2025 Australian federal election

A good question, Neither Portal.

Unless I’m mistaken, an expansion of the house would also require an expansion of the Senate. 14 senators per state would mean a total Senate of 84 (excluding the territories, who aren’t included in calculating the size of the house). So we’ll be looking at a house of 168 seats, and a Senate of 88 members (when you add two for each of the territories) with an approximate quota of 103,176 electors. It will be either 173 or 174 once we add the territories. This is the assumption that I’ll be working off to answer your question.

For Queensland, that would result in 35 seats (Very nearly 36; 35.483)

My guess is that the majority of new seats would be created around Brisbane; possibly a new seat on the Sunshine Coast between Fisher and Longman, a new seat between Blair and Rankin, a new seat between Forde and Fadden, and depending on how the numbers play out, maybe a new regional seat, or two new seats replacing one that is effectively abolished as it’s numbers get dragged north and south to make up shortfalls elsewhere. Without having the numbers immediately available to me, I would hazard a guess and say the new seat here would be made up of parts of Capricornia, Flynn, Hinkler and Wide Bay. I’ll return to this question later in the evening.

If anyone can make maps of it that would be cool.

I made one where I divided every electorate (approximately) in half by population

@Scart can you send the link to it?

My map making skills are meagre at best, so you’ll have to follow the narrative.

For me, fair boundaries aren’t a question of red v blue or left v right, but coherence of communities of interest.

The other principle that I’d prefer to follow is trying to get each electorate as close as possible to the quota (1.00) instead of 10% below or over. This is because I don’t have any data on population growth or projections. So this is as much a mathematical exercise as an electoral redistribution.

Each existing seat in Queensland has been recalculated according to a quota of 104600 electors as per my scenario above.

All of the following is speculative and based on very rough estimates.

Maranoa and Groom together have a combined quota of 2.209. Whether the quota moves north (through Kennedy) or east (through Wright) has a big flow-on to the rest of the redistribution. I’m going to save it for later.

The regional seats from Leichhardt to Wide Bay (including Kennedy) have a combined quota of 9.121 for the existing eight seats. There will be at least one new regional seat. Because Leichhardt can only transfer into Kennedy, the resulting flow-on will see huge changes to Herbert and Dawson, both of which are pulled northwards by Kennedy shedding its huge excess. At the southern end of this strip of coast, the culminative effects of Wide Bay transferring northwards through Hinkler, Flynn and Capricornia will see basically a new seat between and including Mackay and Rockhampton. It may be that Dawson is the seat ultimately abolished, with two new seats created, and Townsville becoming home to two federal seats: Herbert extending northwards from the CBD, Garbutt and Deeragun to include the Cassowary Coast and Hinchinbrook LGAs, and the first new seat (Mabo?) covering Thuringowa, Mundingburra, Charters Towers, Burdekin all the way to Mirani. The other new seat (reconstituted Dawson?) would include the majority of Mackay, Isaac, some of Central Highlands and Livingstone, and the growth areas immediately outside Rockhampton.

(I don’t believe that Leichhardt would contract to become a Cairns-only seat, as the transport and community links for the Cape are far stronger with Cairns than they are with Mount Isa/Charters Towers.)

The four seats from Fairfax to Petrie (Sunshine Coast + Redcliffe) equal 5.084 quotas of new seats, so there will be one new seat created in this area, potentially from Caloundra to Caboolture. The excess 0.084 gets put into Dickson, which moves north slightly.

The four seats covering the northside of Brisbane (Dickson, Lilley, Brisbane and Ryan) cover 4.595 quotas of new seats (including the slight excess from the Sunshine Coast). These seats have a strong southern boundary of the Brisbane River, but it is inevitable that the river must be crossed. There will be general easterly-and-northerly movement of seats on this side of the river, with a rump of what is currently Ryan being added to territories from Blair, Wright and potentially Groom. More about that later. No new seat for the inner-north of Brisbane.

The Gold Coast-Logan side of Queensland has five old seats with 5.907 worth of quota. My thinking is a new seat is created between Fadden and Forde, with the GC seats sliding south and Forde and Rankin inching north and west.

Looking at the south side of Brisbane, Bowman sheds electors to Rankin and Bonner. Bonner heads south slightly, pulling Griffith and Moreton to the east. This also has a big effect on Blair and Wright, already heavily over-quota. This frees up a lot of space in the Lockyer Valley, when added to the western discarded rump of Ryan, and the 0.2 quota from Groom/Maranoa, which results in a new seat of Hayden.

Another possibility would be moving the leftover quota from the Sunshine Coast into Hayden, but there would still be the need for the northern Brisbane seats to cross the river. The movement would be lesser compared to the initial scenario outlined above.

