VIC and WA federal redistribution drafts released – live

By
Ben Raue
-
514

6:12pm – I have one last update and then my margins will be finalised.

There are four seats in Victoria where independents made it to the two-candidate-preferred count (2CP), but have added new areas where there was no independent in the 2CP: Goldstein, Kooyong, Nicholls and Wannon.

This issue isn’t relevant in Curtin, since that seat only lost territory. It’s also not an issue in Labor vs Coalition seats with non-classic areas added, since the AEC has calculated a 2PP figure in every part of the country. It’s also not such a big issue in the seat of Melbourne. Since the Greens had a primary vote in the new areas added to Melbourne, you can calculate a margin based on preference flows.

But in the case of Goldstein, Kooyong, Nicholls and Wannon, none of that works. You could theoretically not count any votes in the newly-added areas, or give the independent candidates zero votes in those areas. Neither of those seem fair.

Accounting for these new areas is important in all four seats, but particularly in Kooyong. Almost one quarter of all electors in Kooyong are new to the electorate, all from Higgins. The figure in the other seats ranges from 3.7% in Wannon to 9.1% in Goldstein. This reflects the relatively minor changes in rural Victoria and the major changes in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

My first approach earlier this afternoon was to credit all Labor 2PP votes to the independent, and all Coalition votes to the Coalition candidate. But I think that underestimates their support.

In the areas which were not new additions to these seats, we have both a 2CP between the independent and a Liberal or Nationals opponent, plus a 2PP which is Labor vs Coalition. We also have 2PP counts for all the new areas. In all four cases, the newly-added areas are less favourable to Coalition on the 2PP than the areas already contained in these seats. Indeed every seat that gave some territory to a seat where an independent made the final count is held by Labor: Hotham, Isaacs, Higgins, Bendigo and Corangamite.

We know that generally independents did better against the Coalition than Labor did in these seats.

So this table shows my revised approach. I have compared the 2CP and 2PP in the non-moving areas, to calculate how much the independent over-performed Labor. I then add that extra vote to the Labor 2PP in the newly-added areas.

This approach significantly improves the independent position in all four seats. What do you think?

I also want to briefly touch on the peculiar seat of Macnamara. My approach to redistribution (which I believe is similar to Antony and William) is to break up the vote by each SA1, and then reassign the SA1s to the new seats and merge them. Unfortunately this means that, when there is a vote category that has been amalgamated into a single seat-wide total (such as postal votes) effectively I assign the same share of postal votes to every SA1. This is less true for pre-poll votes (where there are multiple pre-poll centres with different geographic patterns) and much less true for election day votes.

I have an alternative approach for state and local redistributions, where we don’t have SA1 results data. For those, I distribute the election day votes then skew the special votes to match the skew of the election day vote. So if Labor does better in one part of the seat on election day, I give it a better share of the special vote in that part of the seat.

I tried to apply that approach to my federal method but it didn’t work, so I’ve left it as is.

Most of the time this doesn’t cause problems. Usually we’re most interested in seats where the changes were significant, not the seats where changes were slight. These estimates are not precise, so when changes are small they should be taken with a grain of salt. 0.1% one way or the other isn’t really meaningful.

Now in Macnamara and Higgins there is a peculiarly large gap between voting patterns in different parts of the seats, and we’ve often seen very left-wing areas around Windsor moved around while they are part of larger seats that have voted Liberal (or at least not been so left-voting). This can produce peculiar outcomes where a small movement of a very left-wing part of a more conservative seat produces a counterintuitive change in the margin.

I recommend that people don’t obsess over very slight changes in the margin or primary vote estimates in Macnamara. The seat was close to a three-way tie in 2022 and any redistribution changes will be much less significant than how voters change in 2025.

4:10pm – I’ve now finished replacing the data after fixing the SA1 issue. The margin in Melbourne has dropped a bit further to 6.9% (I’d previously estimated 7.9%). The Labor margin in Wills is slightly better than I’d previously estimated, now at 4.6%.

3:51pm – Looking at the Victorian 2PP and primary votes, the main changes were Bruce, where the Labor margin is now 5.3%, which is much closer to the pre-redistribution margin and closer to Antony’s margin.

3:06pm – Okay I’ve solved the SA1 problem and will start uploading the corrected figures. Starting with 2PP and primary for WA, the Labor margin for Cowan has dropped to 9.9%, whereas my first estimate had it up to 11.0% (from 10.8%). The Labor margin in Bullwinkel is just 3.3% (not 3.7%) and Labor in Pearce is on 8.8% (not 8.4%). The Liberal margin in Canning is now 1.1%, not 0.8%.

