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.
@Nether Portal,
If we were to move to geographic based names, then I wouldn’t be in favour of keeping PM named seats. That would just completely throw everything off. Especially if the seat the PM was from was a completely different area to the seat named after them. I don’t know that I’m in favour of Steve Irwin having a seat named after him. He is known more for celebrity status than anything to do with serving the Australian people. Even if you count his environmentalism and conservationism.
@Mark Yore, about the numbering, I recently looked at redistricting the entire US using http://districtr.org – which is a non-official online tool. I noticed the existing US districts are numbered just as ridiculously as the gerrymanders in some states. I made a habit of numbering them from the north-west of each state in a logical flow on manner, depending on the shape of the state. We could do it similarly here so the north-west, or south-east or what have you is always district 1.
@Frank, @Ben Raue, @Yoh An, Ben sent me a copy of his objection a few days before publishing it. I basically copied it – but like Frank said, I wasn’t keen on Ben’s Hughes crossing into Georges Hall. I reworked that so Georges Hall went to Fowler, which is still not great. Hughes then expanded into Liverpool and Lurnea. I then had to rejig the Werriwa – Fowler line though Cecil Hills, Bonnyrigg, Green Valey and Ashcroft. Regardless, it’s another option, and I think both of those are better than crossing the airport.
@WestSyd, I’ve copied Ben and placed all of Earlwood in Grayndler in my objection.
@Peter, @Jeremy, you’re right, anyone can do it. It probably would be easier if the numerical criteria were changed. Having to balance the 3.5% projected electors with 10% threshold for actual electors, while trying to find effective CoI and clear borders is probably a bridge too far for all but the most dedicated psephologists. An online tool would help greatly. Having the Victorian redivision be completed online I could get all the boundaries completed and instantly see the numbers update.
Also, I think this needs to be said.
The AEC are impartial and the Committee would go out of their way to ensure any decision they make is on demographics and not on partisan grounds.
There were more than a few suggestions and objections that implied, or outright accused, the AEC of partisanship. There have been a few comments here to the same.
Higgins being abolished has nothing to do with the fact it was a Liberal Stronghold, a current Labor held seat, or a seat with three women pre-selected. North Sydney being abolished has nothing to do with it being a Teal seat.
I’m a public servant (if you’ve read my page long political disclaimer in my submissions, you’ll know this). We all work hard to make sure we’re never even being seen as partial. Even liking a politician’s social media can be seen as partisan support.
Tom Rogers, Susan Kenny, David Gruen, Rebecca Main, Narelle Underwood, Margaret Crawford, Bola Oyetunji, Anita Ratcliffe, Dione Bilick, Caroline Spencer, Aneurin Coffey, Craig Sandy, and Andrew Greaves are public servants. So are the staff that work for them. They should be respected for the considerable effort they are undertaking. Not having accusations of partisanship hurled at them.
Back in 2010, I lodged an objection to the proposed boundaries of Deakin and Chisholm. At the time, the proposed boundary was up the middle of Blackburn Road – where it is now and where it is likely to stay. My objection was focussed on splitting a community of interest. The AEC proposal also mentioned that it was a major dual carriageway road – which it is not. I made a submission which made a considered approach to the issues – I also included photographs showing that it is not a dual carriageway. The boundary was changed so it was successful. Probably something that helped is that it was a minor change that did not have knock on effects elsewhere.
@redistributed, the reason with the strange current (and initially proposed in 2010) boundary in Blackburn was since Blackburn Road is on Metro Route 13 which included the back streets of Chapel Street and Railway Road since many North South commuters used the road. While a Blackburn have been split would have broken the community of interest, it created in a weird T shape boundary for Deakin in 2013-2016
@Peter I think the inevitable problem with your proposal is “everyday citizens to make sound suggestions”. Since we’re discussing this on Ben’s page it’s pretty much a self-selecting group, but the average understanding of people about how the electoral system works is depressingly small. If you have a little more faith in the average Australian then I invite you to have a wander through some of the suggestions regarding North Sydney. Another reason why civics classes should be compulsory.