TL/DR:
* Dawson abolished in its current form
* New seat of Mabo covering Townsville to Mackay and hinterland.
* New seat of Irwin on the Sunshine Coast
* New seat of Brennan on the southern fringes of Logan / northern side of Gold Coast
* New seat of Hayden covering Somerset, Lockyer, western rural parts of Brisbane LGA and most of Ipswich’s rural areas.

This assumes that all of my assumptions are more or less correct.

@NQ View – Sounds like a great proposal! Just out of curiosity, what is the proposed seat of Brennan named after? I know what the other 3 are for, but I don’t know Brennan.

It would be interesting to see the parliament expanded to 300+ electorates each geographically named (like the uk)

@James Thank you. I had to name it something, so I chose former High Court Chief Justice Gerard Brennan, born in Rockhampton and based in Brisbane for a time. He wrote the majority decision in the Mabo case. I’m not welded to that name (even less Irwin), but believe Hayden and Mabo will be certainties in the future, along with Bryce. Also, I didn’t want to use state political names such as Goss etc as it seems names like that will be gradually eased into the state parliament in future.

@NQ View – Thank you for the explanation. I think they are all great names, and should most certainly be used when there is a redistribution ongoing within Queensland. Even state level as well.

This hypothetical electorate of Hayden sounds like a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster. Which parts of Ryan is it to cover? If it includes Moggill and Bellbowrie, I’m not sure they would have any community of interest in common with any part of Maranoa or Groom.

@Wilson fair comment! The by-product of quick calculations and haphazard planning. 🙂 I’m sure the experts would take longer than 30 minutes to work something out.

NQ view, I think the Hayden electorate would work reasonably well if it didn’t include any part of Ryan. I understand that this would throw out your aim of getting every electorate as close to quota as possible, but I think this aim may not ever happen reality, because it would create great discrepancies within the standard redistribution cycle. High growth electorates being drawn slightly under quota and low growth electorates being drawn slightly over quota is useful for keeping them near quota over seven years.

@ NQ View
Would Blair be purely Urban in that scenario and safe for Labor.

@Nimalan Hypothetically yes, although is any seat truly safe? Hayden, Mabo and Irwin would be likely LNP seats, and Brennan would be a possible swing seat.

@Wilson Thanks for pointing that out. Upon reflection, my mathematical exercise might work better if the combined excess from northern Brisbane ‘exited’ into Hayden through Longman and Dickson rather than Ryan. At the end of the day it’s a purely hypothetical exercise in response to an interesting question by Neither Portal. Looking forward to reading other responses.

If “Hayden”, a seat based on the Lockyer Valley and Somerset, only goes so far west into Brisbane LGA to include the Karana Downs area as Blair does now, I think that’s fine. But once we start talking about Moggill or Pullenvale then yes, that’s too far.

@NQ View thanks for your input.

I’ll try and make a map out of that.

@ NQ
When i meant safe in QLD it is relative so more like the lines of Rankin or Oxley rather than Blaxland, Watson or Calwell. Could it withstand a 1975 or 1996 style defeat for Labor. In 1975, Labor was able to only win one seat in QLD while the expansion of parliament allowed for Labor to win 2 in 1996. If that was ever repeated with an expansion of Parliament Labor would like to win at least 3 in a bad year. I accept very safe seats like Blaxland, Watson or Scullin or vulnerable to an independent but not Libs.

ABC has a video on Queensland battleground seats https://youtu.be/y_5JRSrvcU4?si=Hs2XuMgQUQsqCQ6t

While it may seem like a hard ask for the libs to win govt outright in majority there are certainly enough seats for them to win or even get close and be able to form majority. But even if they did the senate would be hostile or uncooperative at best in 2025 so I don’t know why they would want to.. posting from Las Vegas for the next few days.

Tuesday is day for Labor if they increase rates which I suspect they will Labor is going be in a world of political hurt. I suspect the next 1 or 2 newspolls will have Labor losing

There are 7 more meetings b4 the last possible date

There won’t be a rate increase next week or in September.

Maybe in the final quarter of the year though.

@scart il be you $1000 there will be one in either august or september

They said that there would only be a rate increase if headline inflation has above 4%.

It ended up being at 3.8%.

Normally any govt gets 2 terms as others have pointed out most if not all teals and independents will be reelected this makes it unlikely that the lnp would poll well enough . They would need to win seats like Bendigo and Ballarat which is extremely unlikely

@scart so take the bet

@mick records are made to be broken. I’m still banking on a Labor minority government. There is an outside chance libs can win got in minority or majority. They can do it without Bendigo and Ballarat as I’ve pointed out but without those teal and green seats it’s unlikely they can get majority unless they win almost every winnable seat.at very least the will need to be in low 70s without the teals siding with them. So again I’m saying Labor minority but not soft minority with 73-74 seats but high 60s to 71 range. Where they are forced to deal with the more radical members of the crossbench. Liberals may even have the most seats on a 2pp basis like 2010 but not be in government due to the teals siding with also. But that works out for the libs

@Mick they wouldn’t need Bendigo and Ballarat.

