NSW federal redistribution drafts released – live

@Angas if it was up to me I’d be pulling McMahon slightly south to take into Fowler and take in all of Fairfield council, but that would mean Fowler would be pushed further south into a purely Liverpool based seat, taking in some spaces where the proposed Hughes would have its North-western corner. I’d push Werriwa south-east back into taking Macquarie Fields and the Macarthur region, whilst Hume, Lindsay and Macarthur can divide Badgerys Creek, Bradfield and Rossmore between themselves.

Hughes I’d prefer to go south if anywhere given it’s the link between Sydney and Wollongong but there’s nowhere else better to put it without pushing Cunningham or Macarthur into Wollondilly the best solution is to keep it there and maybe let it eat into Cook’s southern edges. That’s about it I reckon.

@Angas,

Re north shore – I agree with the first point from Tommo9 above in this regard. He summarises my view on this point well.

@Tommo9, what I don’t agree with is your points 2 & 3.

Bradfield is not very tealie at all, in comparison to the other teal seats. Boele only just managed to creep over 20%. A high voted for the Voice Referendum may show an increased support for progressive policies represented by Labor and the Greens.

How you equate the younger votes with Teal territory is a mystery to me.

What people don’t seem to understand about North Sydney is that there were very good booths for Labor and very good booths for IND teal – they both ended up good booths for Teal IND on SCP, but for different reasons.

Tink has no hope in Bennelong

@High Street what I meant by younger voters in Bennelong (or the new Bennelong rather) is that there is a lot of university students residing with the area and they might be Labor/Green voters on a good day but might vote Teal tactically to avoid Liberals getting the seat, but yes they’re not the traditional teal voters that would be more financially affluent whilst being more socially progressive.

I wouldn’t say Tink has no hope in Bennelong. If she runs she might make Jerome Laxale’s run a lot harder and the Liberals could sneak through when the progressive vote is divided. The parts which are proposed for movement into Bennelong from North Sydney happens to be some of Labor’s comparatively stronger booths as well as very strong Liberal booths (Hunter Hill) so it could be a genuine 3-way race. Conversely, if Tink runs in Bradfield and assuming Boele also runs in Bradfield, that’s the Teal vote split and with Labor and Greens running dead in that electorate, Paul Fletcher who is vulnerable would be much more likely to scrape back in. If the Teal independents want back in, they have to make some hard decisions, maybe including sacrificing one for the other if this comes to fruition.

Either way, the North Shore redistribution benefits Liberals quite well. Unless Jerome Laxale has a personal vote like John Alexander did he’d be struggling with Bennelong come next year.

Hey Tommo9 – I can see you are trying but I think you have been drinking the Teal Kool-Aid too much. As Kevin Bonham has stated, there are SERIOUS doubts as to how many Labor voters would vote tactically for an IND in a seat Labor already holds.
What you have effectively said is that university students residing within the area that normally vote Labor/Green might not vote for the the sitting Labor member, thus removing said Labor member, but then vote in a certain way because they are fearful of the sitting member losing….???? I don’t think that theory passes the pub test – though I also don’t think it will stop the Teal movement from pushing it.
Your next para doesn’t make any sense either – we are not the UK or Canada. We do not have FPTP voting. Other than a very small effect of preference leakage, which is different to a split voting bloc, having more candidates doesn’t really hurt in a preferential system like ours. Your stated logic is also that the Liberals might win because of a divided Left and Centre vote, not that Tink could. You further say that the North Sydney parts of the new Bennelong have strong Labor booths and strong Liberal booths, which is true, as evidenced by the surprisingly small impact (around just over 1%) that the additions make to the 2PP margin. As Ben points out in his new post, prior to the resurgence of Labor in Lane Cove since around 2016, Labor would have done very badly under such a redistribution as this. BUT – you use this evidence of equal Liberal and Labor booth to boost Tink’s case and asset the likelihood of a 3-way race!!
I draw to your attention the many posters on this blog who were dismissive of my prediction that the Teal candidate for Lane Cove would be soundly beaten into 3rd place by Labor at the 2023 state election. They were “only” wrong by 3.5%, and that was in the most Teal friendly part of Bennelong.

The redistributed Blaxland now seems to be very similar to the Pre-2010 Reid whilst Reid current boundaries are just similar to the abolished Lowe.

