Victoria and WA redistributions wrap up, with minor changes

Looking at WA first, I can brag that Malaga staying in Cowan is because of my objection, so I’m pleased. I also was in favour of the Tangney/Fremantle changes and keeping Waroona in Canning (although I didn’t know if it could with the numbers). Glad to see the orchestrated campaign to oust Bullwinkel failed.

Happy to see Bellbrae, Hepburn and Newport changes in Vic. These were minor but made for much better communities and boundaries. While I wasn’t alone in advocating these (except Hepburn which I didn’t originally object to) I know my objections and comments helped these communities.

I’m disappointed, but not at all suprised that there was only minimal changes in Chisholm, Kooyong, Deakin, Menzies and Hotham. Rather more annoyed that the Macnamara/Melbourne boundaries were left. If anything, this area needed to be fixed. The adjustments to Lalor, Corio and Hawke look horrible, but don’t have too much of an effect on electors.

I guess we’ve now got something to focus on to improve next redistribution.

Until the next redistribution, every time I look at a map of federal electoral boundaries in Victoria I’m going to want to… well, I don’t want to describe anything too graphic here, but I think you get where I was going with that.

Darren thanks, I agree with your comments on the final WA adjustments. The AEC final report gives an unanswerable case as to why the name Bullwinkel is an appropriate choice and why divisions ought not be named for a local connection.

the next redistribution will likely be an increase to parliament

John – if that is the case then it would help improve most of the ‘messy’ boundaries by having smaller sized electorates and there wouldn’t be a need to try and combine disparate areas together.

Nicholas, I know, I’ll let out a little whimper every time I look at the map.

Jeremy, agree, I think they explain it really well in this part and I’ll be bookmarking this for my future comments on suggestions/objections:
“In noting the views expressed by those arguing for an alternative name for the new electoral division, the augmented Electoral Commission observed:
” – – naming the new electoral division ‘Bullwinkel’ would be consistent with the naming guidelines for federal electoral divisions,
” – – the primary consideration in these guidelines is the extent of a person’s contribution to the country as a whole,
” – – there is no requirement in the naming guidelines that a person have a connection with the area covered by the electoral division named in their honour, and
” – – in any event, a connection between an electoral division name and the electoral division itself may change over time, as boundaries shift over the course of redistributions.
“The … Commission considers the name ‘Bullwinkel’ represents not only Lieutenant Colonel Vivian Bullwinkel, but also the 21 Australian nurses who died on Radji Beach on Bangka Island, including the four Western Australian nurses, Sister Gp1 Alma May Beard, Sister Gp1 Peggy Everett Farmaner, Sister Gp1 Minnie Ivy Hodgson and Sister Bessie Wilmott.
“The augmented Electoral Commission concluded that:
” – – the Redistribution Committee’s proposal was sound and follows the naming guidelines for federal electoral divisions, and
” – – for these reasons, the Redistribution Committee’s proposal should stand unchanged.

John, while there’s clearaly a *social* and *psepheological* movment for Parliament expansion, I don’t know that there is a *political* appetite for expansion at the moment. I’ve not seen many politicians advocating for it at the moment.

Although expansion was mentioned in the JSCEM last time via increasing Senate represtation, the fact there’s been no movement on that by either main party, lends me to think that it’s not happening anytime soon.

I think Albanese’s big political change was the Voice and after that failed spectactuarly I doubt he’d take the risk to try anything else. I certainly don’t see the Coalition looking to dilute their Senate representation either.

@darren i expect it will be done by the time theyre up for redistribution again after the 2031 election at this stage all states and territory will be needing a redistribution and theres the fact of increasing size of electors to consider

There should be an expansion to up to 200 seats. NSW alone has eight million people (by far more than any other state) but Australia has 26 million people. Yet 150 seats in the House and 93 seats in the NSW Legislative Assembly means the NSW lower house is 62.0% of the size of the federal one. If there were 180 seats it would only be 51.7% of the size and if there were 200 seats it would be 46.5% of the size. The Queensland Legislative Assembly is as big as its NSW counterpart but that’s only because Queensland has no upper house whereas NSW does.

