Category: Federal Redistributions

Federal redistributions: South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT

Radical boundary changes in Tasmania, minor ones in South Australia and the ACT, and limited political implications all round.

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.

Friday miscellany: Morgan poll, by-election and redistribution news, Tasmanian state poll (open thread)

A second sharp drop for One Nation in a weekly poll series, an intriguing by-election on the way in Western Australia, and more.

The weekly Roy Morgan poll records One Nation tumbling another three-and-a-half points after their five-and-a-half point drop last week, reducing them to 22.5%. This still isn’t enough to cost them their lead over the Coalition, who are unchanged at 21.5%, while Labor is likewise steady at 28%. The difference is instead made up by a one-point gain for the Greens to 14% and a two-and-a-half point gain for independents and others to 14%. A Labor-versus-One Nation two-party measure based on respondent allocation has Labor’s lead out from 53-47 to 56-44. The lead over the Coalition is 55-45 based on respondent allocation, out from 53.5-46.5, and 54-46 based on 2025 election preference flows, out from 52.5-47.5. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1584.

Other news:

• A Western Australian state by-election looms in the seat of Secret Harbour after Paul Papalia, who had been in parliament since 2007 and in cabinet since Labor came to power in 2017, announced his resignation on Monday citing a family illness. Labor confirmed yesterday its candidate will be Georgia Tree, a former staffer to local federal MP Madeleine King and government relations employee at Woodside. With its low ethnic diversity and abundance of trades workers, the outer southern suburbs seat appears to be promising terrain for One Nation. Tom Rabe of the Financial Review reports “multiple Labor sources” say recent internal polling from the seat has One Nation running neck-and-neck with Labor in the “mid-30s”, with the Liberal vote “hovering in the high teens”. Perhaps surprisingly, Liberal leader Basil Zempilas has vowed the party will field a candidate.

• The finalised boundaries were published this week for the federal redistribution of the Australian Capital Territory, with those for South Australia and Tasmania to follow over the coming weeks. This involves two seats that Labor won in 2025 by margins of around 20%, one over the Greens (Canberra, held by Alicia Payne) and one over the Liberals (Fenner, held by Andrew Leigh), and one the party came within 700 votes of losing to teal independent Jessie Price (Bean, held by David Smith). Bean both gains from and loses to Canberra: I calculate a 54.0-46.0 split in favour of Labor over Price out of the roughly 9500 formal votes being transferred from Bean to Canberra, and a near tie in the remainder. The extent to which the former helps Price, should she run again, depends on the unknown quantity of her latent support from the similarly sized area transferred from Canberra to Bean. What does favour her, albeit modestly, is the reversal of a plan from the originally proposed boundaries to transfer Norfolk Island from Bean to Canberra, whose votes I estimate as having broken 576-305 in Price’s favour in 2025.

• A DemosAU Tasmanian state poll for Pulse Tasmania has Liberal on 28%, One Nation on 21%, Labor on 21%, the Greens on 14% and independents on 12%. The last such poll in November did not feature One Nation as a response option, and had Liberal on 35%, Labor on 23%, the Greens on 15% and independents on 17%. The result at the election in July last year was Liberal 39.9%, Labor 25.9%, Greens 14.4% and independents 15.3%, producing a seat result of Liberal 14, Labor 10, Greens five, independents 5 and Shooters Fishers and Farmers one. The poll credits Premier Jeremy Rockliff with a 41-32 lead over Labor’s Josh Willie, in from 43-32. Rockliff is rated positively by 35%, neutrally by 27% and negatively by 38%; Willie positively by 23%, neutrally by 48% and negatively by 29%. The poll was conducted June 21 to July 6 from a sample of 999.

South Australian federal draft redistribution

A new name for the seat of Grey, but otherwise not much change from a proposed new seat of South Australian federal electoral boundaries.