@High Street I can assure you I’m definitely not on any cool-aid of sorts. Just a few thought bubbles that came to mind after looking at the redistributions. On reflection and taking into consideration the results of North Sydney last election you are quite right in that Labor performed better in this seat than any other Teal seats and was only a few percentages away from beating Tink and then possibly winning on Tink’s preferences (which would’ve been unprecedented for a seat like North Sydney). And specifically looking at the Lane Cove and Hunters Hill booths which is being proposed into Bennelong, the former is a fairly good Labor booth in a notional 2PP sense and the latter is a strong Liberal area. In that sense, it definitely seems that Lane Cove is trending more Labor these days and that going back to the boundaries of the Howard days may not be such a bad thing for Labor today compared to 2016, which is what you mentioned and what Ben mentioned and it makes sense looking at it from this perspective.

Based on that, assuming that it stays the same for the final redistribution, Labor has a good shot of reclaiming Bennelong despite the fact that it’s now notionally Liberal. But it might be a lot harder this time round because the Liberals have Scott Yung who’s of Asian background and is quite well-known in the area. Laxale’s going to have to put everything into it to win and Labor needs Bennelong to have any possibility to stay in majority.

As for Bradfield, it would definitely make more sense for Kylea to move there given a number of her constituents will be moving into the electorate, but then again I guess they’re trying to figure out who will have the better chance to take out Fletcher: Tink or Boele 2.0. That’s a decision for them.

With regards to my comments about votes, I didn’t say that we had FPTP, but I mentioned the split in votes may help the Liberals because unlike the majors who recommends preferences, the Teal candidates (AFAIR) issued open tickets after their box is marked ‘1’, and if there’s a split in the progressive vote, leakage might not all flow to Labor/Greens, but also might flow to the Liberals (given it’s a blue ribbon Liberal seat) which will allow the Liberal incumbents to scrape back in. But I do apologise that it got muddled up in midst of the brainstorming that I was trying to undertake.

Hope that makes it slightly (if any) clearer.

Tommo9 – No problem. I think its great that you have taken the opportunity to have another look at the North Sydney results and laid out here such a good summary – it would be great if more analysts and commentators did the same. North Sydney was an outlier when it can to the seats won by Teal IND, but it just gets lumped with the others.
I agree with you that the Bennelong seat will be tough for Labor to hold, but its line ball on 2022 results, Laxale has a bit of a boost from being an incumbent and Labor will be tying Scott Yung back to Dutton at every opportunity – will Dutton even be present to campaign in Bennelong (and Bradfield)??

I have heard that Tink has lost some support amongst the North Sydney’s Independent Group, so I think she will have trouble relegating Boele as the preferred IND candidate in Bradfield. Would be very interesting if they both ran.

@high street i think tink may well have lost North Sydney anyway

The other North Sydney question is what the Liberals are going to do with Gisele Kapterian who is their endorsed candidate. From what one reads she seems like a good candidate. Her home base is in Willoughby which has now been moved into Bradfield. Would Paul Fletcher step aside or be pushed to make way for her? Something for the hard heads in a party that desperately needs to go into rebuilding mode and needs high quality talent.

Not sure how much of an impact it made in 2022 but Trent Zimmerman was one of those Liberal MPs who was not formally reendorsed until a few weeks before the election. Hence he was not in a position to spend money and counter the Teal / Tink wave in any way – by that stage it was too late. The Labor vote in North Sydney held up well, it also did in Bradfield as well – Boele’s vote came very much from Fletcher and the Greens. The other issue in Bradfield is that there was probably a lot of complacency and that may not be repeated.

@redistributed run her in Mackellar or Warringah

Warringah is the obvious but possibly not best route.

As Bradfield is the only Coalition seat that voted Yes to the Voice I wonder if Bradfield would had flipped to Teals if it wasn’t for Paul Fletcher strong incumbency. Although I do admit there are less Teal Friendly areas such as St Ive’s which even has a high No vote to The Voice.

I’ve released my North Coast proposed map.

Full North Coast: https://jmp.sh/CuviRDDj

Insets:
Coffs Coast: https://jmp.sh/0la0frPW
Hunter: https://jmp.sh/qwoRPhNQ
Northern Rivers: https://jmp.sh/Xtsa1069
Port Macquarie: https://jmp.sh/hEbD9dOr
Singleton: https://jmp.sh/65BOZbsk

I’ve been started throwing some sentences together of an idea for a cohesive, overarching naming strategy for Federal Divisions.

It’s very likely going to be people’s names but done in what I think is a meaningful and impactful way.

@John,

I’m pleased to see that you also think that Tink would have lost to Labor in North Sydney had it remained largely in its current position.