That’s without even crossing over into some of the more fringe viewpoints. I have the misfortune of knowing some people who fit firmly under the “sovereign citizen” umbrella and discussions with them are both frustrating and pointless. It’s not that hard to come up with a redistribution – it’s a mixture of maths and art but there’s also a requirement to understand the basic rules of redistributions.
Your suggestion of AEC digital tools is interesting. Have a look at goblin.tools, a set of AI text tools. One of them is Professor, which breaks the text down and then explains it with an example. I’m thinking that the AEC equivalent would be able to take a block of text, check it against the AEC rules for redistributions and then mark anything that doesn’t meet those rules (or asks for further information).
The principal rule is that the numbers have to work out, then you have other subjective qualities such as transport links, physical boundaries and communities of interest. There’s a good Parliamentary Library guide at https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2017-11/apo-nid119441.pdf
One of the problems that has arisen lately is that most people skip the maths part of the submission. In the last Queensland State redistribution there was a huge problem – not just with the bizarre approach taken by the ECQ, but also with the fact that a number of major party submissions left out the maths altogether. The ALP submission skipped the redistribution boundaries as well, going for the “it’s the vibe of the thing” approach.
So perhaps a guided approach for submissions would be helpful – this is the name of the electorate, this is the current enrolment and this is my calculation of the projected enrolment of the new electorate over the next seven years. Here are the boundaries.
@Darren McSweeney I have never had anything but the highest respect and admiration for the AEC and the people who work there. Unlike the ECQ.
I’ve suggested on a number of occasions that the ECQ in Queensland should be reduced to an oversight role only and the conduct of elections and redistributions should be undertaken by the AEC.
Also I’m not that keen on working with numbered electorates, but that’s more due to force of habit than any rational reason. 🙂 The vast majority of Local Government divisions in Queensland are numbered except for Brisbane.
Hi everyone, Banks voter here. Milperra deserves to be redistributed into Banks – it is seen as much more similar to suburbs like Panania, East Hills etc as a socially conservative suburb. I also think that expanding Banks to Blakehurst makes sense, as most of the waterfront suburbs are very culturally similar as “family” suburbs with the odd waterfront mansion or two, for example Peakhurst and Blakehurst.
The current redistribution makes sense from my point of view. Keen to hear your thoughts!
@Nether Portal: “I’m starting to agree that we need to have mostly geographical names to make sure we aren’t dishonouring people when the seats are abolished”. The problem is that the namesakes of many current and former electorates don’t deserve to be honoured in the first place, including many that weren’t even Australian.
I checked the list of division names retired since 2007. They are mostly named after colonial British men, including colonial administrators and explorers that perpetrated massacres of indigenous people (such as Batman, McMillian and Stirling), some are geographic (such as Gwydir, Port Adelaide, Murray and Melbourne Ports), and some are Australians that did not deserve a division (like Charlton). I think all these names are the right choice for retirement. Higgins does not fit any of these categories, therefore its abolition is unconvential and understandably controversial.
The problem with geographic names is that some seats can shrink so dramatically in size and/or shift so dramatically in location that they no longer contain their namesake. You can definitely rename the seat with another geographic name when it no longer contains its namesake, but naming a seat after eminent Australians will not have such issue and saves a lot of time and energy in deciding whether to rename them.
ACT redistributions are easy and the Electoral Commission produces a tool that enables you to do your own redistribution and submit it. It took about half an hour to come up with a submission. It was virtually identical to the final product.
@Joseph
I am in favour of people’s names that way when a seat moves out of the geographical area it does not need t be changed. I agree with you that some names are outdated and as redistributions occur we will see them removed. I think using names is a good way to celebrate ex PM’s, Nobel Laureates and other noteworthy Australians.
@Doug ACT redistributions are easy because 1) they’re multi-member constituencies so the electorates are much larger; 2) The population of the ACT is relatively smaller so the projections are less subject to wild swings; and 3) District and suburb boundaries are used almost exclusively as electorate boundaries. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I could only find two boundaries that split suburbs. Canberra’s development is also a lot more homogenous, so it would be difficult to really mess it up.
@Mark
Thanks for the thoughtful comments.