A 50 seat increase is preferable IMO when you factor in our population growth since the last expansion of parliament in 1984, and it rounds out at a ratio of about 1 seat per 101k voters. For reference the expansion in 1984 gave 1 seat per 75k voters. Psephologists such as Malcolm Mackerras have suggested an increase to only 175 seats at a ratio of 1 seat per 116k voters, but I don’ think this is good enough unless we’re willing to increase it again much sooner than we have historically (roughly every 45 or so years.)

Either way I’m hopeful it will be done within the near future because our current seat sizes are getting a bit out of hand.

NP
The size of the NSW parliament is ridiculous – it was reduced to 90 seats in 1904 – floated between 94 seats in 1950 to 99 seats in 1973 and then 109 in 1987 back to 99 before 1991 and Bob Carr for some reason chose 93 seats as the magic number. NSW has fewer MPs than it had it 1950 and has basically the same as 1904. That cannot be good for representation.

Ideally the federal parliament should be expanded. However, Darren is quite right about the political will to do so. 50 seats – an extra 4 senators per state is probably too far. There will be squealing about extra politicians – the way to counter that is to reduce the number of staffers and put the cost savings to more MPs – the elected representative of the people. From a quick look, it would seem that the Nats and Greens would be the big winners in the lower house and possibly One Nation in the Senate. The reason I say that about Nats and Greens is their seats are more contiguous with each other so in NSW say the Nats would pick up an extra seat in inland NSW and an extra on the North Coast.

@Redistributed I agree in fact NSW is the only state where the lower house has ever had over 100 seats (it did for a few years in the 80s).

It had over 100 before Federation too. 125 or so if I recall.

Can the new boundaries be taken to court or has the hard-line cutoff been reached? You can’t abolish Higgins considering it has a significant history. Oh but seats like McMahon can’t be abolished?

Why can’t PM named seats be abolished but seats that have had PM’s serving them can? AEC is doing a disservice to this country and should be scrapped.

@Daniel T.. an independent electoral commission ensures fair boundaries exist.. and politicians cannot rort the boundaries as they do in the usa

@Daniel T
No, unfortunately the commission has followed all of its obligations. The history of a division is not one of its criteria.

“In relation to each proposed electoral division, the Redistribution Committee is also required by the
Electoral Act to give due consideration to:
i. community of interests within the proposed electoral division, including economic, social and
regional interests,
ii. means of communication and travel within the proposed electoral division,
iv. the physical features and area of the proposed electoral division, and
v. the boundaries of existing electoral divisions in Victoria, with this factor being subordinate to
the consideration of i, ii and iv.”

I think many of us would have liked to see Higgins retained, but it just happened to be the most straightforward division to carve up. Hotham would have been nice, but there simply wasn’t enough of a deficit in the divisions to its southeast to make it comfortably work.

I agree with you that PM named divisions shouldn’t exempt from abolishment and I think the commission should always do boundaries first and division names afterwards, which they don’t seem to have been doing. Deakin, Hughes and McMahon are all divisions which they should have investigated but didn’t.

Daniel, it’s just a name for goodness sake. Overall, the redistribution is fair as all parties (both political and the general public) were able to have their input into the process, and ultimately it is the independent commission’s right to determine whether the community input was reasonable or not. I believe the public input wasn’t unanimous in deciding which seat should be abolished, so they decided to go for the best alternative which was an inner suburban seat (same as with North Sydney for NSW).

Although, I do feel they could have made some more significant changes for the final stage, as there were still major issues raised by several individuals/groups that they did not act on.

@Yoh An
I think the one consolation is that Higgins would be a strong candidate to be resurrected if we do get an expansion of the house.

Reading through the commissions’s conclusions in yesterday’s announcement, it seems that they were pretty dismissive of any objection that didn’t explicitly address the key criteria. Unfortunately the campaigns to save Higgins and North Sydney didn’t really do a good job at addressing these points and just ended up creating a lot of noise that might have drowned out some of the more substantial objections submitted.

Fair point Angas, I reckon the NSW redistribution will probably end up like Victoria where they will keep most of it intact and only make some tinkering around the edges to satisfy a few of the objections raised.

