and 2020 elections, and will be used again for the upcoming 2024 election.
This is a long gap! So for this post I thought I would look at how enrolment trends in Queensland have deviated since that redistribution.
For this post I’m using enrolment data from the end of September 2023.
I have calculated how much each electorate deviates from the statewide average, but it’s worth noting that there are four large electorates in northern and western Queensland which are allowed to be drawn well below the average. For seats with over 100,000 square kilometres of land mass, 2% of those square kilometres count as “notional electors”. In the case of Gregory, this amounts to over 9,000 imaginary electors, compared to a quota of just over 39,000.
This special allowance collectively adds up to about 70% of a seat’s quota, so the quotas calculated for each region don’t cancel each other out.
Nine seats exceed the quota by more than 10%, while four others are more than 10% under the quota.
The 61 seats in the urban parts of south-east Queensland are collectively 70% over quota, but the large electorate allowance means that the remaining parts of the state are roughly in line with the quota.
When we get to the map, you’ll see a big divide in Brisbane. Seats south of the river tend to be under quota. The 20 seats in southern Brisbane are about a quarter of a seat under quota, while the 17 north of the river are about half of a seat over quota. Ipswich and Sunshine Coast are both about a quarter of a seat over quota. Interestingly the Gold Coast collectively is roughly on track, but there are tremendous variations within the region.
Most Gold Coast seats are under quota, with Gaven and Oodgeroo about 11% under the average, but Coomera is a gob-smacking 35% over quota. No other seat is more than 18% over quota.
Central Queensland is generally above average, but this is mostly due to Gympie and Wide Bay being 11-12% over quota.
All but one seat along the coast from Gladstone to Townsville are under quota. Mundingburra is quite a long way below the quota, while the other two Townsville-area seats are just slightly under.
The Cairns-area seats are all over quota, if not by much, which creates the potential for the large-area Cook electorate to shrink slightly when a redistribution eventually comes along.
Traeger, Gregory in western Queensland are both very reliant on the notional electors but are still well below quota. Roughly a quarter of the “electors” in these two seats are imaginary. Applying the current redistribution rules, the two seats are about 16% under quota, but that would be 60% under quota if you just counted actual electors – or 80% under if you also include Warrego.
Queensland will not be holding a redistribution prior to the 2024 election. Presumably a redistribution will commence in the following term to cover the 2028 election. It would be a good idea if Queensland now moved to holding redistributions after every second election, now that the state has four year terms.
Excellent work Ben.
At the last redistribution the ECQ was warned that their population projections were unrealistic in a number of seats (particularly Coomera and Caloundra) and some of their boundary decisions were odd to say the least.
I’ve argued for a while now that the States would be far better off getting the AEC to handle their electoral role simply because the AEC is far more competent. While I’ve occasionally disagreed with an AEC decision, they’ve always been defensible. That hasn’t been the case with the ECQ and other state bodies.
You’d think Labor wouldn’t be so keen to disenfranchise grown corridors and continue the Bjelke mander of all those cross burner country electorates, especially since this is shaping up to be a tough election. I guess they’re just bored of government.
Ben, can you explain imaginary electors. Is it because of FIFO?
Ben, I read from legislation and other commenters on this site that the rule for Queensland redistributions is every nine years or three elections, whichever comes first. Due to the ‘early’ election held in 2017 (after two years instead of three, and then three rather than four years to the 2020 fixed term election, the nine years after boundaries were gazetted prior to the 2017 election does not elapse until early 2024, which is too late to hold a redistribution so it will be deferred just after the 2024 election.
Going forward, the rule should mean redistributions will be triggered every two election cycles in line with NSW and Victoria.
@ Furtive Lawngnome Comparing it to the Bjelkemander is a bit much… Most states have (or recently had? I don’t keep up all too well) an allowance for extremely large regional electorates and it’s nowhere near as widespread or extensive as it was back when he was in power.
That aside I think they should consider expanding parliament again. It’s only been a few years since they did, and QLD has as roughly many members as Victoria and NSW, but those two states also have an upper house. Might help with representation while deferring any conflict over under-quota regional seats.
