This post will be extensively updated throughout the day to analyse the new draft federal boundaries for Victoria and Western Australia. My quick and dirty first go at estimating the margins and party shares are featured below; here are Antony Green’s; here are Ben Raue’s.
Western Australia
The northern suburbs seat of Stirling, which was created in 1955, is set to go. East of the freeway, the bulk of the old electorate goes to Cowan, while the area around Yokine at the southern end goes to Perth; west of the freeway, the northern parts around North Beach and Carine go to Moore, the southern parts around Karrinyup go to Curtin.
Changes of note:
Cowan. The gains from Stirling, which include Balcatta, Balga, Mirrabooka and northern Dianella, are balanced by extensive losses in the north, most of them to Pearce. This adds a useful 0.5% to Anne Aly’s narrow margin.
Pearce. Becomes a lot more urban, losing Lancelin and the Avon Valley to Durack and gaining Wanneroo, Wangara and Landsdale from Cowan (although it also loses Ellenbrook to Hasluck). All of which reduces Christian Porter’s margin from 6.7% to 5.5%.
Hasluck. Gains the new urban development around Ellenbrook and nearby Swan Valley territory from Pearce, which boosts the Liberal margin from 4.6% to 5.9%.
Swan. Gains Forrestfield from Hasluck; loses Kenwick to Burt; the Liberal margin is up from 1.7% to 3.3%.
Victoria
The new seat of Hawke is on Melbourne’s north-western fringes, and is pretty safe for Labor with a margin of 9.8%. Corangamite, which has existed with that name since federation, is now called Tucker, the lake from which it takes its name having gone from the electorate as the urbanisation of Geelong has pulled it eastward.
Changes of note:
Hawke. The new seat encompasses Sunbury, formerly in McEwen; extends westwards from there into Melton, formerly in Gorton; and further west still into Bacchus Marsh and Ballan, formerly in Ballarat.
Bruce. Labor’s Julian Hill has his margin cut from 14.2% to 6.9% as Noble Park gets transferred to Hotham in the west, and it gains northern Berwick in the east from La Trobe.
Hotham. Correspondingly, the gain of Noble Park boosts Clare O’Neil in Hotham from 5.9% to 11.1%, further aided by the loss of the southern end of Mount Waverley and Glen Waverley to Chisholm.
Chisholm. And Chisholm in turn loses territory at its northern end, around Box Hill North and western Forest Hill, to balance the loss to Hotham — the changes affecting around a third of its voters. I’m a little perturbed by the fact that Antony Green and Ben Raue are in agreement that this cuts the Liberal margin from 0.6% to 0.2% whereas I have it up to 0.8%.
La Trobe. The loss of northern Berwick to Bruce is balanced by semi-rural territory in the south-east, including Westernport Bay around Koo Wee Rup, which boosts the Liberals from 4.5% to 5.3% in an historically important marginal seat.
Tucker. This seat has earned its name change, being now very much centred on the Bellarine Peninsula, the Surf Coast and outer southern Geelong. The Great Ocean Road from Anglesea on goes to Wannon; rural areas around Meredith go to Ballarat, compensating it for its losses to Hawke. All of which gives Labor what may prove a handy boost of 0.8%.
Deakin. Only a few tweaks to this important marginal seat, reducing the Liberal margin from 54.8% to 54.6%.
Please god (whoever yours may be) the liberals don’t find a new home for the clown who is the member for Stirling now, Vince Connolly.
Rossmcg @ #1 Friday, March 19th, 2021 – 12:14 pm
Hmm, decisions, decisions. Jettison Porter or Connolly? 🙂
Actually, reading Connolly’s Wikipedia entry it’s informative to see how many places the Liberals have got to place their political recruits to get their training wheels on before they put them in parliament. here’s Connolly’s CV:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Connelly
Cat
If you’ve never seen him in action Connelly delivers his allotted Dixers in QT with all the seriousness and theatrics of a 10 year old reciting their lines in the school play.
It is slightly pathetic and worrying that if that’s his real persona he was in charge of men and women in the army.