They would need some fairly unlikely seats though, such as Shortland and Bruce.

I can name 23 seats that’ lnp could possibly win from Labor however unlikely and they only need 18 once you include the 3 they lost to a by election loss and calare and Monash then there’s 2 vulnerable teals and a couple greens in the mix that’s before redistribution but I think it’s around the same afterwards

@Scart if margins were more like state margins the biggest battlegrounds would be in Sydney. Think about it: Bennelong, Greenway and Parramatta would all be marginal Labor seats on state figures and in 2019 they would’ve been fairly safe or safe Liberal seats. The teal seats on state figures would be Liberal seats. Robertson on the Central Coast would’ve been a Liberal seat in 2019 and a marginal Labor seat in 2022. In 2019 Londonderry was a target seat for the Liberals but Labor held it (Pru Carr is the MP there and she’s now Deputy Premier) and most of the other seats overlapping with those three seats were Liberal seats and some still are (all of the ones overlapping with Bennelong are still Liberal seats, those being Epping and Ryde).

On state figures Shortland if you look at the notional TPP then Dobell, Paterson and Shortland would’ve definitely been in play in 2019 but not in 2022 (definitely not Paterson or Shortland, Dobell would be 62% Labor TPP or something like that, but remember the local factors in Port Stephens were very present in 2023). If you look at the notional TPP in Lake Macquarie (since it’s an independent vs Labor contest) the Labor TPP was only like 58% so the Liberals could in the future win that seat (the Liberals do well around Coal Point and some areas like Warners Bay and Valentine are marginal for Labor though parts of Warners are also in Charlestown) and it could become a key seat when Greg Piper retires, while Swansea which is a Labor seat had a Labor TPP of like 61%, so the average TPP for Labor in Lake Macquarie would’ve been 59.5% in 2019. In 2023 Labor did very well even for Labor in Newcastle though and in the seat of Port Stephens a popular incumbent MP and a late announcement for a Liberal candidate while One Nation had already announced theirs meant that the Liberal vote had an unusually large drop which should mostly come back in 2027).

A good example of what they would need is Mcewen very unlikely. Also if you take the first 3 Gilmore Lyons and Lingari they are not certain of any and in my opinion there are are massive odds against all 3 despite the low margins.

I’d the libs cannot win in the
Lower range then they need more at the higher range.

@Mick I wouldn’t say McEwen is ”very unlikely”. It’s definitely a key target seat and the Liberals can win it, but how likely that is really depends on the outcome of the redistribution. McEwen is one of those seats where redistribution really counts. A similar seat would be Macquarie where if it’s mostly Hawkesbury-based then it’s Liberal but if it’s mostly Blue Mountains-based it’s Labor and it would have a high Greens vote too.

Also, @Caleb, I watched that video. I don’t think any of the Queensland teals are getting elected, and the Greens certainly aren’t winning Lilley. Moreton is winnable for the Greens in the future but it would be a Greens vs LNP contest. The LNP usually do well in suburbs like Sunnybank which has Brisbane’s highest Chinese community (suburbs with large Chinese communities often vote Liberal, e.g Hurstville and Ryde in Sydney, in contrast to the US where they mostly vote Democrat) so they won’t get knocked out of the TCP contest. The Greens main goal should be sandbagging Ryan.

In 2022 the Greens picked up seats in Brisbane and now in 2025 I think they’ll pick up seats in Melbourne. Macnamara and Wills are the most likely, while Cooper is like Moreton in that I don’t think they’ll win it this time but it’s certainly winnable for them in the future.

If the Greens win Moreton and the LNP win Blair then Labor would be equal with the Greens in terms of federal seat totals in Queensland provided Labor doesn’t gain any seats in Queensland.

Lyons and Gilmore will be amongst the first to fall. Lingiari will take a little longer due to the delays due to remote polling places. Mcewen is a likely target

What sort of odds sounds like a great investment

@ NP I personally doubt Moreton for sometime to be honest for the Greens a lot of it is quite middle class and some even working class. One reason the Greens did well last time is that they picked up moderate Liberal votes in Chelmer, Graceville etc if some of these moderate Liberals comeback then the Green vote could drop below 20% also Labor actually increased its primary vote unlike in Griffith or Ryan.

That depends if they show perfect the door

No. Bet..
Odds about 1000 to 1

Eg Calare…
Mr Gee if he contests could poll 20% this would give him a chance. Monash margin in 22 was about 3% I suspect Mr Broadbent despite his odd views at times would have a personal vote which will be lost to the liberals.