Laine, the only other state to use a large district allowance is WA. Other states don’t have that provision, but I agree with you that this is nowhere near as bad as the historical malapportionment under Bjelke Peterson or even Tom Playford in SA.
Those historical systems had rural seats with enrolments barely half that of urban areas (a 2:1 or worse ratio), compared to an average variance of around 10% for the current system.
Seems the biggest change for a redistribution should be around Southern Brisbane and Gold Coast.
Thank you for looking at this in detail Ben! I have been raving about Coomera being +35% over quota for a couple of years now. It seems that the division is starting to stabilise in population as of the last 18 – 24 months (after arguably reaching its capacity). Now a lot of the population growth is shifting out into that growth corridor to the immediate West – Yarrabilba, Jimboomba, Flagstone, Springfield’s periphery and the Ripley Valley.
Very interesting that despite the one big offender (Coomera), Gold Coast as a cohesive entity stands at roughly where it should for seat allocation. This is going to be a difficult one for ECQ to deal with. I’ll provide some more commentary regarding how I reckon the Gold Coast jigsaw should be reconfigured momentarily.
I’ll give some more commentary on the middle-ring of Brisbane and the south-western growth corridor later this weekend.
Barney, not exactly. They call them notional electors in QLD and the large district allowance in WA. Basically if a seat is over a particular size land mass you get credit in the form of non-real electors for a proportion of that land mass.
In QLD a seat qualifies if it’s over 100,000sqkm, and once you reach that level you get notional electors equal to 2% of those sqkm. So a seat with exactly 100,000 sqkm is allowed to have 2000 fewer real electors than another seat.
It’s been too long since a Queensland redistribution.
Ben, is that a carry over from joh’s time? i thought the electoral reforms of goss dealt with that. seems like a kind of throwback to the 20% allowance of the 1950s.
It’s much more subtle than earlier malapportionment and only affects a handful of seats. Maybe there’d be one less seat in the far north/west if it wasn’t part of the process.
I thought it was codified during the Fitzgerald reforms. There used to be five out of 89 districts drawn this way, with two (Cook and the old pre-2008 Mount Isa) favouring Labor. Now four out of 93 distrixts receive the large district allowance, with a net-2 seat advantage to the opposition (Cook for Labor, Tragear for KAP, Gregory and Warrego for the LNP).
Oodgeroo should loe the islands and move further inland
I’m not advocating for people to break the law by not voting, but geez, there has to be a way to send a message to the electoral commission and government that the boundaries need to be redrawn because while it’s not too bad living in a seat under-quota, seats like Coomera with massive overrepresentation it isn’t fair for the locals to have an MP who’s workload is much bigger than the average MP.
The electoral boundaries look like very gerrymandered, and it’s not just because of the infrequent redistributions. Add to that, the massive diferences in enrolments per electorate. It’s either infrequent or they have their enrolment projections all wrong or both, like in the case of Coomera.
There’s Mirani which contains the outskirts of Rockhampton and Mackay, rather than just a regional centre or half of it plus the satellite towns and nearby rural areas. This favours One Nation as they poll strongly in rural towns and inland villages but not coastal or large regional centres like Rockhampton.
Why is there a Bundaberg enclave? Why can’t the Burnett River just split up the electorate? The current Bundaberg boundaries gives Labor a fighting chance whereas the outskirts are more LNP-friendly.
I think it has less to do with gerrymandering and more with following the electoral act, which I believe requires electorates centered on cities to be drawn first, followed by the hinterland. I could be wrong though.
If I had the ability to make a submission, I would look at merging Bundaberg and Burnett so that the enclave disappears, and is replaced by a Childers-South of Bundaberg-Bargara district and everything else north of it. I’d also look at pulling the boundary of Mirani north so that all of Isaac LGA is in Gregory or Callide, although this will likely have severe knock-on affects all the way up the coast and outback, also affecting the notional electors. I don’t have access to numbers at the moment so this is likely a terrible idea. 🙂
As I understand it, the notional electors exist because it’s much harder work for a single member to represent a massive geographical area than an urban seat. It’s a five minute drive to my Rep’s office in Bulimba, could be several hours unpleasant or even dangerous driving on under-maintained roads in Traegar or Cook. In other words not all representation is equal, and the intentional mallaportionment is intended to address that somewhat.