Bradfield is Tink’s best bet. She loses Bennelong to Laxale recontesting (or the Liberals).

Tink could run for the senate. It’s not likely to succeed but if she gets an ATL box, the incumbent and competitive teals to put her on their HTVs (and maybe even non teal independents?), Labor and Green preferences, and enough media coverage on how she had her seat ripped away from her to set up an underdog story, it might just work?

Both Tink and Boele could run for local government (you can be both a sitting MP and a councillor).

Tink running for the senate would be a hiding to nothing. It would be impossible to get a senate campaign to work in NSW (or any mainland state) without a full party structure and candidates running in every seat. It is just impossible to get the boots on the ground without the full backup. That is why parties run in every seat to leverage that senate vote.

Just a thought bubble, what would be the most likely outcome in a realistic world (aka not what I was babbling about yesterday) if Tink and Boele both ran for Bradfield in 2025? Could preferences help one or the other get across the line? Or could the split in progressive vote (+ an open ticket if 2022 was anything to go by) mean that Paul Fletcher might be able to capture exhausted preference counts and scrape back in?

With the way things are going if this is going to be the final outcome of the redistribution it’s definitely a possibility that both teal candidates might go up against each other and see who could win Bradfield. Boele’s got the advantage but Tink has the incumbency in the southern end of the proposed Bradfield.

It’s possible in this system. The main risk is that neither of them make the top 2 due to leakage. More likely momentum will consolidate behind one and then resources spent on the other are wasted. Thinking about cases like Licia Heath in the Wentworth by-election, or the Greens in Kooyong 2022 (which was a “target seat” with real campaign resources thrown at it that could have been better spent in Higgins and Macnamara).

It would be interesting Tommo9 – would the sum of the two IND parts equal the whole? Does it give Labor a chance to get to 2nd and avoid exclusion.

given that they would rely on preferences from the greens and labor theyd risk splitting the vote and not making the 2cp.

im feeling shortland and whitlam might become marginal and maybe competitive due to the offshore wind farms and the community outrage occuring but will it be enough to tip the seat?

Tommo
Interesting scenario. Interesting to see how the preferences went in North Sydney and Bradfield in 2022. The patterns were quite similar in both seats. The Greens had some leakage to the Libs but their preferences favoured the independent over Labor but not by much. The interesting thing was the leakage to the Libs when the Labor preferences were distributed. They were in the 20-25% range – surprisingly high. My view is that there would probably be enough leakage in the system to put the Libs over the top possibly reasonably early.

Redistributed you’re right about two preferencing habits I’ve seen that don’t play out that often but matter in these kinds of contests (which have played out in SA and Tas).

1: A chunk of Labor voters prefer the Liberal party over centrist independents. There was a Tasmanian LC election where an independent (Janie Finlay) nearly won on a preference snowball but just lost due to surprisingly high Labor to Liberal preference flows. That’s an independent who later become a Labor MP.

2: A large chunk of Green voters (up to 40%) will preference Labor 2nd even when there’s an independent that the HTV recommends over them. This prevented a progressive independent getting out of 4th in Waite SA (Heather Holmes Ross)

So even if Tink and Boele run a joint 1-2 campaign, there’s potential for weirdness in the flows

People may be overestimating the split vote thing. The vote was already split last time in North Sydney with Labor and Tink, and she still easily got elected. 37.75% of people in North Sydney voted for someone other than Tink or Zimmerman and Tink still got 75% of preferences.

Interestingly enough Bradfield was one of the few Teal targets which had multiple independents run last time. 83.27% of preferences from the other independent, Janine Kitson flowed to Boele.

Whitlam will be marginal and in play for this election. margin is compressed – needs to account for the strong prepoll and postals for its new territory gained in the highlands. Throw wind turbines into the mix and Jones’ general unpopularity. This isn’t safe

@stew im in agreement on that.

@redistributed – analysts mostly ignore that there is a very small difference between rate of preference flows of IND to Labor vs Labor to IND. Just because Cathy McGowan used to (and still does) go around saying “people in these seats can’t/won’t vote Labor” doesn’t mean it’s true.

A lot of solid Labor people in North Sydney felt Zimmerman was ok – they were confident the former Government would be defeated and so felt safe putting a Liberal 2nd preference to keep Trent.

Not everyone drinks from the Kool-aid Teal fountain.

