VIC and WA federal redistribution drafts released – live

By
Ben Raue
-
587

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.

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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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587 COMMENTS

  1. @drake dandenong has the numbers to form its own seat the problem is given its location it would cause very odd shaped divisions around it so i think the best option is to be split into two divisions rather then 3

  2. @Dan M
    Thanks! Yeah I’m definitely going to make sure my final map shows the changes more clearly.

    @Drake
    Good spot! I don’t know if you saw the comments I left further upthread (https://www.tallyroom.com.au/55766/comment-page-6#comment-808190) but those are the exact amendments I made. I think I still might rework the Melbourne-Wills-Cooper section to some degree but I’ve also gotten to a state where I don’t think any large scale changes are needed.

    @Kevin
    I spent some time testing your redistribution tool last. Took me a little while to get the hang of the polygon thing but it’s a smart way of collecting a bunch of SA1s at once!

    Didn’t run into any bugs, but I’ve got a few suggestions that I think could help make the app more accessible.
    – Due to the way that some of the SA1s are drawn it can be hard to use the polygon tool to get the exact boundaries you want. An alternative mode where you can click individual SA1s on/off would be really handy. Perhaps Ctrl/Cmd/Shift click would toggle the entire SA2 at once.
    – If you could add the SA2 names to the mapping template that would be really useful. Maybe you could also add a separate section at the top of the file where we can map whole SA2s to a division (or leave empty if we’d prefer to map individual SA1s as per the current format).
    – A nice feature would be to have a panel with or list or dropdown of the 39 divisions so that you can select one, add the SA1s you want, and then continue to work on other other divisions. At the end of the session you can download your CSV template and then reupload it when you return to the app.

    I don’t know how straightforward those changes would be, but if you’ve got the time and feel like those would fit into your vision for the app, I think those would enhance the user experience.

  3. @Dan M @Drake @John
    To add to everyone’s points, I’m supportive of Melbourne-Macnamara crossing over a Jagajaga-Menzies crossing, as the community of interest is clearly better that way. But I’d also prefer that Hotham is abolished instead of Higgins, like @John. I’m pretty sure those 2 preferences are incompatible, but if someone finds a way to make both work, I think I’d be fully for that.

    In regards to Greater Dandenong, it looks most likely to have a 3-way split with Isaacs moving up to Heatherton Road, but this map I uploaded last week (https://ibb.co/hm5tBvR) shows that it is be possible to push it up to Springvale and to push Hotham out of Greater Dandenong completely. The resulting Chisholm-Hotham would be a pretty neat combination of Monash (except Hughesdale) and the north of Kingston. But then it would be a subjective decision whether this version Chisholm-Hotham is coherent enough. That’s in addition to realising the Burwood doesn’t really fit neatly with Menzies or with Deakin. So there’s going to be some compromises somewhere in the East no matter how we slice things.

    @John
    I don’t really know WA that well but I did do a quick run through of the state a while back and I ended up with something very similar to your proposal. I was also surprised that Bullwinkel needed to cross into the Wheatbelt. Noting that there’s somewhat of a surplus in Fremantle/Tangney/Swan/Burt, I think they could conceivably transfer the part of Burt north of Canning River (Kenwick/Maddington) and that would be enough to maintain Bullwinkel as a metropolitan only seat. That area has been in Hasluck until only recently. On that note, I expected that they’d place the new division on Ellenbrook which is the newly developing area, as Hasluck has generally had a more southern orientation than it has now.