I wonder if they will stop doing moves that frequently lead to objections, one example being the renaming of Corangamite which they didn’t try in this round. The removal of Waroona Shire from Canning to Forrest is another one they tried to attempt again in this redistribution for WA, and like last time they also backed down after the council submitted an almost identical objection.

Losing a seat in a country with almost 30 million people is still a slap in the face to democracy because Australia has too many people per electorate, compare to Canada,UK, Germany, NZ (etc)

Why won’t the government look at expanding the house? That is the most important electoral reform, we need one vote one value, not the silly other gimmicks the government is doing.

It’s not a question of “if” its “when” but when it happens most of us will probably be 50 when it happens.

You’re right, names shouldn’t matter, and I agree the names should be decided after drawing the seats, but it’s apparent the government never gives the AEC the tools or power to do any of the things suggested.

For those of you who want more MP you might enjoy a linkedin post before the recent Voice referendum: “About 3 weeks ago I posted a piece on the history of failed referenda seeking to add new powers to the Commonwealth Parliament. I commented (but gently) on the irony of the High Court in the Work Choices Case in 2006 explaining that the Commonwealth Parliament, via the corporation’s power, had always had the power to legislate in relation to wages and condition and industrial disputes for almost all Australians, even though referenda to confer that power had been rejected by the Australian people six times between 1911 and 1973. But, the iconic ironic referenda outcome (to date) must be reserved for the 1967 referendum to break the nexus between the Senate and House of Representative (HR) numbers. Section 24 of the Australian Constitution provided that the HR number shall be, as nearly as practicable, twice the senator numbers. In 1967 there were 180 federal MPs (60 senators and 120 HR members) and the Government, with bi-partisan support, wanted to break the nexus to increase the number of HR members. The official ‘No’ case, led by the DLP’s Vince Gair and maverick Tasmanian Liberal Senator Reg Wright, went straight to the point stating: If you want more politicians vote ‘YES’; If you don’t want more politicians, vote ‘NO’; Australia is already over-governed; and, on a more positive note, what we need is not more, but better politicians. In its own words, voting NO would guarantee no more federal politicians and, possibly, better politicians. And the people voted overwhelmingly for NO with the referendum being rejected by 3.411 to 2.298 million votes, with only NSW voting in favour. So what happened? Well today, we have 227 federal politicians including 76 senators! (an increase of 25%) So, the No case delivered (NOT). Why? because the amendment was not about more or less, and better or worse politicians! And today which State have the most federal politicians. Why Reg Wright’s Tasmania with one federal politician per 23,826 voters compared to say NSW with one for 94,294 per voter. So (if you accept the NO case) Tasmanians are now the most “over-governed”. [a final thought is don’t ever accept that a NO case will defines what a referendum is really about?)

@Angas Good point. I think a lot of valid suggestions especially re Higgins and Mcnamara were caught up with the co-ordinated objections…..sigh.

Yes we need to expand the parliament 300+ seats would be ideal where are only ~60,000 electors per seat. The 120,000 people in each seat is not representative and were starting to see how different communities of interest are being forced together more and more through redistribution. Its not fair for electors or the members that represent them. It seems ridiculous that a single seat (Indi) stretches from the NSW border to peri-urban Melbourne

I also suggest we get rid of our current naming system and move towards geographical naming like the UK, Canada and NZ… this makes things a lot easier for electors to understand and is more reflective of the community than a lot of the names we have now which have no correlation to the area whatsoever

@Daniel T to further prove that point here are the turnout figures for random single-member constituencies in a few Western countries (I picked ones in the inner-city of the CBD because that’s where turnout seems to be the highest):

* Australia — Sydney: 106,624 (85.0% (–1.3%) turnout)
* Canada — Toronto Centre: 46,183 (57.4% (–8.7%) turnout)
* France — Paris’ 1st constituency: 63,421 (75.2% (+19.0%) turnout in the first round, 68.7% (+14.5%) turnout in the second round)
* Germany — Berlin-Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg – Prenzlauer Berg East: 172,469 (78.4% (+0.8%) turnout)
* India — Mumbai North Central: 901,562 (52.2% (–1.5%) turnout)
* New Zealand — Auckland Central: 35,270 (77.6% (–6.4%) turnout)
* Singapore — Mountbatten Single Member Constituency: 22,559 (93.0% (+3.2%) turnout)
* UK — Cities of London and Westminster: 39,215 (53.5% (–17.8%) turnout)
* US — New York’s 10th congressional district: unknown turnout, (192,347 votes cast)