In WA Stirling is abolished
In Victoria, Hawke will take on Ballan to Sunbury
While the AEC is busy tweeting about the changes and has video’s on YouTube so far they have not released the reports
Here is the link to the Victorian report
https://www.aec.gov.au/Electorates/Redistributions/2021/vic/proposed-redistribution/files/Proposed-redistribution-of-Victoria-March-2021.pdf
The Liberals have won their argument to give Toorak to McNamara (Port Melbourne to St Kilda and taking Caulfield to Higgins. I assume this will change McNamara to a Liberal seat and solidify Higgins for the Jane Hume
Captain Moonligtht
Kate Allan wants to know where has her seat gone?
Jane Hume is in the senate.
I wouldn’t assume that – the Toorak mansions may be the home of serious wealth but they don’t contain that many voters per square kilometre (and are offset by public housing in the Prahran area). The area Macnamara is gaining forms much of the state seat of Prahran which is a three-way Labor/Liberal/Greens marginal. Another element of this change is that the strongly Jewish area from East St.Kilda to Caulfield, which has been politically significant in Macnamara, is being split between Macnamara and Higgins.
All of Toorak remains in Higgins. Williams Rd is the suburb’s western boundary.
The one odd change is shifting Menzies south of the Eastern Freeway into Box Hill.
Gladys Liu will be in trouble as the northern end of Chisholm was the more conservative area.
B.S. Fairman
Its not that clear cut because there are ALP lending booths around Box Hill and strong Liberal areas around Glen Waverly and Wheelers Hill are added as have strong ALP areas around Oakleigh and Clayton should keep it marginal and might tip the seat.
Chisholm takes in more of Glen Waverley – becomes a bigger margin to the Libs.
Deakin takes in Blackburn and East Burwood which will be more to the ALP.
Menzies will shift more to the ALP with Box Hill North, Mitcham & Nunawading.
If William’s first numbers are accurate, this is essentially a swap of a Liberal seat in WA for a Labor seat in Victoria.
Otherwise it all looks very benign.
Porter’s seat survives, but it will be harder now it’s lost it’s rural fringe, which is the only part of it that didn’t dramatically swing at state level last weekend. And while normally Federal and State don’t overlap much in WA, it’s hard to see how the Feds involvement in borders wasn’t a major factor in the result last weekend. Certainly the ALP will spend the entire time until the next election tying the Federal Coalition to Clive Palmer, who is beyond despised in WA these days.
With the WA state election result, it looks like there could be up to 30% of the WA electorate voting Labor at the state level and Liberal/National at federal level.
Palmer is hardly a popular figure anywhere anymore. I wonder if he is going to pollute the suburbs with billboard ads again.
It always looked like it was going to be ALP up at least one and LNP down one as WA had so many LNP seats and the growth in Victoria was in the outer suburbs where the ALP does very well.
Whether it was affected any other seat in Victoria is the only other question.
Pleased to say we will be in the new electorate of Hawke. Nice.
Pity that Swan is safer liberal.
Back in my polling day official time I saw it shift from safe Labor with Kim Beazley as member to marginal to Liberal since 2007.
Steve Irons is hardly an ornament to the parliament.
Ben Raue estimates the Lib margin in Chisholm has been cut from 0.6% to 0.2%.
snap laughtong!
We’ll be in the new seat of Hawke as well. The boundaries look sensible to me.
However whoever is the new member for Hawke, will have a nice drive, it is reasonably easy seat to get around, but I wonder if future redistribution’s will see this seat move around a bit.
If Covid has a major impact on Victoria’s population as today’s press has outlined, could the seat be abolished and would the name be moved to another seat if it was after the next election
Captain Moonlight
Many parts of what is to be Hawke are growing very rapidly. Where we are, Bacchus Marsh, certainly is. There is growth happening up to Ballan, down to Melton and Sunbury is definitely expanding.
I suspect the name Hawke will be quite popular.
We live in Sunbury and there is a lot of growth happening here. McEwen really needed to lose the Sunbury end of that electorate
I’d expect that over time, as the rural seats with declining or slowly growing population move east, Hawke would lose its western end to Ballarat (which would in turn lose territory on its west side to Mallee or Wannon).