2:33pm – It appears the AEC has switched from using 2016 SA1s for the 2022 election results spreadsheet to 2021 SA1s for the redistribution data, so it will be necessary to add some extra code that adjusts for these changes and this may change some margins. I’ll get that done later today and update the tables.

2:07pm – Okay I’m logging off now. I’m sure there’ll be more analysis later. I will be writing a piece for the Guardian tomorrow and I’ll be carefully kicking some tyres to see if there are any errors in the estimates over the coming days.

If you appreciated this very quick analysis of the breaking news, please consider signing up to support The Tally Room on Patreon!

2:05pm – So the creation of Bullwinkel in the outer east of Perth has then pushed all of the neighbouring seats out of the way.

Hasluck has become a much smaller seat and now sits entirely on the northern side of Perth.

Moore has shifted south, with Pearce adding a small area from Moore. Cowan and Perth have lost their eastern edges to Hasluck.

Swan has also shifted west, while Canning has lost its north-eastern corner to Bullwinkel and compensated by picking up Karnup from Brand. This explains the big drop in the Liberal margin there.

Tangney, Fremantle and Curtin have experienced very minor changes.

1:59pm – And here is the interactive map for WA.

1:55pm – Okay now here we have the 2CP margins for WA. Curtin thankfully didn’t add any extra territory so no complicated calculations needed there. Bullwinkel is a notional Labor seat with a 3.7% margin. Labor has also significantly improved their position in Hasluck, and the Liberal position is weaker in Canning. Labor’s margin has also been dented in Burt.

This means that Labor has gained a seat and the Liberal Party has lost a seat so far in this redistribution, with NSW yet to come.

Seat Old margin New margin
Brand ALP 16.7% ALP 17.1%
Bullwinkel (new) ALP 3.3%
Burt ALP 15.2% ALP 13.3%
Canning LIB 3.6% LIB 1.1%
Cowan ALP 10.8% ALP 9.9%
Curtin IND vs LIB 1.3% IND vs LIB 1.3%
Durack LIB 4.3% LIB 4.7%
Forrest LIB 4.3% LIB 4.2%
Fremantle ALP 16.9% ALP 16.7%
Hasluck ALP 6% ALP 10.1%
Moore LIB 0.7% LIB 0.9%
O’Connor LIB 7% LIB 6.7%
Pearce ALP 9% ALP 8.8%
Perth ALP 14.8% ALP 14.4%
Swan ALP 8.8% ALP 9.4%
Tangney ALP 2.4% ALP 3%

1:49pm – And here we go with WA. This table shows the 2PP and primary vote estimates for each seat.

Seat ALP 2PP LIB 2PP ALP prim LNP prim GRN prim IND prim
Brand 67.1 32.9 50.7 21.8 11.3 0.0
Bullwinkel 53.3 46.7 36.4 35.74 11.3 1.8
Burt 63.3 36.7 49.8 24.78 9.5 0.2
Canning 48.9 51.1 35.1 41.44 8.4 1.6
Cowan 59.9 40.1 45.8 30.97 10.0 0.0
Curtin 44.4 55.6 13.8 41.36 10.4 29.7
Durack 45.3 54.7 28.8 44.84 9.5 0.0
Forrest 45.8 54.2 27.7 43.13 13.3 0.1
Fremantle 66.7 33.3 44.0 24.38 17.9 0.0
Hasluck 60.1 39.9 43.7 30.12 11.4 2.1
Moore 49.1 50.9 31.9 41.81 14.1 1.3
O’Connor 43.3 56.7 26.7 44.5 10.9 0.0
Pearce 58.8 41.2 42.4 30.12 11.2 0.0
Perth 64.4 35.6 39.1 27.21 22.0 0.0
Swan 59.4 40.6 40.0 31.64 15.1 0.0
Tangney 53.0 47.0 38.2 39.41 12.4 0.0

1:36pm – So just a quick description of what the map shows before moving on to WA.

The seat of Melbourne has jumped the river into South Yarra, which has then pulled Wills and Cooper south, making Wills much stronger for the Greens. This doesn’t appear to have done much to the Greens’ position in Macnamara, although we’ll need to wait for a 3CP estimate to know for sure.

The abolition of Higgins has had dramatic impacts in the eastern suburbs, with Kooyong and Chisholm absorbing most of the seat.

Menzies has lost areas further east and expanded into Box Hill, which explains the seat becoming notional Labor.

Deakin has retracted to areas further east, further reducing the Liberal margin from a slim 0.2% to 0.02%.