Draft boundaries have been published for a redistribution of South Australia’s federal electoral boundaries, following less than a month on from Tasmanian and Australian Capital Territory drafts together with a Queensland state redistribution that have all unhelpfully coincided with the South Australian state election. Below are my estimates of party vote shares on the proposed new boundaries. A row below the bold results for each seats shows the changes from the 2025 election result, where changes there have been — so Adelaide, Hindmarsh and Sturt are being left as is. The changes elsewhere have been fairly modest as well. It is proposed that the regional seat of Grey be renamed O’Donoghue, which is not reflected in the table.

I neglected to comment on the ACT redistribution proposal when it was published a fortnight ago, but the changes are of minor significance, as is usually the case in the ACT when the number of seats doesn’t change. I will add my revised margins to this post if and when I get time.

Tasmanian draft redistribution

A radical redistribution proposal for Tasmania brings the formerly rural electoral of Lyons deep into Hobart, and moves most of the eastern coast to the formerly Hobart-dominated seat of Franklin.

A draft redistribution proposal has been published for Tasmania, to to apply at both federal and state elections, which is rather gobsmacking in its extent, it evidently having been determined that population growth in Hobart makes it no longer feasible to have most of it accommodated by Clark (traditionally encompassing the western bank of the Derwent, including the city centre) and Franklin (the eastern bank and the southern outskirts). The proposed solution to this problem is to transfer the entire northern half of Clark to Lyons, which continues to encompass the central parts of the state but will now become largely urban in character; for Clark to absorb all of Franklin’s territory on the western side of the Derwent, including southern Hobart and the hinterland beyond together with wilderness areas further to the west; and for Franklin to occupy most of the state’s eastern coast, while maintaining the Hobart suburbs on the eastern bank of the river. The northern seats of Bass and Braddon, by contrast, are all but entirely unchanged.

I have calculated the following vote shares based on the 2025 federal election result adjusted for the new boundaries, which runs into the fairly substantial problem that Clark is dominated electorally by Andrew Wilkie, and that the second strongest performing candidate in Franklin was another independent, Peter George. Wilkie, for instance, thus ends up with 26.8% in Clark and 18.8% in Lyons, drawn entirely from those parts of the seat that were in Clark as of the 2025 election. The “two-candidate preferred” estimates outside of Bass and Braddon are thus of little value, divided as they are between three rather than two candidates. However, this does not apply to the “two-party preferred” estimates, which boil things down to Labor-versus-Liberal. For all the extent of the voter transfers, the effect here is remarkably modest, with Labor’s commanding margins over the Liberals (at this election, at least) very little changed.

Further detail can be found at the Australian Electoral Commission. Submissions will be received until March 27, and I dare say they will be lively and plentiful – proposals as sweeping as this are quite often reined in after the consultation period. The most useful way to explore the changes is through the interactive maps featured at The Tally Room. A proposal for the Australian Capital Territory will be published in a fortnight.

Friday miscellany: redistributions and preselections (open thread)

New South Wales federal boundaries confirmed, post-redistribution musical chairs for the Victorian Liberals, and contenders like up for the Labor preselections to replace Bill Shorten and Brendan O’Connor.

It’s been a busy week on Poll Bludger, which a new thread on the US election joining posts on state polls in Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland. Meanwhile at federal level:

• The federal redistribution for New South Wales has been finalised, with only very minor adjustments made to the boundaries proposed in June, none of which affect my calculations of the new margins by more than 0.1%. Certainly there has been no revision to the abolition of North Sydney, held by teal independent Kylea Tink. The only redistribution process still in train is that for the Northern Territory, charged with drawing a new boundary between its two seats of Solomon and Lingiari, for which a proposal should be published shortly.

• The Liberal candidate for the crucial Melbourne seat of Chisholm will be Katie Allen, who was the member for Higgins from 2019 until her defeat by Labor’s Michelle Ananda-Rajah in 2022. Allen was endorsed on the weekend by the state party’s administrative committee, which was charged with ratifying local party preselection processes that were conducted before new boundaries revealed that Higgins, for which Allen had again won endorsement, was to be abolished. The decision came at the expense of Monash councillor Theo Zographos, who was last year preselected unopposed for Chisholm.