I agree that it appears that large numbers of people have a poor understanding of civics. The question is what do we do about that? In discussions on various topics here, there seem to be two alternatives:
1. Dumb down a system so that people can engage with it with less time and understanding, or
2. Smarten up the people so that more of them can be better engaged with democratic systems.
#1 is easier but achieves less. #2 is harder to do but achieves more.
And yes, I absolutely agree we should probably teach more civics in schools, but in the meantime, I’m interested in what more we can do to better educate the adult citizens we currently have.
“I think the inevitable problem with your proposal is ‘everyday citizens to make sound suggestions’.”
To be fair, that’s not a problem with this suggestion for a more accessible redistribution tool, that’s a problem with all civic engagement.
In this case, a user-friendly redistribution tool could enable a number of people who currently make flawed suggestions to make better quality ones. That written guide looks very informative, but I wouldn’t expect many people would take the time to read it, sorry. Whereas a practical tool could enable a ‘learning by doing’ approach, where people could test out ideas in places that are familiar to them, and receive feedback on the implications of their ideas.
Not sure if you were following the VIC comments thread but I dabbled in creating a tool for exactly this purpose to make the drawing of boundaries more accessible. A few people ended up using it to help formulate their submissions for Victoria.
https://kevinchen870.shinyapps.io/redistributiontoolSA1/
I didn’t have the time to expand it to other states but hopefully next time I can set it up earlier in the redistribution process to let people make both state wide submissions as well as individual areas.
Yeah nice one, Kevin! It’s awesome that you’re dabbling in this task, and I think the fact that you’re doing this shows a void in the AEC’s offerings. So goodonya and all the best with your work!
@Peter I think that it would be possible to have a guided approach to naming. Starting with the name of the existing area, the proposed name, the link to the area and the justification for the name. That would also force people to clearly enunciate the reasons why that name would meet the criteria. You would probably have to break it down a lot more than what I have set here, but I’ve found that a guided approach also make people think about what they are doing.
Very few people do a complete submission – it’s mostly about their own neighbourhood and they generally ignore the impact on other electorates.
@Kevin I don’t suppose you have one for the Queensland boundaries? 🙂 We have state and federal redistributions due 2025 and 2026. It also makes it easier to describe the starting point for redistributions which is always handy when looking at other submissions.
@Mark – that’ll be next on my to do list – Need to reshape the entire design so that people can pick a state to begin with.
I have been going through these NSW objections and what I have seen so far is, frankly, laughable.
I am currently up to OB 200 and this is what I have found so far:
*54% of the objections either directly or indirectly deal with North Sydney
*31% are nonsensical objections, ranging from “Leave North Sydney/Kylea Tink/Warringah Alone” to accusations of gerrymandering and conspiracy theories.
*13% are part of an “unofficial” copy-past campaign lead by Kylea Tink’s support team to flood the objections with what amounts to (word-for-word) the same arguments around the AEC ignoring the State Government Development Plan around the Metro Line. You can tell this because they either have the exact same lines used or you can see the poor copy-paste attempt (or a combination of both)
So far, I have found 6 reasonable objections and they are all around naming convention, with all of them suggesting that the combined seat should be named North Sydney (instead of Warringah). One suggestion even goes a step further and suggests that Mackellar should be renamed Warringah.
They should abolish Blaxland to ”balance” abolishing Higgins which was held by 2 former Liberal pm’s. Blaxland was held by Keating.
@Hawkeye_au
I hope you do not give up till 738 but I wouldn’t blame you if you do. Good Luck.
Thanks Leon. I’m up to 250 (so I’m past 1/3 mark) and we have a new trend that I will be adding to this.
Along with the Kylea Tink Cheat Sheet, there is now a Zali Steggall Cheat Sheet. Same concept, but clearly coming from Zali’s Camp which all suggest the same thing:
*Expand Warringah to take all of Mosman Council (aka out to Warringah Freeway)
*Expand North Sydney to take all of Chatswood and take some of North Ryde
*Suggestion of abolishing a seat out West.
I have also found another objection accusing the AEC of a conspiracy against the Teals.