  4. ive put in my counter submission if you will and ive read there are 2 more rounds 2 to go so i dont think these changes are guaranteed and the aec might change the proposal especially given the suggestions they had were bsased on incroorect numbers. i think theyre just wanting feedback on their proposal

  5. @angas hasluck would be the ellenbrook seat as the majority of the voters from hasluck end up in that seat so the new seat would be in the east but if you remove the city of swan from durack it gets to quota. the way they have drawn them 3 seats cross the metropolitain barrier (durack, bullwinkle and canning) but they way i was able to draw them only canning needs to as i was able to confine the new seat to within the metropolitain area

  6. ive also drawn them so forrest and o’connor dont need any changes. i came up with the exact same brand and curtin though. my cowan and moore are very similar however i had karinyup in cowan so as to keep moore as is but i think their version is better as it has a better shape for cowan.

    im waiting on raues comparisons to 2019 results as i think the libs would have probably won cowan on these boundaries in 2019. so anne aly could be in for a challenge given shes lost the formerly strongest areas in the east this time around

  7. I played around with the numbers and tried to make a Higgins if a Melbourne/Macnamara crossover existed. It really doesn’t work. You either have to move Higgins all the way down to Bentleigh East, which creates an extremely elongated electorate or move it into Oakleigh or Ashwood/Chadstone. Neither are ideal outcomes.

    So I think what happened was the AEC got their heads stuck on using a Macnamara/Melbourne crossing (due in large part due to a lot of submissions proposing it) and once that’s done you are kind of left with no choice but to abolish Higgins.

    I’d be curious if Trent still has his first redistribution attempt where he tried to abolish Higgins. I’d imagine it has similar boundaries to what we have now.

  8. @drake i read through the report and that occureed after they decided to abolish higgins. they considered a number of divisions for abolition and went with higgins in part because it was the most under quota.

    im interested to see the result of a merged higgins/chisholm and a merged warringah/wentworht should the election be called prior and a mini redistribution initiated

  9. Drake and I got the uploading part working so that should be good to go.

    @Angas – Thanks for the ideas. Updating the CSV I can do I initially tried a clickable version like the old SA2 tool but that got very unwieldy very quickly as each SA1 had to be its own individual layer. I’ll look into the other ideas, but now that I know it’s working, I’ll probably try to incorporate other states first so that at least it’s usable when NSW drops before looking into any other features.

  10. I am going to throw an idea out there.

    – Higgins is abolished
    – Melbourne does not cross the river and those areas south of the river go into Macnamara
    – Menzies stays basically as planned either going south into Box Hill or Balwyn.
    – It is Casey that crosses the river – Warrandyte and Wonga Park go into Casey and so does say Eltham, Kangaroo Ground and those areas in the eastern part of Nillumbik on the Kinglake Road.

    Thoughts?

  12. but not all that would fit into macnamara. i think the higgins abolition/melbourne crossing are intwined i dont think you can one without the other

  15. @redistributed
    I really like that idea from a thematic perspective, but I’m not confident the numbers would work out. Given the North of the Yarra/South of the Yarra split starts at 20.72:17.28, Casey would have to take in at least 50-60% new territory at which point it’s probably no longer Casey. Plus the flow-on effect to Jagajaga and McEwen would be difficult to manage I think.

    But that highlights a good point. Warrandyte south of the Yarra is very much more like parts of Jagajaga like Eltham than any of the rest of the proposed Menzies. That’s a potential small change that may help boundaries elsewhere.

    Thinking more generally, would there really be any ill effect on the boundaries of Jagajaga/Menzies/Deakin/Chisholm if there was small crossing made at Bulleen, say everything west of Thompsons Road? I know that area reasonably well and the river does not feel like a huge cultural divide at that point. The parklands are a strong unifying feature and both Buleen and Heidelberg have effectively the same transport options.

    Just to compare the effectiveness of different Yarra crossings:
    – The proposed boundaries leave the North and West at 20.92 quotas
    – Our discussed amendments to swap South Yarra for Southbank and to revert the Casey-McEwen transfer leave the North and West at 20.90 quotas
    – A transfer of just Bulleen and North Warrandyte leaves the North and West at 20.81 quotas. Add Warrandyte as well and that’s 20.85 quotas

    Any of those options are workable, although maybe 20.81 is a bit too low. The next step would be to push into Templestowe Lower at High Street.