No comment from me on whether it’s the right solution or what a better one might be.
@joel I think it’s because of how sparesly populated these areas are as the are mostly mining and agricultural lands which take up large amounts of land
Is there any data on population in coomera specifically where the population is?
Based on.my drafts once the districts south and easy of Theodore are brought up to quota the remainder of Theodore can combine with the excess in coomera. After which based on my drafts the following will take place. Bonney becomes Southport. Southport becomes Nerang, Theodore becomes Coomera and Coomera would obviously need a new name
At the end of the year 2023:
Coomera 52,802 34.71% (over quota)
https://results.ecq.qld.gov.au/profiles/currentEnrolmentFigures.html
@seq yes but I mean specific enrollments by suburb or sa2
Coomera->Pampama and tbh Gaven should be renamed given its named after “part of the Pacific motorway”
Enrolment data isn’t available by suburb or SA2. You can maybe try to estimate it using some crude calculations (average enrolment rate x current population in SA2) and using the ABS regional population report as the basis. But the regional population report lags. Most recent reference period available is 21 – 22 Financial year.
Unlike WA western/north west Qld should avoid losing a division because of the excess in far north Qld. But I think callide will be getting a major remodel and drawn into brisbane. With about 30% new electors
I agree with your proposal that Gaven should be renamed. The suburb of Gaven is not particularly large or well-known suburb of the Gold Coast. It is also quite sparse and low in population. It is not a natural community of interest either. Especially in comparison to both Pacific Pines and Nerang, to its north and south. I would argue in favour of Gaven being renamed back to Nerang – the division that largely served as its basis prior to its creation in 2001. The town of Nerang at its center is a very large and established community of interest as it was one of the historic 19th century towns located in the region, well before “the Gold Coast”. It thus has a large zone of influence as many suburbs grew out of Nerang during subsequent waves of population increase throughout the 20th Century ie. Carrara, Highland Park, Pacific Pines. Nerang has also long been one of the primary de-facto hubs servicing the Gold Coast Hinterland communities such as Mount Tamborine, Canungra, Beechmont, Advancetown, etc. To get a picture of Nerang’s zone of influence, you can observe that its postcode 4211, extends up to Pacific Pines and deep out into the Hinterland through the Numinbah Valley to the NSW border. The Nerang post-office historically served all of the localities in the 4211 boundaries.
Going beyond just the town, two natural features sit within this division with the name of Nerang too. The Nerang National Park and the Nerang River catchment. Hence I think Nerang would be the most appropriate name of this division.
@seq I was going to change Southport to Nerang as the Southport lga would be removd. That and it would contain most of the Nerang river. But that could be an option too. Although pacific pines would be my choice for gaven.
Building further on the topic of renaming state divisions and managing the population excess in Gold Coast’s north, I’ve got some additional points.
I kind of like your suggestion of renaming Coomera to Pimpama. But I first want to highlight that I used to appreciate the old convention that ECQ used on the Gold Coast – naming the inland divisions based on each of the big South Coast river catchments. Nerang, Coomera, Albert, Logan. I think Pimpama is a fitting one to throw into this based on that old convention. Pimpama River is a notable catchment and Pimpama Island was once the historic locality that all of the sugar cane fields today covers throughout much of the Coomera division boundaries.
Building on your proposal – I would then chop off a decent southern chunk from the new division of Pimpama to Theodore, with some of Theodore being handed over to Nerang (Gaven) and Broadwater. I would then be proposing that Theodore is renamed to Coomera (as much of its boundaries encompass the Coomera River catchment). I would be trying to orient the new Coomera division to incorporate some of the most specific Coomera-related suburbs: Upper Coomera (including Wongawallan), Coomera (Foxwell) and terminating at the Pimpama SA2s. It can eat into Oxenford, Maudsland and Guanaba for additional electors where appropriate.