You can’t make this up…
Seeing the other objections (most but not all of them, to be clear) makes me feel like a nitpicker. (My objection is OB330.) I seem to recollect that minor (and practical) objections like mine were par for the course in previous redistributions!
@Hawkeye_au the teals think they can gerrymander the boundaries set by the AEC. They know Western Sydney is a battleground full of Liberal targets.
They want a seat like Greenway or Parramatta to be abolished so the Liberals can’t win a seat out west, or they’ll suggest abolishing Lindsay or Mitchell which the Liberals already hold (Lindsay is also a Labor target), or they’ll attempt to get rid of Dai Le by abolishing Fowler.
The teals know this. They’re trying to get the Liberals and Dai Le out and keep Labor in. They’re trying to turn Sydney teal and red, and stop it going blue again.
Just reached yours @Nicholas. At least yours makes sense and is quick and efficient.
Some of the responses I have read so far have been mind-boggling, right down to one particular family using one of their kids (who has self-identified in her submission as being under 18) making a submission identical to her parents…
WTAF is going on?
Ok, I am now at the half-way mark and I can confirm that 1/3 of the objections to North Sydney have come from the Kylea Tink Cheat Sheet that has been copy-pasted through all of these submissions.
Thank is frankly ridiculous. Will it get worse? I’m going to find out.
Mine is something like number 504
Hope ppl like it but I am shorter on detail than I initially wanted due to uni commitments
Just read through some of the objections and almost laughed at the amount of objections to North Sydney tied to ‘Oh we’ve lived here for so many years, Kylea Tink is doing a great job’ so and so and claiming that removing North Sydney is akin to gerrymandering. Newsflash: The AEC is independent and those objections sound more like gerrymandering than anything else to protect Tink.
Also surprised at the number of objections of dividing Epping between Bennelong and Berowra. Funnily enough Jerome Laxale is also getting a mention about how great he is. Perhaps he’s more popular than initially thought and might be able to pull off what John Alexander did for 4 elections and win them even if Hunter Hill and Lane Cove (which is starting to lean left these days) are brought in.
Most mentioned seats (only that seat):
* North Sydney: 303
* Bennelong: 48
* Warringah: 14
Someone would need to recount them though since I’m tired.
I’ve compiled my analysis – having admitted to not reading all of them, especially those that only relate to North Sydney or Bennelong.
– 23 relate to all or multiple divisions – these are the serious ones that I will write proper replies about individually. If I recognised it beloning to someone here, I tended to put it in this category.
– 2 about Banks
– 1 about Blacktown
– 1 Calare – Andrew Gee – spoiler, he supports no changes.
– 2 Cowper – one is Anon which was someone here (sorry I can’t remember who).
– 1 Dobell
– 6 Eden-Monaro – either Goulburn or Yass & Snowy
– 128 about Epping
– 2 Grayndler – including one that just says get rid of it (assuming because they don’t like Albo)
– 7 about Old Windsor Road
– 3 about Hughes
– 1 about Hunter
– 3 almost identical ones about Cunningham and Whitlam
– 3 about Bayside
– 8 about Emu Plains
– 1 about the name Macquarie
– 8 that support the new boundaires of Mackellar
– 1 about both Bennelong and North Sydney, and the North Shore in general
– 454 about the abolition of North Sydney (some of these may refer to other areas, but essentially they’re objecting to North Sydney) All the Tink templates are in this category.
– 6 about Parkes/Forbes/West Wyalong
– 1 about the Parramatta area
– 1 about Wahroona
– 69 about Warringah – which includes those that object to Mackellar expanding south, or Steggall templates.
Of the non-objections
– 1 about the map of Kingsford Smith not showing the port expansion
– 1 simply says “20years [sic] why do we need to move electorate, things work just fine” – from guessing, I’d say this is an Epping one maybe.
– 1 simply says “I am in favour of the proposal.” (although technically this could be 2, because the Liberal party one does effectively the same, just with more words).
– 1 questions the electoral quota but is basically out of scope.
– 1 corrects the spelling of “abolishment” as “abolition”.
– 1 is a screenshot of the gazette notice.