    Assuming the new North-South alignment is retained, a crossing between Jagajaga/Menzies would make a Menzies that runs from Templestowe to Burwood. How do we rate that compared to the following:
    – the proposed version
    – an amended version that incorporates Balwyn
    – a more traditional East-West version

  16. I think Bulleen would be better off sticking with sticking with Doncaster and Templestowe in Menzies. Bulleen is generally more affluent than the suburbs west of the Yarra such as Heidelberg. It is a lot more socially conservative too. Out of the options presented, I think the one that works best from a demographic and community of interest point of view would be seat comprising Balwyn, Box Hill and Doncaster, though one that has Box Hill, Box Hill South and Doncaster works well too. Manningham’s demographic changes, particularly in the western half make a traditional East-West version increasingly out of step. My main gripe with the proposed Menzies is how it awkwardly has a Warrandyte tail sticking out.

  17. I just can’t fathom what must have been going through the minds of those on the committee. How is literally every proposal by everyone on this website so much better than the committee’s proposal?

  18. Nicholas, I often wonder if the commissioners ever get ‘out and about’ and actually go and look where boundaries go and consider on the ground issues like community of interest or seeing what they think might be a main road is actually a suburban street. Especially this time, you get the feeling that the whole thing has been given to some numbers nerd who has never the seen the light of day, has got the numbers to add up but not had the nous to realise that they all these silly odds and ends shouldn’t be there. Does the City of Stonnington need to be split across five different electorates?

  19. @nicplas the committee seems to start differently it seems they be decided to abolish the smallest division and then move the boundaries to accommodate that where everyone else has chosen Refulu what they abolish

  20. Redistributed, that’s a question for the government when it comes to consider the size of the HoR, the proposed boundaries for Stonnington isn’t ideal, however, it makes sense to place Toorak and Malvern, west of Tooronga Rd into Kooyong,due to sharing similar demographics and transport links. The AEC may eventually merge the eastern half of Stonnington and the electorate covering the City of Boroondara which could work as a boundary, if the eastern suburban electorates continue to be below quota. This would enable the AEC to juggle Menzies, Deakin and Chisholm, and keeping Chisholm all or mostly north of the Monash until the AEC either increases or reduces the number of electorates.

    The only chances I would propose for this area, would be to shift Kooyong’s eastern boundary to the City of Boroondara LGA boundary, and add the area of Camberwell north of Toorak Rd, this send the Prahran East and surrounding areas west of the trainline to Macnamara, then depending on quota, I would consider shifting the proposed Melbourne boundary from High St to Commerical Rd/ Malvern Rd or Toorak Rd, then you could add parts of Southbank to Melbourne.

  21. Redistributed, that’s a question for the government when it comes to consider the size of the HoR, the proposed boundaries for Stonnington isn’t ideal, however, it makes sense to place Toorak and Malvern, west of Tooronga Rd into Kooyong,due to sharing similar demographics and transport links. The AEC may eventually merge the eastern half of Stonnington and the electorate covering the City of Boroondara which could work as a boundary, if the eastern suburban electorates continue to be below quota. This would enable the AEC to juggle Menzies, Deakin and Chisholm, and keeping Chisholm all or mostly north of the Monash until the AEC either increases or reduces the number of electorates.

    The only changes I would propose for this area, would be to shift Kooyong’s eastern boundary to the City of Boroondara LGA boundary, and add the area of Camberwell north of Toorak Rd, this send the Prahran East and surrounding areas west of the trainline to Macnamara, then depending on quota, I would consider shifting the proposed Melbourne boundary from High St to Commerical Rd/ Malvern Rd or Toorak Rd, then you could add parts of Southbank to Melbourne.

  22. https://ibb.co/tLWswjT

    I’ve reworked my versions of Menzies and Deakin because my previous version of Menzies cut through the main section of Balwyn, along Whitehorse Road.

    I’ve shifted that boundary southward to the effective boundary of Balwyn/Deepdene along Mont Albert Road. This has allowed Deakin to take in all of Blackburn, shifting to a far neater boundary along Middleborough Road, however Vermont South now has to be split with Chisholm using Burwood Highway.