Aston was barely touched, as was Goldstein, but Hotham, Isaacs and Dunkley have all been pulled north. Casey also expanded west to take in areas from McEwen and Menzies.

In the western suburbs, Lalor has contracted sharply, and Hawke has taken in the area around Melbourne Airport. But generally changes in the west were mild.

Outside of Melbourne, Corangamite has again shrunk in size, now almost entirely fitting within the Bellarine Peninsula.

Indi, Gippsland, Mallee and Monash appear to be unchanged, or close to it. McEwen has moved closer to Melbourne, but it has made no difference to the margin.

1:26pm – Okay I have now had a chance to revise my Melbourne 2CP estimate which was very quick. I now have the Greens on 7.9% by applying the same preference flows to the new areas as the rest. That is a drop in the Greens margin of 2.3%, but nothing like my first estimate.

1:18pm – Okay here is my interactive map where you can toggle between the old and new boundaries for Victoria. Will take a quick bathroom break then be back.

1:05pm – And here is my first stab at the new margins for Victorian seats compared to the old margins.

Seat Old margin New margin
Aston LIB 2.8% LIB 2.6%
Ballarat ALP 13% ALP 13%
Bendigo ALP 12.1% ALP 12%
Bruce ALP 6.6% ALP 5.3%
Calwell ALP 12.4% ALP 12.4%
Casey LIB 1.5% LIB 1.4%
Chisholm ALP 6.4% ALP 3.3%
Cooper ALP vs GRN 8.7% ALP vs GRN 7.8%
Corangamite ALP 7.6% ALP 7.8%
Corio ALP 12.8% ALP 12.5%
Deakin LIB 0.2% LIB 0%
Dunkley ALP 6.3% ALP 6.8%
Flinders LIB 6.7% LIB 6.2%
Fraser ALP 16.5% ALP 16.6%
Gellibrand ALP 11.5% ALP 11.2%
Gippsland NAT 20.6% NAT 20.6%
Goldstein IND vs LIB 2.9% IND vs LIB 3.9%
Gorton ALP 10% ALP 10%
Hawke ALP 7.6% ALP 7.6%
Higgins (abolished) ALP 2.1%
Holt ALP 7.1% ALP 7.1%
Hotham ALP 14.3% ALP 11.6%
Indi IND vs LIB 8.9% IND vs LIB 8.9%
Isaacs ALP 6.9% ALP 9.5%
Jagajaga ALP 12.3% ALP 12.2%
Kooyong IND vs LIB 2.9% IND vs LIB 3.5%
La Trobe LIB 8.7% LIB 8.4%
Lalor ALP 12.8% ALP 12.8%
Macnamara ALP 12.2% ALP 12.2%
Mallee NAT 19% NAT 19%
Maribyrnong ALP 12.4% ALP 13%
McEwen ALP 3.3% ALP 3.4%
Melbourne GRN vs ALP 10.2% GRN vs ALP 6.9%
Menzies LIB 0.7% ALP 0.4%
Monash LIB 2.9% LIB 2.9%
Nicholls NAT vs IND 3.8% NAT vs IND 2.5%
Scullin ALP 15.6% ALP 15.3%
Wannon LIB vs IND 3.9% LIB vs IND 3.4%
Wills ALP vs GRN 8.6% ALP vs GRN 4.6%

The Greens margin in Melbourne has been weakened quite significantly, while the Greens are much closer in Wills. Labor is also slightly weaker in Cooper.

Labor is much weaker in Bruce, Chisholm and Hotham, but stronger in Isaacs.

The seat of Menzies has flipped from 0.7% for the Liberal Party to 0.3% for Labor.

With Labor losing Higgins but picking up Menzies, that’s a net loss of one seat for the Liberal Party.

12:47pm – Okay I have calculated the 2PP and primary vote for the main parties for each seat, below.