I included the objection of just the map of Bennelong under the Epping ones and the map of Greenway under the Old Windsor Road groups.
So hopefully I’ll get a reply done this week. I’ll look over Tink’s proposal properly and see if I can support a rotation. The issue I’d have with it is Mackellar expanding into St Ives. But is that any worse than Berowra expanding into Epping, Cowper expanding into Port Macquarie or Hughes expanding into Ingleburn?
Oh yeah, the funny thing about OB6 is that I can’t actually find the word “abolishment” anywhere in the redistribution report or on the AEC website – except in comments and objections by the public!
I remember hearing it used in the video the AEC put out announcing the proposal (which came up a few minutes before the actual report and thus could be used to screenshot a few key seat maps).
What are our guesses for how the committee will respond to the objections? Will they redraw Northern Sydney? If so, how? Will they fix up Hughes? McMahon?
@ Daniel T Very silly comment. Putting that aside though, if we assume parliament is not expanded for some reason, then Blaxland is probably a good candidate to rename after Howard or Keating when they eventually pass away. Keating is the obvious choice, but we have seats like Fraser and Gorton which are named after Liberal PMs despite being safe Labor seats, so Howard is perfectly fine as well.
Maybe if parliament is expanded and the time is right for it, North Sydney could be resurrected in spirit and named “Howard”.
@nicholas i reckon the next expansion will occur affter 2028 and howard will still be alive but it may be approprirate to revive north sydney
@John John Howard is currently 84 so in 2028 he’ll/d be 88.
@NP yes and im wagering he’ll still be alive.
Anyone wanting a real laugh at some genuine SovCit BS, check out OB 486!
From memory, Victoria had more frivolous objections that made me laugh.
Jerome Laxale got a few “he’s a great local member” comments and I saw one for Angus Taylor.
I’ve made it! I’ve made it to the end of the 738 objections. My piece will focus solely on those directly dealing with North Sydney/Warringah. Yes, I am that much of a sucker for punishment.
First things first, the number of 738 is not correct, because, as you will see later on, there was a series of submissions where people grouped the same message multiple times in the one objection. The true number of objections is actually 1048
To start with, there were 814 Objections that actually went into North Sydney and/or Warringah in some capacity (over 3/4 of the objections). So we are dealing with a pretty big pot.
First off, we will look at those that I looked into and thought “ok that is at least reasonable and coherent”. Of the 814, only 26 of the objections were somewhat reasonable. From that pot:
*19 suggested renaming the merged seat North Sydney instead of Warringah (IMO, this makes sense)
*4 suggested abolishing Bradfield, which would result in Mackellar taking St Ives, North Sydney expanding North and Berowra shifting South
*1 Suggested abolishing Berowra and shifting everything North along the Pacific Highway
*1 suggested renaming the merged seat as Sydney Harbour
*1 Suggested Renaming the merged seat North Sydney and renaming Mackellar as Warringah
So that is me being nice. Now lets deal with the 788 where I thought WTF. Of those 788 objections, 5 were determined unworkable:
*4 suggested that Warringah takes all of Mosman Council and North Sydney should extend further West into North Ryde
*1 Proposed leaving everything in Northern Suburbs/Beaches as it stands and abolish Banks instead (riiiiiight)
This then leaves 783 that then fell into one of three categories:
*Feelings Hurt aka Leave North Sydney/Warringah Alone (essentially, those having a whinge with no coherent argument – 210
*What I have now named the Kylea Tink Cheat Sheet:
-Complained that the NSW Property projections in the current state plans would add 20,000 new dwellings
-5000 small businesses are projected to come into the area
-The redistribution is a conspiracy against the Teals
-At First glance, you would think that there is 195. But this is where the multiple copy-paste objections occurred. This is where the number goes up to 505 (nearly half the total objections!!!)
There is then a 2nd cheat sheet created by the supporters of Zali Steggall. Again, they share a similar formula, effectively that the AEC should use Zali’s Option A from her original submission. This number totals the remaining 68.
