Assuming the government serves out a more-or-less full term, the next federal election will be held under new boundaries in three states and one territory, the exceptions being New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Queensland’s redistribution has been held up pending official confirmation that its population growth will not entitle it to a new seat, but the other three redistribution processes have reached their fruition over the past fortnight, barring the delicate question of nomenclature.
The finalised boundaries for South Australia cancel two of the changes from the proposed boundaries published in March, leaving only the transfer of 10% of Spence’s voters to its northern Adelaide neighbour Makin, and small transfers from Mayo to Boothby and Barker. The former have little impact on the substantial Labor margins in both of the affected seats, while the latter adds half-a-point to Rebekha Sharkie’s margin in Mayo. Beyond that, the regional and remote seat of Grey, which bears the name of a colonial governor, will become O’Donoghue, in honour of the late Aboriginal leader Lowitja O’Donoghue.
Tasmania’s redistribution is as radical as South Australia’s is conservative, and has an extra layer of interest in also providing the boundaries for state elections (votes shares at state level have been calculated by Ben Raue). Where formerly Clark accommodated Hobart’s core and Franklin its south and east, the redistribution has made a hard boundary out of the Derwent River, causing Franklin — which has the proposed new name of Tongerlongeter (subject of a critical opinion piece by Tony Abbott in The Weekend Australian) — to lose the suburbs and periphery south of Hobart to Clark. Clark’s gains are balanced by transferring northern Hobart to what had previously been the largely rural electorate of Lyons, while Franklin extends up the state’s east coast as far as Bicheno, taking a large chunk of what had formerly been Lyons.
For all their scope, the impact of the changes appears remarkably modest in electoral terms. None of the changes I estimate in the Labor-versus-Liberal two-party margins reach a full percentage point, and One Nation, who would appear to be a competitive prospect in the state’s regional seats, has had minimal change to its primary vote shares. Losing a large chunk of the territory he has serviced since 2010 will not help Andrew Wilkie, but he likely remains safe: the transfer to Lyons (which accounts for 43% of the enrolment) is not his strongest territory, and future state independent Peter George scored 22.9% in the area being gained from Franklin, much of which would doubtless transfer to Wilkie.
The minimal changes arising from the Australian Capital Territory redistribution were covered in a post a fortnight ago. My own calculations for new margins and party vote shares are accounted for in very great detail in spreadsheets for South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory. Similar exercises can be found on the sites of Antony Green and Ben Raue.
Can we please keep this thread devoted to discussion of the redistributions. The open thread for general discussion is here.
> future state independent Peter George
Future? Was this post written in the past?
As I’d hope readers would be smart enough to work out, the state election was in the future when George “scored 22.9% in the area being gained from Franklin”.
From that Abbott article:
Seems like one of the ACT seats got renamed Truganini when nobody was looking. Now that’s a real change-by-stealth. 😛
Weird thing for him to screw up. Even if he didn’t know the names of ACT seats offhand after 20 years in parliament, it’s a five second google. Even Google’s frequently-wrong AI search says there’s no such seat.
Regarding Tasmania, it used to be there were five seats – one (Braddon) for Burnie and Devonport , one for Launceston (Bass), two for Hobart (Denison and Franklin) and one for the rural middle of the state (Lyons).
However, rural populations keep falling. There now isn’t roughly 20% of Tasmania’s population living outside Hobart, Launceston, Burnie and Devonport.
What the redistribution now means is there is one seat for Burnie and Devonport, one for Launceston, and three for Hobart, two of which essentially split Tasmania’s rural center between them.
Actually, Lyons is going to be weird under the new map, including both basically-Hobart Glenorchy, and basically-Launceston Prospect Vale and basically-Launceston Blackstone Heights, plus everythng in between. However, Glenorchy LGA has about fifty thousand people in it, and Prospect Vale and Blackstone Heights might scrape up five thousand between them. It’s politics are going to be dominated by Glenorchy, New Norfolk and the Derwent Valley – when the constituents complain about ‘the hospital needing more money’ they are going to mean Royal Hobart, not Launceston General.
I’m writing this from what will be Lyons, and I look around and it’s suburbs all around me, and Mount Wellington peering over me. That just feels weird for what is supposed to be Tasmania’s rural electorate.
Abbott’s false claim about Truganini has been corrected but the correction was abysmal:
“Note: I should thank readers for pointing out an inadvertent error in the original piece – my claim that there was already a seat of Truganini in the ACT – which shows why “information” should be triple checked”
So because he has been incredibly sloppy and either had a complete case of brain fade or else misused AI in his article, he thinks its OK to use that to throw shade on information presented by everyone else.
Anyway, the AEC has received a lot of feedback in this round, which I expect will be mostly objections to the proposed renaming, and that will be published by Friday.
There was negligible demand for renaming Franklin in the 2017 redistribution and likewise for the first round in this one. It was only when the initial committee recommended new boundaries that people started recommending new names for it and even then those names were all over the place with two out of dozens suggesting Tongerlongeter. Tongerlongeter is at least a good fit for the boundaries which other suggestions like Truganini are not, but the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre is not happy (they don’t even like the spelling), the short timeframe has just fuelled conspiracy theories from racists and the whole thing suggests that very little was learned from the 1984 “Truganini” proposal debacle.
I’m in lower Mt Stuart and I’ll be able to walk to Lyons and back.
Our travels on Monday from Launceston to Hobart then out and back to Moonah twice took us from Bass to Lyons to Clark. Under the new boundaries the same day will become Bass-Lyons-(Franklin)-Lyons-Clark-Lyons-Clark-Lyons-Clark.
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2026/07/tasmania-redistribution-franklin.html
Tasmania Redistribution: The Franklin Renaming Fiasco