Seat ALP 2PP LNP 2PP ALP prim LNP prim GRN prim IND prim
Aston 47.4 52.6 32.5 42.8 12.2 0.1
Ballarat 63.0 37.0 44.8 27.1 14.5 2.1
Bendigo 62.0 38.1 42.8 26.7 14.0 4.4
Bruce 55.3 44.7 40.3 31.7 9.7 0.2
Calwell 62.4 37.6 44.9 23.7 9.8 0.0
Casey 48.6 51.4 25.1 36.6 13.1 11.4
Chisholm 53.3 46.7 35.0 39.2 13.8 4.0
Cooper 75.7 24.3 40.7 16.2 28.4 0.0
Corangamite 57.8 42.2 38.4 34.0 15.3 0.0
Corio 62.5 37.5 41.9 25.0 14.7 0.1
Deakin 50.0 50.0 32.9 41.5 14.2 1.1
Dunkley 56.8 43.2 40.5 31.7 10.6 3.4
Flinders 43.8 56.2 22.8 43.3 9.5 11.7
Fraser 66.6 33.4 42.1 24.5 18.9 0.0
Gellibrand 61.2 38.8 42.8 27.2 15.6 0.3
Gippsland 29.4 70.6 19.2 54.1 8.5 0.0
Goldstein 46.3 53.7 13.6 39.6 8.4 31.3
Gorton 60.0 40.0 41.3 27.4 9.0 2.5
Hawke 57.6 42.4 36.7 26.4 8.9 7.9
Holt 57.1 42.9 40.8 29.5 8.6 3.0
Hotham 61.6 38.4 42.9 28.6 15.0 0.2
Indi 44.7 55.3 8.6 34.3 3.6 40.7
Isaacs 59.5 40.5 42.8 29.5 12.1 0.0
Jagajaga 62.2 37.8 40.8 29.2 16.7 3.0
Kooyong 46.3 53.7 11.3 43.4 9.9 31.0
La Trobe 41.6 58.4 26.2 45.2 10.9 0.0
Lalor 62.8 37.2 44.1 25.0 10.4 2.8
Macnamara 62.2 37.8 31.7 29.1 29.7 1.9
Mallee 31.0 69.0 16.8 49.1 5.3 12.2
Maribyrnong 63.0 37.0 42.2 26.8 16.7 0.0
McEwen 53.4 46.6 36.9 33.1 14.2 0.0
Melbourne 73.1 26.9 25.7 19.5 44.7 1.0
Menzies 50.4 49.6 31.8 41.0 12.9 4.9
Monash 47.1 52.9 25.6 37.8 9.9 10.7
Nicholls 34.1 65.9 13.2 43.5 3.7 24.0
Scullin 65.3 34.7 46.1 21.9 10.9 0.0
Wannon 41.4 58.6 19.7 44.2 6.7 20.8
Wills 77.1 22.9 36.4 16.2 32.8 0.2

12:40pm – The AEC has now published the Victorian redistribution. I’m going to focus on getting the new margins up first then analyse the trends.

12:17pm – While the AEC has not published anything, the Gazettes are now up.

In Victoria, the seat of Higgins has been proposed to be abolished. No other seat has changed names, and apparently 34 other divisions have been changed. 8.31% of all electors have been moved to a new seat.

In Western Australia, the new seat is named Bullwinkel, after Lieutenant Colonel Vivian Bullwinkel. The seat seems to be located in the outer eastern suburbs of Perth. 14.57% of electors have been moved to new seats.

12:00pm – The Australian Electoral Commission will be announcing the draft federal electorate boundaries for the states of Western Australia and Victoria this afternoon. They have indicated that the boundaries will be published at some point between 12:30pm and 2:30pm AEST.

My plan is to publish my estimated margins for each electorate, and estimated primary votes for the main party groupings, some descriptions of what changes have happened, and maps showing the old and new boundaries.

In 2021 I was held up by a problem where they didn’t publish the SA1s for Victoria until a couple of hours after they published their report, and then there was a problem with the data. Hopefully that won’t happen again, but I’ll be relying on that data to calculate the new margins.

On the other hand, I have previously drawn my own KML versions of the electorate boundaries. I am not planning to do that this time, so it should be quicker to take the AEC shapefile and make interactive maps this afternoon.

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514 COMMENTS

  1. Ok, I’ll have a look.

    Update: 488 – Anne Webster is the Nationals, smh.Still humourous.
    505 – Why. Just why.

  2. 488 is weird but also hilarious. Sounds like the guy writing it was either drunk or high. Or just an average Collingwood supporter, who knows (I think he said he supports Carlton though, either way the Brisbane Lions are better).

    Apparently he’s from a small coastal rural town called Yanakie in the Gippsland region of Victoria, located on the Yanakie Ishtimus.

  3. Anyway, as James pointed out, Anne Webster is a Victorian Senator from the Nationals, not the Greens.

  5. Have a look at OB2 for WA. Full of typos and grammatical errors plus old mate seems to have left caps lock on.

    Not sure how, why, by who or what this means but OB23, OB27 and OB44 (all for WA) have been withdrawn according to the AEC website.