@High Street I suppose if Kylea Tink did not run or wasn’t as high profile, would it have been possible for someone like Catherine Renshaw to actually beat Trent Zimmermann in a two-party race in North Sydney? Looking at the booth results Renshaw actually ran Tink a pretty close race in the North Sydney/Willoughby parts of the electorate as well as Lane Cove. Had Renshaw won a few more percentage points it appears she could’ve leapfrogged Tink and then won on her preferences. Labor did a pretty good job in that seat, and if the Liberals lost it to Labor then it would’ve been catastrophic for them, given it (and Higgins) would’ve been the first blue ribbon seats since Federation/1949 to be lost to Labor.

Imagine if Whitlam and Menzies swapped parties…. How symbolic would that be Hahaha

@ Tommo9
IMHO, I think even if North Sydney continues to exist, i think Labor probably missed their opportunity to win North Sydney and will not get that chance again. There is a long term trend even without a Teal for the Greens to replace Labor as the challenging party for the Libs in very affluent areas and i think the Greens will gradually eclipse Labor if the Teals did not exist among such demographics. The only holdout for Labor in the North Shore would be Chatwood due to its large immigrant population and St Leonards due to unionised Health Care workers. Even in North Sydney CBD i think Greens will gradually get strength among young renters. Otherwise, there is no real middle class nuclear families, unionised workers etc. Even in Kooyong before Monique Ryan Labor vote fell below 20%.

@Daniel T I can hear Menzies panicking in his grave.

I. Think Menzies will no matter how you draw those seats or which division you abolish Menzies is a certain switch iny opinion notionally speaking.

Also, Menzies may not even be a guaranteed Labor gain especially with the softer ALP vote – incumbent MP Keith Wolahan can still win, and he has some strengths of his own being a moderate of some sorts.

@Yoh An I agree.

Anyway, I made a new target seat map for NSW using the proposed boundaries. You can view it here: https://jmp.sh/br5PXjWs

As always, darker shades indicate higher-priority targets, lighter shades indicate lower-priority targets, purple seat are major party targets, teal seats are teal targets or potential targets, bright pink seats are Greens targets, darker pink is Dai Le’s seat of Fowler (key seat for her and for Labor), and as always, blue is Liberal seats that aren’t in play, dark green is Nationals seats that aren’t in play and red seats are Labor seats that aren’t in play.

I’m focussing on WA and Vic as well as the NT Comments on the six suggestions first.
But on a quick glance I don’t mind it overall.
Dont like:
– Cook still creeping over the Georges River
– The ridiculous extension of Kingsford Smith across the airport.
– Mitchell pushing into Parramatta, which then squishes around it.
– McMahon having no real centre or focus.
– Sydney taking the Balmain peninusula with no land connection.
– Whitlam still running up the mountains to the Southern Highlands.
– Lord Howe Island *still* being part of Sydney.

Do like:
– Hume is no longer split.
– Most of the rural areas and the north coast (although I’d love to see Port Macq and Coffs back to the centre of their divisions).

I’m not sure what proposals I’ll actually object to with a workable solution. I’ll have to take a look at that once I get my objections for WA and Vic finished.

@yoh an i think it will be labor notionally but i think liberal will make a notional gain/retain whatever its called.

@NP i think greenway will be a bit out of reac at this election parramatta 50/50 and id also put shortland on the target list because of the offshore wind farm issue

John you are correct that if the Liberals hang onto Menzies, it will be recorded as a ‘notional gain’ for them.

@yoh i think we will get some slightly different boundaries though as surely they can do better then that and im also putting in an objection for them to take into consideration updated proposals based on the new numbers

@John I think Greenway is more winnable than Shortland, especially when you look at how the suburbs in Greenway have been quite competitive on the state level in the state districts of Riverstone and Winston Hills. Shortland on the other hand is a more working-class seat in southeastern Newcastle and the northeastern Central Coast.

If you look at Newcastle on both levels of politics, some will look at historical results and say Merewether and Bar Beach. However, while it is true that those suburbs have a much higher Liberal vote than other suburbs, they’re a bit like Sandy Bay: they’re more small-l-liberal since they voted Yes and have high Greens/independent votes. Places like Coal Point, Valentine and even Warners Bay on the other hand have high Liberal votes. I’ll do a further analysis later on another thread.

@NP greent is not gonna get a 10% swing in one election i think it will be a target in 2028 for sure especially if rowland retires. Shortland i would say no usually but the offshore wind farm has communities up in arms so thats why id put it there

I could see Newcastle as a realistic Greens target. More likely for the Greens to win than the Libs. I would take the view that Shortland has a long term trend to the Libs – a definite possibility in the Libs next big win – if there is ever one again.