I then managed to find the objections from the major players in the area:
Kylea Tink MP – ended up copying the main submission from the Greens, merging Berowra and Bradfield, expanding Mackellar to take St Ives, Push Warringah North and give all of Mosman Council to North Sydney
Zali Steggall MP – Reinforces around her suggestion of Option A, resulting in no loss of seat
Liberal Party – No Objection
Labor Party – No major objection to Northern Suburbs but suggests that Bennelong could reach even further into the Old North Sydney and that Greenwich should be part of Bradfield
NSW Greens – No objection to Northern Suburbs
In short, the Kylea Tink Mis-Information campaign is running at full steam and I have to say that getting her supporters to flood the AEC with frivolous objections should be criticised to its fullest extent.
The funny thing is, it is numerically possible for North Sydney to become precisely the union of North Sydney, Willoughby, Lane Cove, and Hunters Hill LGAs. For decades this would have been considered the ideal boundaries that would have been draw were numerical constraints not so restrictive. Now that it is numerically possible, the bigger picture has us abolish it! (The only way to make those boundaries work is for Mackellar to take in not just St Ives, but around half of Ku-ring-gai LGA.)
Interesting how there are tons of objections to splitting up Epping into three. It’s perhaps the most common suburb-specific objection. Lots of suburbs are split into three. Blacktown is split right where the CBD is into three. Chatswood is also split, close to the CBD, along the Pacific Highway.
I suspect it’s because there are community interest groups or long-term residents or owner occupiers with time on their hands. Epping isn’t even a large commercial centre but it’s definitely a transport hub with several high-rise apartments. Blacktown and Chatswood are far larger commercial centres and more populated.
The proposal actually only splits Epping into two – that small part of Bennelong protruding into Parramatta LGA contains only parts of Eastwood.
Interestingly, during the last NSW redistribution, there was a suggestion from a resident of that tiny sliver of Epping south of Chesterfield Road that was then part of Ryde district. He described how he was aghast to have been handed an absentee ballot at what he (quite reasonably) believed was his local polling place.
Thanks Darren and Hawkeye for your summaries. I’ve looked through 77 responses so far, so I can see how committed you’ve been to look at them all already.
While I have no idea what the AEC will do in response, I do hope they make some sort of changes. This proposal – that breaks up Epping and Blacktown while generating lots of objections in North Sydney – isn’t the way to go.
On North Sydney, I agree with Hawkeye’s call that Tink’s approach should certainly be criticised for being silly. However, I can’t see how it could be called a “misinformation campaign”. It’s just a bunch of people who’ve been motivated to object to the abolition of their division. The problem, as Ben critiques in this thread, is that Tink’s message to her community takes a superficial “save North Sydney!” demand that doesn’t adequately deal with the AEC’s imperatives to redistribute.
So how could northern Sydney be redrawn in a better way? Well, what are the actual problems that we trying to fix in the current layout as of 2022?
Good – Mackellar and Bennelong are both very well drawn where they are, and don’t need major changes in themselves, aside from quotas.
Average – North Sydney and Bradfield, and Mitchell and Parramatta, are mostly decent, but have some clunky boundaries in some parts.
Bad – Warringah and Berowra bridge large waterways, which is suboptimal.
This leads to the conclusion that the AEC are right about Mackellar to keep it where it is, and that Warringah does still need to cross the Spit Bridge to join the Northern Beaches to the north shore. That means, IMO, that the larger scale changes in this redistribution should occur somewhere between North Sydney – Bradfield – or Berowra. That could take various forms and whichever names people think most appropriate.
Ultimately, I think that somewhere in that assessment is where the best outcome can be found from the unfortunate situation of a state losing a seat.
I tend to look at what the new seats covers and, IMO, the redistribution around Northern Sydney makes a lot more sense as it is.
It is unavoidable that one of the Northern Beaches Seats would have to leave the Northern Beaches, to an extent. Whilst Mackellar does have a land route (Mona Vale Road from Terrey Hills to St Ives), there is such a distance divide between the two that it is inconceivable to bring them together. The nearest residential locations on that run is Richmond Road, St Ives Chase, to just past the Terrey Hills Tavern. The distance between the two is about 5.5km, which doesn’t sound much, but it is a significant distance for a metropolitan seat.