  7. I didn’t submit an objection, but will submit a comment.

    I will roughly break it into two parts:

    1. Agree with the large number of submissions that suggest abolishing Hotham instead, and argue that because it’s right next to Higgins, it won’t require a wholesale redo of their whole draft but I will just identify how abolishing Hotham can make the immediate seats around it – particularly Kooyong, Macnamara, Goldstein, Isaacs and Higgins itself – far better than they currently are.

    In this section, I will essentially present a version of the proposal I did (but never submitted) after the revised numbers were released, including:
    – Macnamara gaining all of South Yarra, Prahran & Windsor from Higgins;
    – Higgins gaining all of Glen Eira LGA from Macnamara;
    – Higgins also gaining Caulfield South from Goldstein (whose northern boundary shifts south to North Rd)

    I will again argue the merits of how this proposal dramatically improves the boundaries for Macnamara (Port Phillip + Chapel), Higgins (Stonnington minus Chapel + Glen Eira), Chisholm (based on Monash), Isaacs (based on Kingston) and Goldstein (Bayside + Bentleigh and a bit of Kingston) compared to the current state where they are arguably the worst boundaries on the map, and how abolishing Higgins only makes it worse.

    2. I will also offer an alternative, in the event that either Higgins remains abolished or they are reluctant to move Caulfield out of Macnamara, that endorses the Macnamara/Melbourne boundaries proposed by Drake and the Liberal Party (and others) as being the most ideal boundary possible where the abolition of Higgins means there is nowhere else for Caulfield to go.

  8. OB505 is truly groundbreaking.

    OB2 in WA is partly humourous, partly concerning. I believe Teodora is serial offender with these rants, having submitted one in the original submissions period for Victoria.

    On the ‘Withdrawn’ submissions, I can answer that. I ended up submitting a 2nd submission to the WA committee because I wanted to add some extra stuff. The redistribution manager emailed me and asked if I wanted to withdraw the first one or retain both, and I elected to withdraw my first submission. So I suppose that that might have happened for the other submissions too.

  9. I won’t have a chance to do this, but if someone is reading through them all, I’d be interested in a spreadsheet of how many of them object to the abolition of Higgins, and of those how many of them actually propose a feasible alternative? Reading through a few they all seem to say “don’t do this” without suggesting an alternative, which strikes me as completely useless in helping the mapmakers improve their draft.

    Personally I’m currently drafting my objection to NSW. I ended up coming up with a new map for 9 divisions in the southern half of Sydney which fixes Kingsford Smith, Hughes and Cook.

  10. Agreed, a lot of the Higgins abolition objections could honestly fit for every single other seat in Victoria. In order to actually have a meaningful impact, one needs to explain what to abolish instead and explain why that is better than abolishing Higgins and give guidance to how to reconfigure all the other seats to make it work since it’s basically telling the committee to throw away all their previous hard work and start from scratch. I think it’s extremely unlikely if not impossible for Higgins to be restored.

  11. @Ben Raue
    I’m working on a spreadsheet currently, so happy to share the results of that when it’s done. I’m doing my best to bundle them into categories that account for the objections and the changes proposed, if any. Interestingly, there’s far fewer unique submissions than the 508 total suggests. Lots and lots of templates going around, mainly for Higgins and Wills.

    Looking forward to reading your NSW submission.

  12. @Dan M
    I agree. Lots of empty platitudes about maintaining the Higgins community and political legacy as if those factors don’t also apply to every other division.

    I suppose that comes with abolishing Melbourne’s “Old Money”/”Liberal Heartland” division. I suspect there’d be far fewer complaints from the residents of Clayton, Springvale and Noble Park if Hotham was abolished. For example, barely a whisper about the strange boundaries for Lalor.

    The best objections either get deep into demographic details, community facilities, transport links, etc., or they provide some reasonable alternative transfers. The committee can actually act on those.

  13. Agree Angas, many of the best objections come from some of the regular posters on this site (key examples like Dr Mark Mulcair and Darren Sweeney that actually put in some numbers for alternative solutions that make better sense from a community of interest perspective. I think Josh Drake also does a good job, particularly with his suggestion of transferring Woodend back to Bendigo (which I believe is far better than the messy alternative of splitting one LGA from Ballarat district).

  14. Some of the WA objections do have valid points, one example from Waroona Shire where they argue the locality has better fit with the wider Peel region located in Canning district. I believe they also submitted that objection last time when the previous 2021 redistribution draft for WA tried to transfer Waroona from Canning to Forrest, which was reversed in the final boundaries.

  15. Katie Allen herself has put in a submission in her name, but still no alternative map. So if it weren’t for individuals’ submissions from outside the party, they’d be expecting the AEC to start afresh with nothing to go on.

