Victoria and WA redistributions wrap up, with minor changes

I have read through the final boundaries for Victorian divisions. I am disappointed that there were no changes to the boundary between Corio and Lalor, as well as the boundary between Melbourne and Macnamara.

It is completely unnecessary for Corio to cross into the City of Wyndham. To make sure Corio does not cross into the City of Wydham, only the boundaries of Corio, Lalor and Gellibrand need to be changed from the proposed redistribution, as my COB and Drake’s Objection have shown. I don’t understand why the Augmented Electoral Commission chose not to fix this serious flaw that can be fixed with relatively small changes in boundaries.

In terms of the boundary between Melbourne and Macnamara, I don’t understand why the Augmented Electoral Commission thought it made sense to transfer South Yarra and part of Prahran that are not closely linked with the CBD to Melbourne, while transferring suburbs like South Wharf and Southbank that are closely linked with the CBD to Macnamara.

Understandly, the Augmented Electoral Commission has chosen not to transfer Woodend from McEwen to Bendigo, because doing so will cause substantial boundary changes, affecting the boundaries of seven other divisions. Transferring Woodend from McEwen to Bendigo means McEwen needs to gain voters from Jagajaga, Jagajaga needs to gain voters from Cooper, Copper needs to gain voters from Wills, Wills needs to gain voters from Maribyrnong, Maribyrnong needs to gain voters from Hawke and Gorton.

I also don’t understand the need to change the boundary of Hawke. Since Hawke already meets the numerical requirements at the commencement of the redistribution, its boundary does not need to be changed. What’s even more puzzling is that both the Redistribution Committee and the Augmented Electoral Commission have chosen to let the slightly over-quota Hawke to gain voters from the significantly under-quota Maribyrnong.

I welcome the Augmented Electoral Commission’s decision to unite the whole of Hepburn Shire in Ballarat, but I struggle to understand why they thought the Hepburn Shire should not be split between two divisions but the Campaspe Shire should.

Overall, I think the final boundaries for Victoria are still a bit messy, especially along the Wyndham – Greater Geelong corridor and Eastern Melbourne, although some of the mess are unavoidable due to numerical requirements.

@Angas I can’t find Corio in your maps. What’s the boundary for Corio? And there must be another Geelong based seat other than Corio. Could you please post a detailed map of the Geelong area? Thank you.

2 weeks until determination in WA

@Joseph
Agree with all your points above. I’m really interested to see why they didn’t amend the Lalor boundary when they release the report.

And good catch, I hadn’t done a map for the Geelong area earlier. Here it is:
https://ibb.co/twRV0Zh

Funnily enough, after complaining about Corio and Hawke breaching the Wyndham boundary, the numbers meant that I would have to the the reverse with Lalor spilling into Avalon, Little River and the rural parts of Lara.

@Angas…I may be missing something but cannot see the Geelong area. Overall excellent. The do seem more coherent that the current maps as someone mentioned. Ta Mike

@Angas

As someone from Geelong good map. Those parts you sent to Lalor fit well, they are kind of just empty farm land and cut off from the rest of Geelong. I consider Lara to be as far out as Geelong goes. Similarly Anakie is completely seperated from the rest of the Geelong and feels way more like the Golden Plains towns.

I wonder if the numbers would work to make a Geelong + Bannockburn, Bellarine and then growth suburbs/Surf Coast seat. The numbers probably don’t work though.

Im getting frustrated that I cannot find a website that tells me each of the Lord Mayor candidates policy positions, can someone help me out here. (That isn’t a paywall) I am in Melbourne.

I meant to post on the council page, my apologies.

I’m a little bit dumbfounded by what they’ve done to the Melbourne/Geelong corridor. So Lalor shrinks significantly losing the northern part to Hawke (which is already too big) and the western part to Corio, which also sucks up parts of Ballarat and a huge chunk of Corangamite which makes the latter a purely Surf Coast/Bellarine based seat.

I would’ve thought with the growth of Greater Geelong Corio should be shrinking in size as a purely urban Geelong/Lara seat rather than expanding. Corangamite shrinking somewhat makes sense but surely if that’s the case then Lalor should be expanding to the areas north of Geelong with Gellibrand moving slightly west to take in Truganina and Tarneit to offset its push out of inner-western Melbourne by Fraser. Instead Corio looks like a hodge-podge of a seat with three different council areas of varying community interests.

The southern part of Golden Plains LGA is basically the semi-rural outskirts of Geelong (Bannockburn etc), so they fit fine in Corio. It could be said that it’s the council boundaries, not the electoral boundaries, that fail to capture community of interest here.

Little River itself is on the border of ‘Melbourne’ and ‘Geelong’, so not ridiculous to put that in Corio as well. Those two additions are perfectly fine.

The big problem IMHO is that they’ve drawn Corio right up into the outskirts of the Wyndham growth belt, which is already spilling over the proposed boundary. So you’ll have a few hundred new houses isolated in Corio instead of being in Lalor. That’s the silly part of it.

Is nobody going to answer my question? I am struggling to find any information on the candidates, a little help would be appreciated, (I noticed there isn’t a guide foe the CBD council election)

@Tommo9 When you consider the AEC totally ignored communities of interest in favour of moving as few electors as possible, the boundaries aren’t too surprising.

