Objections to the federal redistribution proposals for Western Australia and Victoria were published last week. Objections to the NSW proposal close this Friday.
The Victorian objections were dominated by a large number of simple objections in opposition to the abolition of Higgins. North Sydney MP Kylea Tink has launched a campaign on her website to encourage local residents to make similar objections to her seat’s abolition, which leads me to assume a similar flooding of the process in NSW.
But I think these campaigns are making a fundamental mistake which means they aren’t likely to find a success.
While there is room for public involvement in the redistribution process, it’s not just a matter of asking for something loudly and en masse. You actually need to propose practical solutions to the dilemmas faced by the mapmakers.
In the case of North Sydney, the committee was required to expand all of the seats on the northern side of the Sydney. Most others who made suggestions agreed that it made most sense to have Mackellar to expand south in Warringah, and then have Warringah expand west into North Sydney. The details could vary, but that was the general principle.
Sophie Scamps proposed changing her seat of Mackellar in a way that fit with this shift, but her teal neighbours instead proposed things that would have minimal impact on their own seats: Zali Steggall suggested her seat should expand both ways into Mackellar and North Sydney, and Tink proposed that North Sydney expand into both Bradfield and Warringah.
Both Steggall’s and Tink’s proposals would have required Mackellar to shift west into Bradfield and the upper north shore. That wouldn’t have been a crazy idea, but they didn’t even address what that would look like.
I understand that proposing changes to a colleague’s seat would have created tension, but without acknowledge knock-on effects, your suggestion has less credibility and is less likely to be adopted.
The one bit of real doubt with North Sydney would have been whether the remainder of North Sydney was combined with southern parts of Bradfield, or would have been split between Bradfield and Bennelong. But Tink instead proposed a third approach for her area that would have had major knock-on effects in other areas that made much less sense.
Tink’s proposal for her electorate effectively was an argument that Mackellar would have to shift significantly into Bradfield, but she didn’t make any case for such a change.
What is even more fascinating is that Tink’s campaign page seems to be continuing to pursue the original strategy of keeping North Sydney entirely intact, rather than aiming to move Lane Cove and Hunters Hill into the Bradfield/North Sydney overlap seat. I can’t see such an approach getting anywhere.
I haven’t paid quite so much attention to the campaign to save Higgins, but many of the submissions made on behalf of Higgins don’t give the mapmakers any alternative plans that would allow Higgins to be saved – they just make an argument that Higgins is too important a seat to be abolished. But that isn’t how the decision is made.
I don’t normally make submissions into redistributions, but the committee’s proposals for Kingsford Smith and Hughes have motivated me to put something in, which I did last night.
Kingsford Smith was expanded past Sydney Airport to take in suburbs along the Botany Bay shoreline in the former Rockdale council area, while Hughes was expanded to take in the northern suburbs of Campbelltown.
But a submission just saying “don’t do that” won’t get anywhere – you need to present an alternative plan that can work instead.
So I decided to limit my proposal to a nine-seat area in the southern half of Sydney, with the goal of making Kingsford Smith, Hughes and (to a lesser extent) Cook cover much more appropriate boundaries.
If you want to read my submission, you can download the PDF here. You can also download a spreadsheet listing how I allocated each SA1 in these nine seats.
I don’t know if it will go anywhere, but I think it’s more likely to be successful when you acknowledge the dilemmas faced by the mapmakers and work with them to fix problems, rather than just insisting that things should stay the same.
Peter, I feel they should have abolished two seats (North Sydney and a Bankstown area one like Banks) then created a new seat in the outer suburbs (either southwest or northwest Sydney). This would involve more widescale change but could possibly improve the configuration of other non-metropolitan seats (Macquarie no longer being a mishmash of two distinct communities and also Hume returning to a purely rural seat, not extending into urban areas).
The extent of changes in the proposal probably isn’t far from crossing the line between “major changes to existing seats” and “abolishing one seat and creating another”. Look at Blaxland and Watson. How much more can they be changed before it can be argued that they are no longer continuations of the existing seats?
@ Yoh An
Fair nuff. I was thinking about the north-south shift that occurs in the Parramatta vicinity if only one seat is abolished.
@ Nicholas
Good point. That goes into the discussion about the ABS commenting on minimising the number of people who experience a seat change, even though that’s not a criterion.
I’ve just finished writing my comments on objection. There were only 16 objections that concerned the division of Kingsford Smith, and at least 2 of those were non-serious objections. Hopefully this does not mean that the augmented commission will overlook the issues raised by these objections.
I would like to think that the proportion of comments on objections considering Kingsford Smith will be greater than the proportion of objections. The sheer number of North Sydney comments to wade through in the Objections round was absolutely ridiculous
Well this one’s now out of our hands, unless they want to squeeze in an inquiry. They have 60 days (roughly 8 weeks) to come back with an amended map, plus there’s only 11 weeks until the official date of determination on October 10.
Kudos to those who were brave enough to read through all or most of the objections!