Agree redistributed – in NSW Greens could win Newcastle, Cunningham and Sydney (but not Grayndler IMO) with Liberal preferences. The real question is whether they will preselect serious candidates and resource a winnable seat campaign, especially given the risk Liberal preferences aren’t coming.

Outside NSW, Wills has that dynamic and is being targeted as winnable. Canberra has a preselected candidate but no word on resourcing. Cooper and Fraser have no candidate yet. Franklin is messy but has potential with the ALP incumbent being the housing minister and Liberals likely to do even worse than 2025 in Southern Tasmania.

Again though, we saw the Victorian Greens squander a golden opportunity in 2022, and I don’t think the national campaign will be any different.

@John while Newcastle does have a Greens vote it’s worth noting that the Labor vote is too strong in the working-class Old Labor areas like Jesmond and Wallsend for it to fall. Meanwhile, Merewether will (in the future) be a Liberal/Greens booth (Liberals first, Greens second, Labor third).

When Greg Piper retires I think the Liberals will be competitive in Lake Macquarie. To be honest if the Liberal MPs in the state Newy seats weren’t involved in any scandals some of them could’ve held on (Charlestown was won by the Liberals with a 9.9% margin in 2011, so before all the ICAC stuff I would’ve expected them to retain that albeit narrowly).

@John I would say Cooper, Macnamara and Wills are the main Greens targets. I doubt they’d win Cunningham, Franklin, Grayndler, Newcastle or Sydney.

@ Nether Portal

I agree with your analysis i think Merewether being an elite suburb will be LIB/GRN in future. However, i dont really see Cooper as a target unlike neighboring Wills is only 4.1% Muslim below state average and its Eastern Orthodox % is almost 9% so Palestine is less of an issue in Cooper. Also Ged Kearney is more popular so harder to dislodge.

@Nimalan potentially when Ged Kearney retires.

Anyway, back to my target seat map, that’s NSW for now. Victoria and WA are coming soon.

The likelihood at present of the Liberals directing preferences to the Greens above Labor is precisely Buckleys or None.

Disagree redistributed.

1. The 2025 goal for the LNP is to push Labor into minority. Turning 8 seats from ultra safe Labor into Labor vs Green marginals will do that.
2. Labor will put resources and rhetoric into defending those seats that allow the LNP more opportunities to win their targets.
3. Liberals preferenced Greens over Labor at the last QLD, Vic, and WA elections and didn’t have a consistent approach in SA and NT. That’s every state election with single member CPV. This decade 2022 federal is an exception.
4. “Put Labor last” is a nice and simple message for people who voted 1 PHON, UAP etc whose votes go either way.

The reason not to outside of policy would be that it would be harder to dislodge the Greens than Labor in 3 corner contests. I don’t see the Liberal party suffering for it, given how much of their voting base happily follows the HTV. Rather the accusations of a deal with the Liberals will hurt the Greens (including in Brisbane and Ryan).

@ John
Dont take it the wrong way i am not here to attack the Greens. However, i agree with @redistributed the chance given current circumstances for the Libs to preference Greens ahead of Labor is somewhere between zero and nought. The following reasons
1. The only thing that really unites the Liberals at the moment is support for Israel this unites both moderates like Dave Sharma, Katie Allen and the Hard Right like Hastie, Dutton etc. The only time you can see Peta Credlin, Turnbull, Pesutto, Abbott, Moira Deeming on the same stage is if they are attending a Pro-Israel rally.
2. “Put Labor Last” Is not nice and simple message it is actually quite stupid. Antony Green called his out and this is aimed at people who have no intention of voting for you. At a Victorian level, it may have maximized the swing in low SES seats with an antiockdown sentiment but it had no impact in a seat like Northcote where Labor still won despite a switch in Liberal preferences. If you look at the link below, the Libs ended up preferencing a white supremacist over Labor in Narre Wareen South last time due to Put Labor last strategy. i would argue that is why the Liberla primary vote just collapsed in Box Hill, Ashwood, Glen Waverley, Bayswater etc.
3. A lot of people who voted UAP last time will not do that again. The UAP has no clear base or ideology and benefited from anti-lockdown sentiment last time. Each election they talk about something completely different.
4. The Liberals will suffer from any decision to preference Greens in Higgins, Kooyong, Wentworth, Bradfield and Goldstein among Jewish voters who will be furious.

https://www.tallyroom.com.au/archive/vic2022/caulfield2022/comment-page-3#comment-779086