Probably try posting it in the right place Daniel. And yeah I had to move house and ran out of time to do the Vic council guides.

@Angas. Great effort with your map. I am not going to comment on the East, as apart from Hawthorn, I have nothing to do with that area. It’s not on my radar. All I will say is that Tchen is a great name. It’s about time we had some Chinese names for electorates. I applaud you.

Personally I don’t like Tucker. Brunswick West and Fairfield in the same electorate: no. If this would ever come about the part of Brunswick West, west of the freeway would be far better served by being in Maribyrnong (as it is as of September 2024). There is no connection between that region and suburbs like Fairfield, Northcote, or Clifton Hill. People in this pocket do their shopping in Essendon, and Moonee Ponds. They are closer to the 59 tram, than the 58, and many of them catch the train from Essendon or Glenbervie. Not to mention that so many of them barrack for the Bombers (lol).

I would not even put Brunswick in the same electorate as Northcote. The Merri Creek is a divide line. Brunswick and Coburg should be in the same electorate. The demographics of Brunswick and Coburg are far more akin than those of Brunswick and Northcote. They have always been suburban cousins, like Kew, and Hawthorn, Toorak and Armadale, and Port Melbourne and South Melbourne.

To the superficial observer Brunswick and Northcote may be similar, but they are actually quite different. Fairfield is nothing like Brunswick. It’s not even like the suburban low rise Brunswick West. Think Union Square, concrete, vape shops, and junk food eateries versus trendy cafes, new age crystal shops, dog sculptures, trees, and boutique dog groomers.

There are not even good public transport connections between these two districts. The 510 bus is the best of a bad bunch. Brunswick is a true northern suburb. When you travel to Brunswick via train or tram you travel north. Northcote and co, are northeast. To get to Northcote via train, from the city, you go east and then north. To go there via tram you head northeast. Brunswick West is northwest. You look south from Brunswick West you see Flemington. The CBD is to the south east. You look south from Northcote and you see Richmond, and South Yarra. The city is to the southwest. The Tullamarine Freeway divides Brunswick West, whereas the Eastern Freeway cuts through Yarra Bend, and Clifton Hill East. That can’t be in the same electorate.

Having a few hipsters, punks, LGBTIQ+ people, musos, people employed as dishies, and leftists in both districts is not enough to put them in the same electorate. If that’s the case you may as well put Brunswick and Footscray in the same electorate. You are also putting the Carlton heartland in with the Collingwood heartland; that’s no go right there (lol).

The days of putting Footscray and Williamstown together are over in my opinion. The Terry Wheeler connection has come and gone. These two suburbs have really gone down a different trajectory. I don’t mind the current boundaries of Fraser. Personally I believe Freeways are real divides. Yes, there are issues that face all western suburbs, like toxic fumes/ fires, the housing crisis, and the cost of living, however Footscray is very different demographically to Williamstown. Quite frankly it’s not even that close. Mephan Street is a long way from The Strand. The 472 bus journey takes an eternity (lol) from Farnsworth Avenue down to Willie. The kids who come up from WSC to the Savers see it as a day trip excursion. The WSC motto hold fast sums everything up, as this nautical term refers to the bayside nature of Williamstown. Williamstown and Altona have that bayside connection unlike Footscray, Maribyrnong, and Braybrook.

No argument with Maribyrnong except you may as well throw Meeri Bek west of the freeway in there. That redistribution makes sense, and it will be permanent in my mind. I always thought Flemington goes well in Maribyrnong as it has an organic connection with Ascot Vale. Maribyrnong electorate really is the link between North and West.

I like Melbourne, and MacNamara. They make a lot of sense. Having a familial connection to the Caulfield area, it has never made sense to me that Caulfield North, and South were in Melbourne Ports/ MacNamara. There has never been a connection between Port Melbourne and the Caulfield area. There may be some connection between Caulfield and Albert Park, such as a cousin of mine from Caulfield who now lives in Albert Park (lol).

We are now 20% to the 2028 projection date as outlined by the AEC.

Based on the enrolment figures for Victoria, we have one seat growing at 300% of projected enrolments and 2 growing at 250% of projected enrolments.

There are also 3 seats with less electors than 12 months ago

Gorton is growing at 300% of projected enrolments and is on track to meet its April 2028 enrolment next March to April!!

What is more interesting is that in the revised projections that the AEC released is that it reduced its Gordon projections by around 100 on the proposed new boundaries but every seat that surrounded it grew with he exception of Hawke.

The impact is that if Gorton continues to grow at its current rate, by 2028 it will have over 20,000 electors more than projected, which is almost the same amount of electors that Melbourne will have south of the Yarra

It make me wonder, if Gordon was projected correctly, the end result would of seen all of Melbourne north of the Yarra and those 20,000 electors south of the Yarra could have caused the seat of Higgins to be spared.

I am guessing that there will be no change to Victoria’s seat allocation after the next election, so the next redistribution will see Gorton around 42,000 electors above its projection and thus the next redistribution will see an extra seat north of the Yarra

BTW the 3 seats that have less electors now than 1 year ago are Mallee, Menzies and Chisholm