    Arguably the template spam undermines their position by drowning out the more reasonable objections. There are some there that object to the odd pairings of new suburbs under the draft. Without expecting everyone who writes in to do a full map – that carries far more weight than demanding to retain the name Higgins just because you’ve lived there for 40 years or that it used to be Costello’s seat.

    The Wills objections seem to be slightly better.

  16. The AEC should create a mapping tool – easily usable and with accurate enrollment projections – like the VEC. This would result in more submissions/comments/objections with maps – particularly from less IT savvy people, making the AEC’s work simpler.

  18. lol a guy named John Lyon has opposed the name Bullwinkle and suggested it be named after Majorie Jean Lyon. this sounds like hes related to said person and even if he werent the name Lyon wouldnt get up becuse Lyons is already a division in Tasmania and it would create confusion

  19. objection 6, 11, 12, 28 all state putting donnybrook-balingup would force people who travel to bunbury for medical care would be forced to travel to kalgoorlie, albany or perth. umm no just because you live in a different electorate doesnt mean you cant go to Bunbury.

  20. also in regards to Bullwinkle whilst i agree she is not a native to WA and therefore the name probably doesnt belong in WA Regarding the people asking for Beard to be considered instead of Bullwinkle. They state her only achievement as dting in ww2 and living within the current boundaries of Bullwinkle which are certain to change over time and no longer include Toodyay

  21. A surprisingly high amount of submissions saying to put Balwyn into Menzies. I wouldn’t be opposed to that, maybe than Kooyong can gain more of Malvern and than Chisholm can move north.

  22. the main problem with abolishing higgins is it causes too many problems down the line which is why i went with menzies

  23. I’ll start with WA because it’s easier.
    All the objections to Bullwinkel, and those suggesting Beard: I wouldn’t have minded Beard, if anyone put it forward as a suggestion in the first place. That’s what the suggestions are for, and clearly they didn’t feel that strongly about it then. The justification that Vivian Bullwinkel wasn’t Western Australian enough is just parochialism.
    John, I do love seeing people object on the basis that their amenities will change. I get the reasoning that they use the ameniteies elswehere and its a good indicator of community of interests, but no one will be foreced to travel. I remember a while back in Vic state, a whole lot of peolple complained that East Bentleigh going into Clarinda meant they’d have to change their postcode, the LGA, and their school zones!
    I think that Waroona and Murray better belong with Canning rather than Forrest, but sometimes the numbers don’t work. Once the proposal is out, I think its very unlikely tha they’ll rework everything, so I try to put forward tweaks in the proposal that actually have a chance of getting up. Although I do like those proposals to move Bullwinkel into the metro area using Kenwick and Maddington, and the flow on to bring Bullsbrook into the metro area too.
    I’ll write my thoughts about Vic soon. Once I digest them.

  24. @James oops my mistake. Thanks for the correction.

    @Angas ah okay. Thanks for clarifying.

    Anyway, about the funny and off-topic comments, Teodora seems to be a right-wing populist cooker.

  25. Of the WA ones 24/45 are solely about Bullwinkel, while a further seven are partially about Bullwinkel. 24 + 7 = 31, so 31/45 proposals mention Bullwinkel.

    Most mentioned divisions in the WA objections (excludes the objections that cover all divisions):

    1. Bullwinkel (26 times)
    2. Forrest and O’Connor (9 times each)
    3. Canning and Tangney (3 times each)
    4. Every other seat (all either once or twice each)

  26. Correction: there are actually 10, not nine, objections mention Forrest and/or O’Connor.

    Interestingly six of the nine objections about either Forrest or O’Connor are objections that solely relate to both seats. So it appears that these seats are commonly being paired together, likely because they both cover the non-metropolitan areas of southern WA.

    * Bullwinkel only: 24 objections
    * Bullwinkel and others: 7 objections
    * Forrest and O’Connor (together): 6 objections
    * Forrest, O’Connor and others: 2 objections
    * Forrest but no O’Connor: 1 objection
    * O’Connor but no Forrest: 1 objection

    It looks like people really object to the proposed boundaries for southern WA, with a total of 39 mentioning Bullwinkel, Canning, Forrest and/or O’Connor.

  28. Nether Portal, out of those objecting only about Forrest and/or O’Connor, all of them except one, object to Donnybrook-Balingup moving into O’Connor. All of the south-west once used to be in Forrest, but bit-by-bit they’ve all moved into O’Connor. Donnybrook is the last inland LGA that is still in Forrest, so of course, like all the rest of them prior, object.
    The one exception is Waroona going into Forrest, when they say it should be in Canning.