Well yeah, but barring a #wavotes style federal swing, the Libs will still be sending back Ian nowhere-near-Goodenough, Steve Irons and Andrew Hastie. Who all, sad to say, are worse than Connelly.
Not to mention of course, the unmentionable Member for Pearce.
Interesting that the margin did not change much in Tucker with the loss of the Lorne and richy end of the Surf Coast. I guess there are a lot of Green types in the hills and there are a lot of holiday homes which are not where people vote.
Demographic changes however probably mean that the additional growth in the southern areas of Geelong will see it become safer for Labor.
La Trobe show also move towards Labor despite the changes in boundary as the areas near Clyde are growing like a bushfire. Speaking of bushfires, the area had a bad bushfire last year too, so Climate might be issue too.
Whatever happened to the proposal to call a seat “Wright” after Judith Wright?
There was confusion that it was to honour former Labor Leader and convicted paedo Keith Wright from memory.
Rossmcg says:
Friday, March 19, 2021 at 2:46 pm
_______________________
Such hate in you ross. Have you ever met any of these people?
LVT
“Whatever happened to the proposal to call a seat “Wright” after Judith Wright?”
Wright (named after Judith Wright) is a seat in Queensland, created in 2009 (IIRC). First contested in 2010, won by Scott Buchholz.
Thanks Kakuru, I googled it, apparently both Labor and Liberal opposed the name change at the time. Keith Wright was associated with Central Qld (being the Member for Rockhampton) and Judith Wright had no particular connection to Central Qld.
It does seem odd – they could have picked another area given one J Wrights fame.
Interestingly the last Labor member for Rockhampton, Kirsten Livermore runs a program called the Australia Mongolia Extractives Program which is funded by DFAT. Interesting.
Lars von Trier: In 2006 Wright was originally the proposed name for the electorate that became Flynn, but in that case the connection with Keith Wright was strong as he was a former member for Capricornia (hence opposition from both major parties). The AEC then chose Wright for a seat in a totally different area of the state (Gold Coast hinterland) at the next redistribution in 2009, which no one particularly opposed.
All other things being equal, that should be one extra seat for Labor and one less for the Libs.
I know State and Federal voting can be quite different but the result in WA this week was extraordinary right across the board so how much weight can be put on the margins at the 2019 election. It is not just the State Libs, ScoMo is very much on the nose here.
Hard to know how much the Porter situation will affect his personal vote. I expect many voters, especially women, will be angry with him, but he may also get a sympathy vote from those who feel he has been attacked unfairly.
“Alpha Zero says:
Friday, March 19, 2021 at 1:27 pm
Chisholm takes in more of Glen Waverley – becomes a bigger margin to the Libs.”…
The new estimated 2PP of 49.2% ALP vs 50.8% Libs in Chisholm doesn’t look very big at all….
… and this time around the voters will understand that Liberal propaganda in AEC colours is Liberal propaganda, not AEC advice….
Apart from swapping a Liberal seat in WA for a Labor one in Victoria, the electoral impacts of this redistribution are unusually benign – the big changes in margin are all in relatively safe seats, and the most marginal seats in both states have been strengthened slightly for their incumbents.
Alpha Zero @ #12 Friday, March 19th, 2021 – 1:27 pm
With Kevin Andrews forced out of Menzies I wonder how much of his personal vote will be lost?
Kevin Andrews has a personal vote?
Yes, he is still allowed to vote.
It was interesting that in WA the AEC resisted the urging of the Liberals to abolish Anne Aly’s seat. After all she is a woman with great experience in the field of anti-terrorism, probably greater than any LNP politician, who has called out the LNP repeatedly over their confused and bitter anti-immigrant policies.And just recently exposed a weakness in the ASIO chief’s language about home-grown terrorism.
Perhaps it would have not looked well to abolish a Labor seat when the Libs have 11 time-servers to choose from. With the exception of Ken Wyatt… As an Army friend once said, “most of them wouldn’t make a good pull-through for a twenty-five pounder”.