So to Warringah/North Sydney. I actually think the way that this seat has been organised makes sense, taking the very southern end of NBC, then basically all of Mosman Council and North Sydney Council, meaning that Bradfield covers Willoughby and KRG Councils and Berowra is left with Hornsby Council, in its entirety. It actually fits rather nicely.
Bennelong then taking all of Lane Cove and Hunters Hill Councils, along with covering just about all of Ryde Council, also works.
The redistribution for Northern Sydney makes complete sense and I really can’t understand why anyone would object to it.
Hawkeye, I don’t see an issue with the general principle of abolishing North Sydney and having Warringah take in more of the lower North Shore (rest of North Sydney council). But I do take issue with how they organised the interface between Berowra, Bennelong and Bradfield districts.
Whilst it is neat to follow the Hornsby-KRG council boundary, I feel that breaks apart key communities of interest. The overlapping state district borders (Epping, Hornsby, Wahroonga) have a much cleaner split even though they divide LGA areas into two because the break occurs where local transportation links also diverge (local buses connecting to Hornsby stop at Turramurra, with suburbs south of the A3 and Pymble naturally gravitating more to Chatswood instead). Likewise, Pennant Hills Rd is also a more natural border compared to the Parramatta/Ryde council border because Cheltenham and Beecroft share residual linkage back to Epping and Macquarie Park rather than Hornsby. This approach also avoids splitting suburbs in half, which I feel is more disruptive than breaking apart LGA areas.
@Hawkeye,
We’re taking the same starting point that the Northern Beaches does need to have an electoral link, and that the Spit Bridge is the right place for that, while St Ives – Terry Hills isn’t.
However, from that point onwards, I would argue that this proposed arrangement makes a meal of not only the North Sydney area, but also Epping and Blacktown too.
In northern Sydney, they would have been better to leave Epping in Bennelong (it wasn’t broken, so don’t fix it), and to redistribute up the north shore towards Berowra. Perhaps our different points of view there is that you’re obviously putting a lot more emphasis on seats following LGA boundaries, whereas I’d prefer they emphasise creeks and rivers.
Avoiding buggering up Blacktown also depends some extent on what happens in the southern Sydney area, which is probably in flux depending on what happens around the airport…
So if the committee does make some further changes from here (and I think they should), then they could help resolve some of these issues.
@Yoh An and @Peter – Both very valid points and I agree that the way that Epping and Blacktown have been treated is a dog’s breakfast. If anything was to be cleaned up, they would be the two that needs to be cleaned up.
For Blacktown, I would have thought that Vardys Road would have been a better boundary so that the whole of Blacktown and Lalor Park would slot within either Chifley or McMahon.
Agree Hawkeye, after looking at the maps in more detail the three-way split of Blacktown CBD between Chifley, Greenway and McMahon is even worse than the Epping split between Parramatta and Berowra.
Ideally McMahon should have moved south instead of north, perhaps gaining Arndell Park which shares a connection with Huntingwood (industrial areas) but no more. It should gain more of Fairfield council (possibly Canley Vale and Cabramatta as well as East Fairfield), which would allow Fowler to be reconfigured as a Liverpool council district (gaining suburbs like Hoxton Park and Austral from Werriwa, thus enabling Werriwa to push south into Ingleburn and Macquarie Fields). This arrangement will also allow Hughes to gain the ‘inner’ Liverpool council suburbs like Prestons and Casula instead of the northern Campbelltown council suburbs.
I’m going to play a bit of devil’s advocate here and make the case that the split of Blacktown per se isn’t that bad. Blacktown is an enormous suburb, so splitting, even into three, is understandable. And (unsurprisingly given its size) it’s not a particularly homogeneous suburb.
However, I do agree that the proposed McMahon is pretty bad. It’s an electorate of five parts!
@Yoh An
“Ideally McMahon should have moved south instead of north”
Would that scenario involve abolishing a southern seat instead of a northern one?
I preferred a southern seat abolition (Banks) because I thought it worked better for the whole of Sydney. That’s more ideal, I think, but now the AEC has gone north the question is also a pragmatic one.