    Also anyone else notice WA objection OB42 by Anonymous 2 has accidentailly included all their Victorian objection as part of WA. Does anyone know who this is?
    I haven’t had a chance to look through all the Vic ones yet to see if they managed to submit it for Victoria separately as well. It would be a shame for a detailed high effort objection to not be included in deliberations because they submitted it to the wrong portal.

  29. Darren, although I would argue that Donnybrook-Balingup as a shire/LGA is closely linked to Collie town. Collie is combined with Donnybrook-Balingup alongside Capel as the state seat of Collie-Preston. Even though both communities under the draft proposal are now lumped in with other far-flung localities stretching out towards Kalgoorlie and the SA border at least the two inland locations are combined together, albeit separated from the coastal locations that they share a connection with.

  30. @Darren
    That was mine. I submitted my Victorian report far too close to the cutoff, like 5:59:50pm, and was worried it’d just miss out. Since there was a time zone difference, I decided I would attach my Victorian submission to my WA one ‘for context’. My Victorian submission did make it just in time however.

  31. It’ll be interesting to see what changes they make to WA. Aside from the small group of complaints about Donnybrook-Balingup, only 4 submissions have really suggested any significant changes, all Tally Room posters.

    I know they don’t usually like to change proposed boundaries but they might be tempted by the opportunity to bring Bullwinkel (and Bullsbrook) within the metro area, which results in fewer electors transferred overall, and would resolve the complaints around Forrest.

  32. In 2008, Manjumup and Bridgetown-Greenbushes were moved from Forrest to Kalgoorlie (as it was then) There were six objections. There was a hearing in Manjimup.
    In 2016, Collie was moved from Forrest into O’Connor. There were seven objections.
    In 2021, Nannup was moved from Forrest into O’Connor. There was only one objection.
    It’s been a slow but steady process to turn Forrest into a coastal seat instead of including all of the south west.

  34. Agree Darren, ideally both Collie and Donnybrook-Balingup should be combined with Bunbury and Capel in one seat, just like they have been at the state level. This will most likely occur once federal parliament expands, and you can have smaller sized districts that better reflect on community of interest.

  35. On Victoria, last night I went through every minor submission that didn’t mention Higgins. There’s a small handful of consistent themes outside of that area:
    – About 10% of objections are to the split of Glenroy and Oak Park and the inclusion of Carlton North and Fitzroy North in Wills (all originating from people in Merri-bek/Wills, so interestingly no one in Maribyrnong is against this proposal)
    – Opinions are relatively divided about whether areas like Balwyn, Box Hill and the Green Wedge in eastern Manningham should be in Menzies or Deakin with some support for the new north-south arrangement and others preferring the traditional east-west arrangement
    – The residents of Heathmont are happy with the proposed split along Canterbury Road, but haven’t provided an alternative to dealing with Aston’s shortfall
    – Some comments around how to carve up the Greater Dandenong area between Bruce, Hotham and Isaacs
    – Some comments for the inclusion of South Yarra in Melbourne and some for the inclusion of Southbank instead
    – Almost zero objections from non Tally Room submissions regarding the proposed changes to divisions like Bendigo, Calwell, Flinders and Lalor

    It’ll be tedious but I’ll go through the remaining 300 Higgins-related submissions and see if there’s any general trends there. I think most of them are just templates.

    It’s been quite interesting to learn about all the different ethnic enclaves that are scattered around Melbourne, many of which I wasn’t aware of.

  36. The objections regarding Bullwinkle nearly all relate to the name. Hopefully the Redistribution Committee will maintain this division name – names should recognise lifetimes of achievement, not lives sadly cut short in wartime. Division names should not be linked to a specific part of the seat as boundaries can and do change. Thus Pearce has no relationship to the Pearce RAAF base (now in Durack) and Canning was never named after the City of Canning/Canning River.
    The encroachment of O’Connor into the SW of WA is inevitable as Forrest contracts to a coastal division based on Bunbury and Busselton.
    Objections that seek a radical redrawing of the WA proposals are comparatively few. The major parties and others regularly submitting suggestions have recognised that this would be presumptuous and impractical.

  37. A lot of the Higgins submissions are the same. Had to laugh at how overly dramatic some of them were written. I think the AEC wouldn’t of got as many submissions if they didn’t go from having Stonnington council entirely within one seat to spread out across five. As far as I’m aware, no other council is spread across that many seats. With Glen Eira going from 4->3 I think it’s just Hume council that is split across four seats now, and that’s one of the biggest councils in Victoria.