All of these stats are from the last election in that country, and the change is compared to the election before that in that country. Note that the Singapore CBD itself is located in the Jalan Besar Group Representation Constituency which is technically a multi-member constituency (if you want to learn more about how Singapore’a voting system works and how dominant the PAP is in Singapore check out my earlier comments about it on the UK open thread).

So what we can see is the only districts with over 100,000 voters are in Australia, Germany, India and the United States. Yet Australia is the third least populated country in the list (behind only New Zealand and Singapore). It makes sense for a district in the US to have 200,000 voters, and it makes sense for a district in India to have 1,000,000 voters, and it makes sense for a district in Germany to have over 100,000 voters.

Here are the populations of those countries (according to Wikipedia):
1. India: 1,428,627,663
2. US: 334,914,895
3. Germany: 82,719,540
4. France: 68,373,433
5. UK: 67,596,281
6. Canada: 41,012,563
7. Australia: 27,390,900
8. Singapore: 5,917,600
9. New Zealand: 5,399,960

So obviously India, the US and Germany will have big electoral districts. But Australia? Our electorates are larger than British and French constituencies despite both of those countries having more than double the population of Australia and New Zealand combined.

im starting to wish the original numbers were correct based on the disaster of VIC redistribution. the Wa one was better although they could have placed Bullwinkel better

RAUE. now that its confirmed can we get a page for Bullwinkel?

With all this talk about an expansion of the house, I wanted to see what Victoria could end up looking like.

https://ibb.co/cgtd0y7

If parliament is expanded to 14 senators per state, Victoria would be entitled to 44 seats. Using the projection figures for the current redistribution, there would be an exact 24:20 split of seats North/South of the Yarra River. The North would get 3 new divisions:
– One in Western Victoria
– One in Western Melbourne
– One in Northern Melbourne

I’ve ended up with:
– A return of “classic” Corangamite which is a bit awkward as it contains both Bacchus Marsh and Torquay, but I think this captures relatively similar areas in Victoria’s “Inner West”. Connewarre could be used as the name for the Bellarine Peninsula division
– A resurrected Burke based on the Macedon Ranges and Sunbury
– A new “Inner North” division which would be a real gift to the Greens. I’m thinking Tucker would be a suitable name for this division after it got knocked back from Corangamite

Some other observations:
– Greater Geelong Council is exactly 2 divisions
– Wyndham Council plus Altona Meadows/Laverton is also exactly 2 divisions
– Trying to put Mickleham and Wallan in a single seat seemed to be very tricky. The smaller quota means that high growth areas are even more difficult to manage

Divisions South of the Yarra are still to come.

Regional Victoria:
https://ibb.co/0CZKr1q

@Angas so Burke would be a Labor seat and Tucker would be a Greens seat.

@Nether Portal
Yeah I reckon that’s a good estimation. The new “Corangamite” would be competitive but probably Labor leaning.

I think the “Inner North” division would probably lock the Greens out of Wills and Cooper, but they might be able to focus on Fraser instead.

We’ll have to see what I come up with for Eastern Melbourne, but I think the Liberal Party could pick up 2 of the 3 new seats there.

@Angas cool, looking forward to it.

Are you going to do the other states too?

@Nether Portal
Yeah I think I’ll try to do NSW at the very least. I started on it a while back when you put out the challenge on the Australia 2025 thread, but it was reasonably difficult.

Queensland, WA and SA shouldn’t be too hard as long as I can work out some enrolment projections for them.

@Angas

I tried to do this too but gave up before I even got to Melbourne. Corangamite was also what I had issue with. I think yours work, if you think of it was a Ballarat/Geelong outskirts seat. Even if both the inland and coastal communities are very different.