• Ronald Mizen of the Financial Review reports the looming preselections for the Melbourne seats of Maribyrnong and Gorton, respectively to be vacated with the retirements of Bill Shorten and Brendan O’Connor, will be shaped by a long-standing agreement that the Left will take Gorton from the Right when O’Connor retires, while the Left will take “the next safe Right seat that becomes available”. The matter will be determined by the party’s national executive, which has again taken over the federal preselection process from the Victorian branch. Maribyrnong is considered likely to go to Jo Briskey, national co-ordinator of the Left faction United Workers Union, although The Age reports she “could face a challenge from Moonee Valley mayor Pierce Tyson”.

• In Gorton, the Labor preselection appears to be developing into a contest between Alice Jordan-Baird, a climate change and water policy expert, and Ranka Rasic, the mayor of Brimbank. The two candidates are back by rival sub-factions of the Right, the former with that of Richard Marles and the Transport Workers Union, the latter with Bill Shorten and the Australian Workers Union. James Massola of The Age reports the matter could be decided by a third Right union, the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association, supporting Rasic and the AWU in the interests of checking the rising power of the TWU.

Friday miscellany: redistributions and preselections (open thread)

Federal redistributions for Victoria and Western Australia confirmed with only minor amendments, while Bill Shorten calls time on his political career.

The federal redistributions for Victoria and Western Australia have been finalised, with only minor changes made to the proposals published in May. Higgins duly remains abolished, with adjustments made to the boundaries between Ballarat and Bendigo, Bendigo and Nicholls, Chisholm and Hotham, Corangamite and Wannon, and McEwen and Scullin. My estimates of the new margins suggest this increases the Labor margin from 3.5% to 3.7% in McEwen as compared with the original proposal, reduces it from 12.0% to 11.3% in Bendigo, and is barely measurable anywhere else.

In Western Australia, Fremantle and Tangney swap territory and Canning gets to keep the Shire of Waroona. The closest any of this comes to being of electoral interest is that Labor’s margin in Tangney is down from 2.9% on the proposed boundaries to 2.6%. The finalisation of the New South Wales boundaries can presumably be expected very shortly.

Preselection news:

• Bill Shorten announced yesterday he will bow out of politics at the next election, creating a vacancy in his safe Labor western Melbourne seat of Maribyrnong. Shorten will take up a position as vice-chancellor of the University of Canberra in February, which will presumably be close enough to the election that no by-election will be held. John Ferguson of The Australian reports the ascendant Left is hopeful of gaining the seat, with one potential contender being Jo Briskey, national political co-ordinator of the United Workers Union and unsuccessful candidate for the Brisbane seat of Bonner in 2019. Potential candidates from within Shorten’s own Right faction Australian Workers Union orbit include state minister Natalie Hutchins and former AWU official and political staffer Shannon Threlfall-Clarke.

• Labor’s candidate for the new seat of Bullwinkel on Perth’s eastern fringe will be Trish Cook, deputy president of the Shire of Mundaring. Cook was chosen ahead of widely touted front-runner Kyle McGinn, a member for the state upper house region of Mining and Pastoral who failed to secure a winnable position on the ticket for the March state election. Hamish Hastie of WAtoday reports the preselection was determined by the party’s national executive, at which “some in the party were surprised” since it would normally be left to the state party administration.

• Jeremy Neal, a paramedic and former Cairns councillor, won a Liberal National Party preselection vote last weekend to succeed retiring veteran Warren Entsch in the far north Queensland seat of Leichhardt. The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column reported rival contenders included “local aviation identity” Alana McKenna, who had the backing of Entsch.

• Mal Hingston, a defence contractor with “a long history of work in the manufacturing, mining, oil and gas industries”, has won Liberal preselection for the north-western Tasmanian seat of Braddon, which will be vacated at the election with the retirement of Gavin Pearce. Earlier reports indicated there were five candidates, including Belle Binder, founder of a farm labour scheme, and Vonette Mead, Latrobe deputy mayor.