    So in my objections I still will argue for Higgins to be abolished, but talk about how you can clearly divide Stonnington into three seats. The council has enough diversity in it (Windsor being one of the most left wing suburbs vs Toorak) that splitting it up has a lot of merit.

    Also going to do a bit on how a lot of the tougher boundaries can be fixed just by using the state seat boundaries.

    Corio/Corangamite (Geelong + Lara)
    Lalor/Gellibrand (Use Tarneit and Laverton boundary)
    Maribyrnong/Calwell (Sunbury and Greenvale boundary)
    Scullin/McEwen (Thomastown/Mill Park)
    La Trobe/Casey (Monbulk)
    Macnamara/Kooyong (Prahran)

  38. @Drake i think the objections regarding putting Balwyn in Menzies are quite a smart coordinated move from the Liberals and Keith Wolahan specifically, to add a conservative area into the seat, while removing progressive ones (Box Hill South, Warrandyte). There are a few objections that are almost exactly the same, and I think they have reasoned that they have a better chance of saving the seat by advocating for this smaller change rather than reverting to a traditional E-W Menzies.

  39. In terms of highly split councils, previously it was Merri-bek, Whitehorse and Glen Eira at 4 divisions each, now all down to 3.

    Proposed boundaries have Wyndham, Brimbank, Melbourne and Kingston at 4 divisions, and Hume and Stonnington at 5.

    An overall increase of 18 new division-LGA pairs. Many of those can be unwound though.

  41. How about we bring back abolished division names like ”Angas” to re-honour George Fife Angas, who was a pioneer in South Australia. And bring back the division of ”Lawson” which was named after bush poet Henry Lawson.

    Instead of naming seats after some of the other people they did. and some prime ministers that were seen as failures to this country.

  44. @nimalan I dont support abolishing Hotham either but in a choice between the two Hotham is the better one to abolish

  45. I finally found an original idea in one of the Higgins submissions:
    “Most of the Kooyong electorate is a bit posh, while most of Higgins is not.”

  46. @Drake
    There is also Scullin, but hopefully that one gets removed!

    @Daniel T
    I can get around that idea!

    @John @Nimalan
    Yeah I think if people can use their comments on objections to direct things towards an abolition of Hotham, there’s a good chance the AEC might relent.

    I thought Yaron Gottlieb’s submission was an interesting way to maintain Higgins but without having to make changes to Cooper and Jagajaga. Quite similar to your version of Hotham, @John

    https://www.aec.gov.au/redistributions/2023/vic/files/objections/vic24-OB0149-Yaron_Gottlieb.pdf

  47. @Daniel T, I think there’s very little chance of any abolished division name being reinstated today. The AEC are definitely looking at upping the diversity of namesakes and the age for colonial pioneers is gone. There’s no chance a division like Angas appears again, and Lawson is only marginally more likely.

    @John, @Nimalan, @Angas, I wouldn’t hold out too much that Higgins will be overturned.

    The Augmented Committee rarely make “significant” changes that warrant another round of consultation. I can remember only the abolition of Murray in Victoria in 2010 in the 15-odd years I’ve been doing this.

    Although, I’d say that if the Augmented proposal is going to be “significantly different” for any redistribution, it’s going to be this one. Even more so given our original suggestions were based on incorrect numbers.

    I’d prefer to see Hotham go instead of Higgins, although I’m thinking saving Hotham to use for a north-south alignment next time – Hotham taking Kingston and Nepean Hwy/Warrigal Rd, Isaacs taking Springvale Rd/Greater Dandenong and Bruce moving out to Casey. I considered something like that while coming up with my objection, but I figured it was way too much work to do for an objection, where they generally don’t make huge changes.

    All of this probably would have been taken better had they had the courage to change the Higgins/Kooyong boundary with Macnamara.

  48. @ Darren
    It is still worth a try IMHO. However, you and i agree that Hotham is not a name worth preserving so if you could at least make a comment that it should be renamed that will be much appreciated. The Labor party suggests that Gellibrand as a colonial name should be renamed Tucker so same logic should apply for Hotham.

  49. @darren ive submitted the tribuanl to take into account revised proposals fiven the numvers were wrong. The problemi have with aboliahing hotham is it’s one of the few divisions at quota and that any subsequent boundary change would result in the majority of voters from hotham remaoning together. And they should abolish aa division thars below quota. I think menzies or chisholm would be better to abolish. But the way ive come at it is from both sides of the yarra meeting in the middle at menzies

  50. @nimalan I don’t believe any name should be given precedence over another except where it involves federation or primeinisters colonial Era names have as much importance as aboriginal names or those of women inour history. Aboriginal names should have no more importance then colonial names.

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