    Deakin can no longer include Warrandyte so reverts to the northern boundary proposed by the committee. I haven’t included Warrandyte in Menzies, but strangely enough the numbers allow for it to be included in any of Jagajaga/Menzies/Casey without putting any of those divisions out of tolerance.

    In other news, I forgot to include the southwestern part of Surrey Hills in Chisholm so I’ll have to rework my Kooyong-Chisholm boundary further east. I’m hoping I haven’t made any other mistakes.

  23. @Angas Whitehorse Road is a pretty effective boundary in Balwyn, for example it is the southern boundary for the highly sought after Balwyn High School zone so there aren’t any problems with including it as your Menzies boundary. That being said Mont Albert Road as a boundary also works so I suggest perhaps including both options so the committee gets a choice of which one they prefer. Effective arguments both ways.

  25. @Angas I think this version works slightly better. I don’t mind my current Deakin/Menzies Blackburn border because it’s the same as the AEC one and the previous one.

    @Kevin Your toolkit is great! Glad we could get it to work. If anyone needs help with getting theirs to work I’m free to help.

    I’ve uploaded my proposal. It’s so nice getting to see it in this way. For anyone who wants to see it:

    1st download this: https://www.sendspace.com/file/5wsygt
    2nd: go here: https://kevinchen870.shinyapps.io/redistributiontoolSA1/
    3rd: click ‘browse’ and than click the downloaded file

    I also made another proposal where i tried out a few different things. See here:
    https://www.sendspace.com/file/rn2zyg

    – For anyone who lives around/visits Merri-bek council, how separated is that bit of Coburg east of Merri Creek? I can either keep that in Cooper, and move Wills southern border down to Park Street or put that bit of Coburg in Wills and use the Brunswick border for Wills.
    – I can also have Holt’s northern boundary with Bruce be O’Grady Rd (the current boundary) or use Pound Rd.
    – Also realising now I could have the same southern boundary for Menzies as the AEC and same Menzies western borders with Kooyong. Also all of Vermont South would then fit in Deakin. Maybe that might be a better solution.

    Would be great if other people uploaded their CSV files so we could easily see the files on Kevin’s site. Big thanks to Kevin and James for the big help they’ve been with the redistribution toolkits. I most certainly couldn’t have done it without them both.

  26. @Drake, regarding the boundaries I had wjen I attempted abolishing Higgins in my first proposal, they were actually very similar to what @redistributed just described a few posts above. Caulfield into Goldtsein, Kooyong stretched down into Toorak & Malvern, and no Yarra crossing at all in metro Melbourne (I even reversed the existing one at Warrandyte).

    I never finished that proposal though because I found Hotham was working better.

    But it’s important to remember that was based on the incorrect ABS numbers, never tried it with the correct numbers.

    I’ll just note too that I never factored in or cared at all about what the overall quotas north/west and south/east of the Yarra were. In my view, if you could avoid a crossing at all and still have all 38 seats individually within their required quota range, that’s a better outcome that crossing the Yarra just to have more overall balance on each side of the river. So that was more my focus, and on both old and new numbers, I was able to do that at least in metro seats (no idea if regional seats crossed it).

  27. &Angas.

    I like the way that you have put the northwest portion of Fitzroy North into Wills.

    It also makes sense that the northwest pocket of Brunswick West, and the southwest corner of Pascoe Vale South (west of the freeway) are in Maribyrnong. It’s pretty much a done deal that this enclave will be put into Maribyrnong with no objections. I would not be surprised if Shorten has the form letters sitting on his desk, ready to be dispatched to the new residents of his electorate.

    I agree that all of Glenroy should be in Wills. Using Pascoe Vale Road as a divide line between Maribyrnong and Wills makes no sense to me. Unlike the Tullamarine Freeway, Pascoe Vale Road is not a cultural barrier. Glenroy feels the same on both sides of Pascoe Vale Road, whereas there is a Western suburbs feel west of the Tullamarine Freeway in Pascoe Vale South, and Brunswick West. Many people in that part of Brunswick West go to the Moonee Ponds CBD to shop as opposed to Sydney Road. They also catch the train from Glenbervie or Essendon stations.