To complete the reinstatement of the naming convention, I would propose that the division of Macalister, largely oriented around the SA3 of Beenleigh, is renamed back to Albert. The defunct division of Albert partially served as the basis of Macalister when it was created in 2017. The Albert River passes along the edge of this catchment and I think that it is appropriate if Albert needs to, shift back into the Gold Coast LGA a bit more to reconnect with some of the historical rural localities that Beenleigh was intertwined with on the other edge of the Albert River like Stapylton and Alberton.
I know that the ECQ have tried to establish a hard boundary between “Greater Brisbane” and “Gold Coast” (as designated by ABS’ GCCSA). But this particular designation doesn’t do any justice for how much Beenleigh and the old Albert shire still are a particular community of interest that outweighs the ABS’ haphazard designation of “Greater Brisbane”. A designation that laughably incorporates Beaudesert and Rathdowney into Brisbane! The current LGA boundaries of Logan and Gold Coast don’t quite do justice for Beenleigh’s zone of influence either. But unfortunately, much of Beenleigh and its periphery has been neglected by subsequent amalgamations of local representation over the 20th Century. A similar tale common for other localities throughout Logan and Scenic Rim.
I didn’t even mention Logan which is now 17% over quota and is quickly expanding because of Yarrabilba and Jimboomba both being within its boundaries. The trajectory looks strong in the medium term for this division too because the newly designated locality of Kairabah will over the decade become another Yarrabilba sized master-planned community. I wanted to first highlight that I think the name Logan is appropriate if we’re sticking to the regional convention of River catchment based names for divisions. The Logan River snakes through this division and two localities in this division feature Logan in their name. But if the ECQ are no longer sticking to this convention, it might be confusing to electors that might expect that Logan City should be incorporated in this division. I have no informed suggestion to offer in how to reorient Logan, Jordan and Bundamba so they can shed some population. Perhaps Inala, Miller, Moggill, Mount Ommaney, Toohey, Stretton, Algester and Waterford all need to be reoriented in some form and expand southward.
At the next redistribution, I expect that Blair will be shrunk by a fair bit. The rural towns that are currently in Blair (like Esk) will be split between Groom, Maranoa and Wright.
@seq I’ve done exactly that
@nimalan this is the state redistribution thread
Agree seq observer that parts of southern Logan around Beenleigh do combine well with northern parts of the Gold Coast, so having a district that straddles both lgas is suitable
Cooks surplus can be solved by transferring Mareeba Shire to traegar. Hill will also give up Mareeba Shire and possibly parts of tablelands regional shire
@yoh an the problem with that it the territory south will already be at if not over quota with coomera so much over. McAllister and Logan will problem lose territory in the north. In regards to Redlands oodgeroo and capabala. I think there should be a counter clockwise territory swap. Redlands takes the excess from , far eastern parts(5%) off Springwood and the islands from oodgeroo which takes the northern parts of capabala and capabala takes the southern parts of oodgeroo and northern parts of redlands. This would make the shape of capabala and oodgeroo look better.
excess from macallister*
SEQ Observer, I would suggest that for the short term, Jordan would shed some its northern suburbs to Inala, and Bundamba would shed some of its western suburbs to Ipswich and Ipswich West. Eventually the southern parts of Ipswich and Bundamba will need their own separate electorate as they grow.
From pure numbers it would be useful if Bundamba could transfer sections to Moggill, but I doubt the ECQ would draw an electorate across the Brisbane River after they’ve gone to so much effort to avoid it elsewhere. Redbank certainly has little in common with anywhere in Moggill, they’re very different socioeconomically and culturally.
Logan is a trickier one to resolve. As you say, every electorate to its north may have to be brought further south to take up the excess. This would solve the problem of how to get more voters into Stretton and Toohey, neither of which have any neighbours that are significantly over quota. Miller can at least take voters from South Brisbane by their boundary being moved up to be identical with the federal and council boundaries (bit odd it wasn’t set there in the last redistribution, really). Probably requires Woodridge to be renamed since its namesake suburb is its northernmost one.
Speaking of renaming electorates, I’d like to see Logan renamed as Goss. I’m not a fan of naming urban and suburban electorates after river catchments, because those catchments usually cover multiple electorates, not just one. And as a deceased former Premier with a solid reputation, Wayne Goss deserves a seat named after him, and the most appropriate one would be the one he represented, Logan.