There’s really not enough time to fully review so many objections and I was only able to refer to small handful of community submissions in passing, mainly focusing on the areas I felt could still be changed:
– Rotating Barton/Grayndler/Sydney/Kingsford Smith to keep Kingsford Smith east of the airport
– Pushing Cook south of Georges River
– Rotating Macquarie/Greenway/Chifley/Lindsay to keep Emu Plains in Lindsay
– Keeping Bennelong largely unchanged and west of Lane Cove River by amalgamating Bradfield and North Sydney
– Plus one final map of Greater Northern Sydney to drive the point home (although I was in a rush and trying to simplify the concept and I think the proposed Mitchell might be accidentally over quota)
Looking forward to reading the Tally Room community submissions on Monday. I wonder how the North Shore discussions will continue to play out.
How many more objections to North Sydney will be lodged as comments? Victoria still had over 100 comments, but a whole lot of them were just objections to Higgins and not comments.
when can we expect comments on objections?
John, I presume after midday just like when the ones for WA and Victoria were released.
@john, I’d say it wont be til after midday at least. If there are still a lot of objections to sort through, then it may take some time to get them all up.
im assuming we will get the in inquiry for WA sometime around middle – late August and final boundaries late august and nsw and vic inquiry early – mid spet with final boundaries mid september
235 Comments on objections for NSW.
Looks like about half of them are really just objections, and most of those are North Sydney/Warringah/Mackellar/Brafield/Bennelong related.
Outside of the continued noise around Mackellar/North Sydney/Warringah, there’s really only just a small handful of comments from the regulars.
Even though there’s a larger amount of submissions, it seems like there’s been far less engagement with the New South Wales redistribution compared to the Victorian one. I wonder if it’s because people don’t mind the proposal or if it’s because it’s too difficult to make easy improvements to it?
Kingsford Smith seems to be the only area where there’s been a relatively united alternative proposed, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the commission adopts the entire original proposal with no further changes.
Coming in late on the original question as someone who has drafted a successful objection to a draft redistribution – a 2013 proposal to move part of West Heidelberg and Bellfield from Jagajaga to Batman (now Cooper). For those who don’t know this part of town, this is a disadvantaged area by the standards of middle-suburban Melbourne, with lots of social housing, and is very strong for Labor (and relatively weak for the Greens).
The key here is that you need to present a proposal which meets the key AEC criteria of appropriately balanced numbers and community of interest. In this case, we argued that the old (and current) boundary was a more appropriate community of interest boundary, as Darebin Creek is both a physical barrier and an LGA boundary. The numbers in Jagajaga and Batman/Cooper could then be balanced up with changes on their northern boundaries, which were relatively weak boundaries (especially as, in the north, the northern boundary of the Banyule and Darebin LGAs doesn’t coincide with the main physical boundary in that area, the Ring Road).
Interestingly, while successfully objecting to this was favourable for Labor in 2013 (since removing West Heidelberg would have weakened the then-potentially-marginal Jagajaga with little benefit to the then ultra-safe Batman), now that Jagajaga is a fairly safe Labor seat they probably wouldn’t mind having some extra Green-unfriendly territory in Cooper.
There’s a report that the AEC will likely hold an inquiry into the proposed abolition of North Sydney. There was a petition and heaps of objections to the AEC. I won’t speculate on the political leanings of each person who objected. There may be Lower North Shore residents who have regionalist pride and want the LNS to be united.
Interestingly, a 2010 plan to axe Murray in Vic was abandoned so there is a precedent to save a seat. Given the under enrolment of all of northern Sydney, it is still likely one seat will get the axe.
https://northsidelivingnews.com.au/aec-likely-to-hold-north-sydney-inquiry/
There was no change in the Victorian seat count in 2010 so they could avoid abolishing a seat. They can’t do that in this case. If they don’t abolish North Sydney something else will definitely need to go.
Exactly. Very likely, a seat north of Parramatta River or Sydney Harbour will get abolished. At the very least, the name North Sydney could be saved. I’d be shocked if a southern Sydney seat gets axed.
Ns is gone unfortunately the numbers just don’t add up and something needs to go. It’s like a game of musical chairs someone has to miss out. The Higgins abolition is abit different and il be opposing that. Collectively NS warringah and mackellar are 40% under quota in that little corner of the the norths shore. Higgins you can at least pass on the defeceit threw a frw seats before you get anywhere close to that number. Due to the excess in holt and la trobe needing to she’d westwards.im got nna try and appear at the Vic and maybe the nsw one. The tribunal will look at the issues that garnered the most “abuse” “complaints” or “objections” as they did with wa the issues facing NSW will be the abolition of NS and possibly the hughes werriwa foeler boundaries as well as the ks issues. Also the fact that most people suggested a new seat be created in western Sydney and abolishing one I central
You’d think I’d learn the first time, but no. I’ve done it again…
Finished the analysis into the comments on the objections. A much shorter list, only sitting at 235 submissions. Of these, I can confirm that 142 of them (60%) deal with North Sydney/Warringah, supporting Tink and Steggall.
But the surprise for me is what appears to be a new cheat sheet, this time based around Dr Scamps and actually supporting the Mackellar Changes, while objecting to Mackellar taking St Ives. There are 63 submissions for this (27%)
This means that, at least, 87% of the submissions deal with Northern Sydney in some capacity
This is going to make for some very discussions around the Teal Table…