• Alex White of the Herald Sun reports Fiona Patten, who enjoyed a high profile as member of the state upper house with the Sex Party and Reason Australia from 2016 to 2022, has been announced as the lead Victorian Senate candidate of Legalise Cannabis party.

New South Wales federal redistribution proposal

Analysis of draft federal boundaries for New South Wales, which propose abolishing the seat of North Sydney.

The proposed federal redistribution for New South Wales, requiring the abolition of one of its 47 seats, is being published today. The boundaries will presumably be up on the Australian Electoral Commission site shortly, but for now there a gazetted notice informs us that the proposal abolishes North Sydney, held by teal independent Kylea Tink. The fact that no other electorate names are identified as having been abolished, and the revelation that More to follow.

UPDATE: Full boundaries now available on the AEC site, and here are my two-candidate and two-party preferred (the latter boiling it down to Labor and Coalition) estimates for the new margins. Teals are treated as a single entity so, for example, where Warringah gains territory from North Sydney, Kylea Tink’s votes there are transferred to Zali Steggall. In areas where there was no teal candidate last time though, it’s not possible to estimate how they would have gone.

UPDATE 2: I just unearthed an error in the code that was causing errors in a few places, notably Hume and Eden-Monaro. The numbers below should add up now.

UPDATE 3: My analysis of the new boundaries has just been published in Crikey.

Federal redistributions: Victoria and Western Australia

Analysis of newly published draft federal boundaries for Western Australia and Victoria.

Proposed new federal boundaries have been published today for both Western Australia and Victoria.

Victoria

The Victorian proposal is here. The proposed seat for abolition is Higgins, reflecting under-enrolment in the inner eastern areas of Melbourne. Below are my estimates of the new vote shares (you’ll have to click on the image for it to be legible), which can be compared with Ben Raue’s similar exercise. Note that there are three seats where the two-candidate preferred has to be split three ways: Melbourne is to take a chunk of Higgins, for which there are no ALP vs GRN numbers; Goldstein gets parts of Hotham and Isaacs, where there is no TEAL vs LIB; and Kooyong gets a big piece of Higgins, ditto.

The best news for Labor is that Menzies now has a notional Labor margin of 0.7% (0.3% by Ben Raue’s reckoning) compared with an actual Liberal margin of 0.7%. Beyond having lost Higgins, the news is bad for them in Chisholm, where their margin is down from 6.4% to 3.3% by Ben Raue’s reckoning and 2.8% by mine, and Wills, where the Greens have been handed the gift of Carlton North and Fitzroy North from Melbourne, cutting the Labor margin over them from 8.6% to 4.2%. However, their 0.7% improvement in Dunkley might prove handy one day.

At first glance, I would imagine that Monique Ryan would be pleased not merely to have had her electorate maintained, but to have had it supplemented with the inner urban end of Higgins and to have lost territory in the east to Menzies and Chisholm. Goldstein teal MP Zoe Daniel’s gains from Hotham and Isaacs are perhaps less helpful, though that is harder to read.

Western Australia

The proposed sixteenth seat for the state is called Bullwinkel and encompasses eastern suburbs of Perth and the Avon Valley further afield, taking much of the territory of Hasluck along with parts of Swan, Burt, Canning, Durack and O’Connor. The new seat has a notional Labor margin of 2.9%, but in the absence of a defending sitting member and given the unusual nature of the 2022 result, the Liberals would be favoured to win. However, its creation has given Labor a helpful 4.7% boost in Hasluck, which loses its most conservative territory to the new seat. Andrew Hastie is a loser out of the redistribution in Canning, but is presumably not in too much danger. Labor has been favoured slightly in Tangney and Swan, Liberal in Cowan. The changes are unlikely to make much difference to teal independent Kate Chaney in Curtin.

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