@wilson GOSS? Despite the fact Inala and Algester are at quota they are border by about 50% over quota to the south and 50%under quota north and east. So because crossing the river is problem not an option I’ve essentially split both them in half and combined the 2 middle parts into one. Logan and Bundumba give their excess to Jordan whose excess combines with south/eastern parts of Algester. The western part of inala then goes into Mount Ommaney and then an eastward push to solve the rest.
Nvm I just Read the part. Personally I don’t support electorates named after people at a state level. And they never name electorates based on where they represented.
With respect John, it doesn’t matter if you don’t support the concept. The ECQ supports it and has created a whole heap of electorates recently named after people (Bancroft, Bonney, Cooper, Jordan, McConnel, Miller, Traeger etc). They’re not going to eliminate them all. The precedent has been set, and it’s here to stay. South Australia renamed Don Dunstan’s old seat after him, and Goss deserves the same honour.
As for Inala and Algester, they can always lose their northern suburbs if they shift south. We’ll see if the ECQ wants to increase the number of members from 93. I suppose Algester is already a bit of a Frankenstein electorate, taking in four different areas that are all culturally quite different (Browns Plains, Calamvale/Algester, Acacia Ridge, Forest Lake/Pallara), so I doubt many would miss it it if were split up, with a new electorate created wherever the most excess voters lie in the broader area.
Yes I’m aware of that but I don’t suggest them or support those that do suggest them
@Wilson, I wonder if rather than the legislative assembly being increased in members, we will instead see the legislative council reintroduced. There seems to be very little appetite from Labor (I suppose they abolished in the first place). But perhaps it’s something that gets pushed by the crossbench under a potential minority government.
@seq no govt is gonna hamstring itself. Don’t be surprised if Labor does the same in wa
theres gonna need to be a whole lot of renaming especially in the gold coast given how seriously the districts are both weirdly dispropotionate with several over quota next to ones close and then ones under quota add to that several divisions named after weird things like roads and parts of roads and namesakes no longer relevant due to being outside the division or forced out
If the LNP lose the state election in October I suspect they will accept reality that Labor is the “natural governing party” in QLD meaning they win gov more often than in opposition, Like how (unfortunately) The conservatives in the UK and here in Australia at a national level are the natural governing parties. They may ask for an upper chamber to hold the natural governing party to account more and stop certain legislation or force them to tone it down.
And I think the LNP learnt during there 1 term gov under Newman, drastic unpopular changes don’t work with the electorate, that’s why they were thrown out after 1 term, at least if there is an upper house, they can make an excuse at the election to win votes saying the council wouldn’t let them pass certain laws that would have avoided a certain situation.
Question to those on here with knowledge, Can Double Dissolution elections be called in states with upper chambers where only half of the chamber is up every election? Could a gov call a double dissolution at a state level if certain legislation is blocked so many times and a DD would allow all the Legislative council seats to be up thus allowing voters to get rid of or re-elect those who wouldn’t normally be up for re-election, And if not, could it theoretically be introduced by a state gov, or would only the fed gov be able to grant the states the power to do so via legislation in Canberra?
@daniel t no I believe that legislation is covered by the electoral Act of each state. Whereas the DD trigger at a federal level is covered by the constitution giving the GG the power to dissolve both houses
The federal government only has power to amend the electoral arrangements of the territories, not the states. That’s why (to provide but two examples) Billy Hughes didn’t reverse Queensland’s abolition of the Legislative Council in 1922, not Gough Whitlam reverse the Bjelkemander of the 1970s.
Regarding the reintroduction of a Legislative Council for Queensland: it will never happen. The window of opportunity was post-Joh. I would have preferred shorter fixed terms with a single house of parliament, but that won’t happen either.
Autocorrect mistake in the previous post: meant to say “nor Gough”, not “not Gough”.
ive done a little bit o fplaying around and in my opinion Barron River can take in aeroglen from cairns and cook can take a bit off the south western parts of barron river then hill can take in more of Mareeba shire which can then cede the cassowary coast to hinchinbrook and also ttake palm islnad from townsville. traegar and townsvile can then take parts of the city of townsvile from hinchinbrook and any excess can go to Thuringowa
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