Out of all the ex-LNP MPs who turned independent, Andrew Gee at least has a fighting chance. He left the Nats voluntarily and early enough to build a profile. There are no guarantees though. Broadbent and Goodenough are pretty much gone.

So you sayingdespite being some of the most marginal seats in the country those three have virtually no chance of falling in 2025

@Nimalan I agree that Moreton isn’t winnable for the Greens for a while. I used Sunnybank as an example as it is a middle-class suburb with lots of Chinese people, so those demographics are traditionally Liberal.

As for Calare, the Nationals should win it back from Andrew Gee. He’ll probably finish second but he won’t win.

Calare is like Cowper or Lyne: it has virtually no areas with a strong Labor vote. Back in the day Calare had a strong Labor vote around Bathurst but that’s gone now, Cowper and Lyne never had a Labor vote anywhere on the other hand. New England has a decent Labor and Greens vote in Armidale, same goes for Farrer with Albury and Riverina with Wagga Wagga but that’s all because of the major universities there. Page and Parkes have a Labor votes in one city (Lismore in Page and Broken Hill in Parkes) but these seats are trending further rightwards so the Labor vote is disappearing in those areas. In NSW the only Liberal seats without any Labor-voting areas are Cook and Mitchell in Sydney.

Another seat without any Labor vote these days (at least not anymore) is Maranoa in Queensland. Similarly, the Labor vote in Hinkler is disappearing. There is also no Labor vote anywhere in Moncrieff and Wide Bay either. Other examples include Gippsland, Mallee and Nicholls in Victoria. Barker in SA also has no Labor vote anywhere, and it’s disappearing in Grey in SA and O’Connor in WA with the decline of industrial towns such as Port Augusta and Collie.

Which other seats also have virtually no areas without decent votes for Labor or the Coalition?

If gee wins he may rejoin the nats as Kevin hogan did in 2019

@ Nether Portal
In terms of seats without other Major party vote it would be Wills, Cooper and Grayndler. In those cases they only have one or two suburbs with any Liberal vote being Pascoe Vale/Oak Park, Bundoora and Haberfield/Ashbury respectively. I actually think there is actually some Labor vote in parts of Cook if you look at state electorates Kogarah and Rockdale are Labor held while Oatley and Miranda are marginal. Wide Bay does have Labor vote in Maryborough and the state seat is Labor held but at a Federal level it is no where near enough for the seat and Labor does not bother to campaign there. Labor is still strong in Whyalla and the state seat of Giles is a Labor heartland. However, Grey now includes a lot of agricultural areas so i doubt Labor will ever win it again. I agree with you about Moreton that suburbs like Sunnybank are not Green at all.

@Nimalan

The Libs actually “won” a booth in Pascoe Vale Middle 52.4% vs ALP. However, this is very likely a mistake, as the Libs would of had to get 80% of minor party preferences of which over half are Greens votes. All of northern and western Melbourne would fall into the category of areas Libs don’t win. This is changing, but the Libs win so few polling booths in this area.

Even after 2013, the only booths the Libs won in this general area are Werribee South, Keilor and some parts of Essendon. As you go further out they won some of the more rural parts of McEwen.

@Nimalan, interestingly a polling booth in the Chinese heavy Box Hill has a Green Vote of 22.5% but not sure if it is linked to the neighbourhiod Anglo-heavy tree-changing suburb Blackburn rather than the Chinese Community as Green support is almost non- existent on first generation CALD?

@ Drake
Agree i think the Pascoe Vale Middle booth was a mistake as well especially in a good year for Labor in Victoria. When Strathmore was in Wills prior to 2013 Libs often won the booths there but that is demographically part of Essendon. Pascoe Vale and Oak Park are the transition between Upper Middle Class Essendon and the working class suburbs from Glenroy and beyond while there is a decent Liberal vote not enough to win a booth. Those two suburbs have more nuclear families compared to Coburg, Brunswick and are more bread and butter suburbs.

Werribee South is Green Wedge and the source of much of Victoria’s vegetables so will remain a Strong Liberal area. Keilor is also Upper Middle Class so reliably Liberal and quite low density suburban. In 2004, which is actually a worse year for Labor in Victoria than 2013 Libs won a few booths in Greenvale (suburb) and Sunbury as well.

@ Marh
I agree with you that a lot of Blackburn is a tree change suburb maybe parts of Mitcham are as well. However, i am not sure if that explains the high Green vote as i think they would have voted in the Labarnum or Blackburn PS booths instead out of convenience or those are the schools their children attend. Me think a lot of young renters include Anglo ones may now decide to live in Box Hill due to good PT and lower rents compared to Glenferrie or Camberwell Junction. Covid may have also meant many first generation Chinese immigrants may have opted for Pre-poll.

I’ve also got another demographics map coming in an hour or so, but it’s a mystery map so I’m not releasing any details. But I hope everyone likes it since I’ve spent a while working on it.