I really like your Melbourne map. Feel like most of these seats work so much better with just this little bit of extra wriggle room.

@Angas very nice maps! Looking forward to seeing how Eastern Melbourne turns out, as well as the other states if you do end up going ahead with them.

I think it’s been brought up here on the Tally Room before but it’s really unfortunate we don’t have sites like Dave’s Redistricting (DRA) or Redistricter available for Australia. It would make it much easier to create hypothetical/hobby maps as well as actual proposals to the electoral commission during redistributions.

@Angas…love your work. Looking forward to seeing Eastern Melb and Gippsland.

Angas, What tool did you use?

Also It’s a shame there isn’t a DRA for Australia, Maybe Ben could someday make one if he knows how to make one, because if he did, I would pay 50$ for one. It would be my hobby to draw maps and I’m sure others on here would as well.

John, I’m not just going to make empty pages so you can have your chats. I will be writing my election guides in November once the other elections have past.

@raue ok. Thanks.

@angas under the rules Corangamite would likely stay in the corner of Coriolis Bay it currently occupies. The rules state that the division name stays with the majority of the electors

@Daniel T I too would love to use a tool to create redistributions.

Me too! it would be good to make a redistributed map with as many seats as Canada or the UK

Thank you all for the kind feedback!

@Drake
It was relatively easy to start off with Northern Victoria by pairing state districts, but Western Victoria isn’t quite as obvious. Another option would be to have a long, thin Wannon that stretches all the way from the border to Torquay and then create a big inland division like the old Wimmera. But that wouldn’t be great either and the new division would get slowly get crushed between Mallee and Wannon. So I agree that the “outskirts” division as you’ve described it is a reasonable compromise.

I think it makes the map a bit more cluttered but I definitely agree that the smaller quota helps give the divisions a more cohesive feel, particularly ones like Wills, Cooper and McEwen

@Daniel
I just have a basic manual workflow using ABS Maps (https://maps.abs.gov.au/) to look LGAs/SA2s/SA1s/etc. up, some basic Python code to allocate these SA2s/SA1s and count electors, and then I just draw the maps up in Paint.

Kevin released this app (https://kevinchen870.shinyapps.io/redistributiontoolSA1/) which can be alongside Excel to draw some nice interactive maps. I think there was also another app shared by another user back in the original round of discussions.

@John
I was thinking a similar thing, but I’m also thinking that the rules might be a bit more flexible in such a large scale redistribution and it’d be nice to return Corangamite to its original area.

Alright, here’s the map with Eastern Melbourne completed:
https://ibb.co/vXrJ6NW

– Higgins returns as a Caulfield and Malvern division
– There’s room for a new division based on Whitehorse, for which I’ve selected Tchen (after Tsebin Tchen, the first Asian migrant elected to the federal parliament)
– The last division is somewhat unexpectedly based around Western Port Bay and the Bass Highway and has been named Guilfoyle (after Margaret Guilfoyle, the first female cabinet-level minister)

Southeastern Melbourne:
https://ibb.co/FJqGZcm

Regional Victoria:
https://ibb.co/DRRc11V

These are very good Angas, but why did you so heavily change Indi and Nicholls? Moving Indi west makes no sense. These communities have little in common. Indi would even be better moving closer to bairnsdale.

@Darcy
Thank you! Yeah that was a part where I thought I might have overdone the boundaries a bit.

Because of the reduced quota, Indi has to lose Murrindindi Shire to Nicholls (or McEwen) and I feel that Mansfield and Strathbogie Shires should go with it. But it’s probably better if Benalla stays in Indi and Moira Shire is split between the 2 divisions.

I’d be hesitant to bring Indi over the Alps unless absolutely necessary as it’s a long established boundary.

@Angas so it looks like Guilfoyle would be Liberal and La Trobe would be quite competitive since it’s centred around Pakenham which is a growing outer suburb.

@Nether Portal
Sounds right to me. Berwick/Pakenham seem to be holding Liberal relative to most other outer suburban areas, possibly thanks to Jason Wood, but I imagine that it will become more competitive over time, alongside Bruce as it drifts eastward.