    Your proposal for Fraser is solid. I think the Westgate Freeway is a good southern boundary. That being said I don’t have any objections to the official proposal.

  28. Angas
    That Menzies boundary looks eminently sensible. Mont Albert Road is a better boundary. As a Blackburn resident, I agree with keeping the suburb in one division. My objection in 2010 seemed to stop the boundary going down Blackburn Road. In reference to my earlier post regarding the Commissioners not getting out and about – in my 2010 objection, I recall including photographs – possibly they should be included more often.

  29. One thing, I will complement the Commissioners on is using freeways as boundaries. They are big, they are ugly, they are well defined and they do make tangible boundaries. The proposed boundary between Wills and Maribyrnong using the Tulla is the right thing to do.

  30. @Drake
    Both of those arrangements are looking great.

    I think the 2nd one works quite neatly for Melbourne/Wills/Cooper/Jagajaga in particular.

    The shift of the Macnamara/Goldstein boundary to Glen Eira Road is a novel proposal. That would alleviate one of the major issues for me in that the current boundaries split the Glen Huntly Road precinct. Would it also work if Caulfield East was transferred into Goldstein? I wonder if the Jewish community would have any objections to such a transfer.

    In terms of Kooyong/Menzies/Deakin/Chisholm, I think it’s worth avoiding those multiple stepped boundaries where possible. The ideal boundary for Kooyong-Menzies would be the LGA boundary, and the Burwood Highway is a great northern boundary for Chisholm (with or without all of Vermont South is Deakin is fine I think).

    Using Ferntree Gully Road instead of the Monash Freeway also seems to work nicely as it unites all of Mount Waverley. I don’t think the freeway is as significant of a divide here, so would be happy with either variation.

    Probably the biggest thing I’d want to change about your proposals is to include the area west of Burke Road in Kooyong as that would better unite the 5 and 72 trams and would make the Stonnington part appear like less of random appendage. But I know that this would disrupt the rest of your boundaries for Eastern Melbourne and I think your current configuration defines Menzies/Deakin/Chisholm very nicely.

    I agree that this a far better way to show of our proposals. Will no longer have to draw all my maps from scratch! Well done to you and Kevin for getting this tested!

    @Kevin
    One other small feature request which I think might be easier than some of those others. When I upload the CSV template and hover over the divisions it shows a tooltip with the division name and projected population. It would be great if you could also get it to show the projected enrolment deviation percentage (and maybe the current enrolment deviation as well, but that is less important). Thank you for giving consideration to my suggestions!

    @Dan M @Y @No Mondays @Redistributed
    Thank you all for providing your feedback. Seems like there’s a good consensus forming around how some of the proposed changes should be better amended.

    On it’s own, it seems like the Balwyn/Box Hill/Doncaster configuration is the best possible version of Menzies, however that’ll have to be balanced against what is most beneficial for Kooyong/Chisholm/Deakin as well.

    I agree with the use of freeways. The committee’s proposal to use both Citylink and the Monash Freeway are some of their better choices.

  31. @Angas – Added deviation for the user inputted divisions. Not sure that the current enrolment deviation would work – especially if people decide on different division names in different areas.
    Also added the functionality so that if you upload multiple csvs the new one overwrites the existing user created map – I noticed when I uploaded both of Drake’s proposals it didn’t remove the first csv’s mapping.

    In terms of actual boundaries, your Menzies makes total sense. As someone who grew up in Balwyn, we definitely headed to Box Hill and Doncaster over Camberwell for our weekends and social events.

    Coincidentally @Drake – my first 3 years in Melbourne was in that section of Coburg North, I would say it’s the rivers that would determine whether you would go South to Pentridge/Sydney Rd or East to Preston. I’m ambivalent about Putting it all in Wills/Cooper – either works and could be argued for

  32. @Kevin.
    There is definitely an argument for keeping Northeast Coburg (Newlands) in Cooper, as it’s one of those enclaves that connects well with its neighboring suburbs in other municipalities ( in this case Preston ).

    Some people who aren’t familiar with the area think that it’s Preston. Statistics show that many residents in this area shop at Preston Market, and Northland (which is further afield).

    The division of Glenroy does not make sense. All of Glenroy should remain in Wills.

  33. Ok listened to the advice on here and made some small changes here and now very happy with it.

    download here: https://www.sendspace.com/file/w0j3di
    and than use here: https://kevinchen870.shinyapps.io/redistributiontoolSA1/

    Changes I made
    – Keeping the current Cooper/Wills boundary, but now Wills goes down south to Park Street (similar to old boundary)
    – Plenty Rd becomes the Cooper/Jajajaga boundary (similar to the 1994-2003 boundary)
    – Only Kangaroo Ground goes to McEwen
    – Doing the Wollert/Mernda swap with McEwen/Scullin. When they first drew these boundaries there would have been no one in Wollert living north of Craigieburn Rd but that is certainly not the case now. Helps to split up some of the super fast growing areas between Scullin/McEwen and actually leads to less voters changing overall. They can just use the state Thomastown boundaries.
    – Keeping Moolap in Corangamite, it fits fine in either Corangamite or Corio, and since it’s already in Corangamite I’ll just keep it there.
    – Putting that small bit of Glen Iris west of Burke Rd in Kooyong instead of Chisholm as Angas suggested (the numbers just fit)
    – Re-arranging my Chisholm/Menzies/Deakin to be pretty similar to the AEC proposal but with a few small changes. Now most of Blackburn in Menzies. Re-arranging Menzies and Deakin as north-south seats was one of the best things the AEC did.

    Quite happy with the new boundaries. Even managed to get the number of moved electors down to 368,668 which is actually slightly lower than the AEC’s proposal which moves 369,249 people. Now just need to write the report!

  34. @Kevin
    Thank you for adding that in. I’m copying my changes into the CSV now and it’s really nice to be able to see the boundaries update with a quick re-upload and to check if the divisions fit within tolerance. This is way more efficient than what I’ve been doing so far!

    One thing I’ve noticed is that the projected enrolments seem to be a slightly overestimated compared to what they should be. For example, my proposed Scullin (I think also the same as @Drake’s 2nd proposal) is at 125,659, but the app is counting the population at 131,762. I did a quick tally and it looks like there’s 28,000 more electors being counted than there should be. I wonder if it is double counting electors in split SA1s?

    Aside from that minor issue, it’s working really well. The map is super responsive and it’s great to be able to zoom in and see the fine details of different areas.

  35. Hmm – I know I’m potentially undercounting some areas which have SA1s created since the last census and I don’t have the mapping for that area, I thought I accounted for split SA1s but potentially not. I’ll take a look over the weekend.
    Do me a favour and add all your ideas/bugs that you see to the repo so it’s not all in my head https://github.com/kevinchen870/redistributiontool/issues
    Also if anyone is interested in the code they can have a gander

  37. @Drake
    Great result! This fixes most of the sins of the proposed boundaries. And it’ll be a compelling alternative given you did it all more efficiently the the commitee did (and with the added challenge of transferring Woodend to Bendigo).

    The only bit I’d haggle over is keeping Moolap in Corio. It’s more a connection of suburban Geelong than it is part of the Bellarine Peninsula in my eyes and matching the state boundaries would be useful. That said it’s pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.

    I think that’s definitely the neateast version of Wills available, with strong and logicial boundaries on all 4 sides. Sounds like the Coburg East portion can go either way in the future.

    I like how you’ve kept Research and North Warrandyte in Jagajaga as it’s probably not beneficial to put them in McEwen. Plenty Road is a good sensible boundary at the other end.

    I agree on aligning Menzies and Deakin as North-South seats. There was a fair bit of discussion around this before we get the proposal, but I think it seems to be one of the less controversial parts they proposed.

    I think your Hotham is exceptional (despite the limitations of having to expand between Glen Eira and Greater Dandenong). I’m going to try to match that if possible.

    Aside from Eastern Melbourne where I’ve taken a slightly more heavy-handed approach, I think I’ll be proposing many of the exact same boundaries. I hope that means we can the committee to take these amendments on board.

  38. Speaking of optional transfers, is it reasonable that Ballan/Blackwood should be in a Ballarat/Hepburn division rather than a Bacchus Marsh/Melton/Sunbury division even if not strictly necessary?

    The average enrolment deviation for Ballarat/Corangamite/Corio/Wannon is at -2% so Ballarat is going to need to take in the rest of the electors of Moorabool Shire eventually.

  39. @Angas

    Looking at my Hotham, I think the short term aim for Hotham will be for it to continue moving east, taking in Bruce’s share of Dandenong. It’s really only the Glen Eira part that massively stands out in the seat. Hopefully the remainder of Bentleigh East can slowly be put in Goldstein and the Murrumbeena/Carnegie/Hughesdale corner in Chisholm.

    My experience with Ballan is that it would work fine in either Hawke or Ballarat. It’s kind of between Ballarat and Bacchus Marsh geography wise. I am just going to say Hawke should stay the same but that it would be perfectly fine to put that area in Ballarat. For what it’s worth, Ballan on a state level has always been paired in a Ballarat based seat, and Bacchus Marsh with Melton in a Melbourne based seat.

  43. @John looks like there could be a surge in new commenters then. The OGs will still be here though.

  44. instead of melbourne gaining windsor it should of gone to macnamara and then it could lose part of the tip. these divisions are just becoming so bizarre

  45. Regarding WA redistributions.

    Bullwinkel looks like an easier Liberal pickup than Tangney, despite Tangeny’s higher notional Labor margin. The Labor margin in the new seat is inflated because the western parts came from Swan and Hasluck and Labor put resources into both winnable seats last election. The wheatbelt is very conservative and it forms a large chunk of Bullwinkel. Add to that, there’s no incumbent member.

    Labor would be better off sandbagging Tangney and maybe Pearce.

  46. @votante I think they will need to sandbag Cowan swan and hasluck. I think tangey will go and Pearce too. Put inind Pearce had no incumbent member due to reasons….

  47. I didn’t read all of the report but did the report mention much about the mess up with the projected numbers? I’m still baffled by what happened. Did the AEC just not notice or did they just think no one else would notice and they could get away it? I along with probably most people on these site noticed it within minutes so it seems hard to believe the AEC wouldn’t have noticed something was up. They got the NSW numbers right so it’s weird that the numbers for WA and VIC were wrong.

    I actually just checked and the McEwen I proposed had a projected growth of 121% and a current growth of 99.3%. The Vic Liberal proposal had the north/west getting 20 seats from what is now 20.52 projected quotas.

  48. @Drake
    There’s some commentary around it in the Executive Summary and in Appendix D, but the report doesn’t say a whole lot more than what the AEC have already said. All they really say is that the ABS raised the issue in January and they were provided with updated data and that they are confident that the issue was resolved.

    I think it’s most likely the ABS’s fault for this one, but if the AEC was aware of the faulty numbers when they published them that would be quite bad. I’m willing to believe that no one at the AEC noticed when they initially uploaded the numbers. The weird numbers were kind of obvious, but not immediately so unless one was working on a redistribution proposal. It’s entirely possible that the person responsible for editing the initial information pages wouldn’t have noticed.

    It’s interesting to think what might have happened if they went ahead with the original numbers. It’s pretty likely that we’d have to do another redistribution in a couple of years time because more than a third of the seats would be out of the 10% tolerance, which I don’t believe has ever occured.

    The Liberal Party submission was pretty bold to try to argue to abolish Maribyrnong (among other odd suggestions). Interestingly, they proposed the transfer of Campbellfield to Scullin so I wonder if that was the reason the commitee had the idea in the first place.

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