Category: Federal Redistributions

Proposed new electoral boundaries for Western Australian are available for your perusal. Commentary to follow.

Big surprise: a radical redrawing of the remote areas divides them evenly between O’Connor and Kalgoorlie, the former taking the entire northern half of the state and Kalgoorlie most of the south. I don’t imagine Wilson Tuckey will be too happy this morning.

Stirling (Liberal 1.3%): Nothing too radical has occurred in the metropolitan area. Stirling has gained the salient south of Beach Road on the coast from Moore, lost Scarborough to Curtin but gained Joondanna, gained Coolbinia from Perth but lost the west of Morley. My rough calculation is that this cuts the Liberal margin to 0.8 per cent. CORRECTION: Sorry, made an error there: it actually looks like the margin hasn’t changed at all.

Cowan (Liberal 1.7%): This was one of two seats in the country that went from Labor to Liberal at the last election. The electorate has been brought down to size through the loss of the Noranda area south of Reid Highway to Perth and the new suburbs around Tapping in the electorate’s north-west to Moore, cutting the margin by about 0.8 per cent.

Swan (Liberal 0.1%): The other seat in the country that went from Labor to Liberal. It has gained extra territory in the south including Ferndale, Lynwood and Langford, which by my reckoning damages Liberal member Steve Irons 0.7 per cent and puts the seat back into the Labor column. Furthermore, the new areas swung quite heavily to Labor at the election.

Hasluck (Labor 1.3%): The one seat in WA that Labor won from the Liberals has gained Huntingdale and Southern River in the south from Canning, while losing a very small number of voters in the north to Pearce. I estimate that this has knocked 0.2 per cent off Labor member Sharryn Jackson’s margin.

O’Connor: Going on booths alone, I calculate O’Connor has a Liberal margin of 7.2 per cent.

UPDATE: Antony Green explains all. In a nutshell, the metropolitan amendments are of only marginal interest. The big deal is that Kalgoorlie has gone from being a potentially loseable Liberal seat to a very safe one, which has been achieved by cutting the margin in O’Connor from 16.6 per cent to 7.3 per cent (on Antony’s initial calculation). I might venture that this overstates the Liberals’ safety in O’Connor due to Wilson Tuckey’s personal vote (which is especially high in the part of O’Connor that carries over to the newly drawn seat: the southern coast end was only added to the electorate at the previous redistribution), and the fact that Labor have played dead in O’Connor lately to aid the Nationals. For example, the Allendale Primary School and Geraldton Primary School booths in Geraldton respectively split 59-41 and 56-44 in Tuckey’s favour at the 2007 election, whereas Labor won them 51-49 and 55-45 at the 2005 state election. Nonetheless, the new O’Connor still looks more comfortable for the Liberals than did the old Kalgoorlie, so they have reason to be pleased.

The changes are also significant in intra-Coalition terms. Normally it might be assumed that a 72-year-old member would have retirement in mind, but Wilson Tuckey might be rated an exception. If he’s not in the mood to go quietly, he will have a much harder time now he has to persuade preselectors from the unfamiliar Kimberley, Pilbara and Gascoyne. Then there’s the Nationals, who have been hoping O’Connor might give them their first WA House of Representatives seat since 1974. Their hopes, if any, must now be pinned on Kalgoorlie, which takes not only Albany and half their Wheatbelt heartland from O’Connor, but also Manjimup and Bridgetown-Greenbushes from Forrest and areas as near to Perth as Wandering from Pearce. The latter areas are not strong for them, so it can be expected that they will lodge a fairly spirited objection.

Assuming this parliament runs its full term, there are likely to be redistributions in every state except South Australia before the next election, as well as the Northern Territory. A Western Australian redistribution is currently in its early stages, resulting from the rule requiring that states and territories be redistributed at least every seven years. Tasmania and the Northern Territory will follow for the same reason later this year; Victoria is also due in January 2010 (UPDATE: Or possibly not – see David Walsh in comments). It is also very likely that population changes will result in New South Wales losing another seat to Queensland when the determination is made in February 2009. The following table shows the states’ entitlements at the last determination in November 2005, entitlements based on ABS population figures from June 2007, and a projection to February 2009 based on growth rates in the 2006/07 financial year. Note that the constitution prevents Tasmania from falling below five seats, and that a dubious law passed in 2004 allows the Northern Territory to retain its second seat even if its entitlement falls a little below 1.5.

In the meantime we have a redistribution in train for Western Australia’s existing 15 seats, which despite the state’s rapid growth will not need to increase before the next election. Population volatility has led to substantial variations in enrolment across the electorates, with growth trends confounding the projections used to conduct the last redistribution in 2000. The following table shows actual enrolment at that time; the projections then arrived at for May 2004, three-and-a-half years hence; actual enrolment figures from the October 2004 election; and enrolment as of last month.

It is particularly notable that Moore, heretofore the quintessential growth corridor electorate, has fallen well short of the AEC’s projections at the time of the 2000 redistribution. Enrolment in the electorate took seven years to grow 6.9 per cent, against a projected 17.2 per cent in three-and-a-half years. This is a similar rate of growth to other Perth suburban seats, which came in between 1 per cent and 10 per cent. The real action has been in semi-rural Canning (32.5 per cent), Pearce (29.2 per cent) and Brand (24.8 per cent), along with outer metropolitan Cowan (22.0 per cent). Growth in the state’s south-west has boosted enrolment in safe Liberal Forrest by 19.6 per cent, but further afield O’Connor and Kalgoorlie have remained stagnant.

It will thus be necessary for the redistribution to cut upwards of 10,000 voters from Canning, Pearce, Brand, Cowan and Forrest, paring back existing over-enrolment and accounting for projected growth over the next three-and-a-half years. Significant expansion will be required not only for ever-declining Kalgoorlie and O’Connor, but also for Moore to correct for its over-estimated growth prospects last time. In the metropolitan area, Curtin, Swan and Tangney will need to take in new areas, but little adjustment will be necessary for Perth, Stirling and Fremantle (which is not to say that these electorates will not be redrawn due to knock-on effects).

While it never pays to second-guess redistributions, it’s tempting to draw a scenario in which Kalgoorlie absorbs all or part of Geraldton from O’Connor, which can easily be compensated by taking some of the territory that Pearce and Forrest need to lose. The need for cuts to adjoining Forrest, Canning and Brand will tempt the commissioners to make most of this required transfer from Forrest, resulting in knock-on transfers to the other two. The required growth in Moore can be accommodated either at the expense of Pearce to the north or Cowan to the east, both of which will need to be cut.

The New South Wales boundaries have now been finalised as well. Geographically dramatic changes have been made to the large electorates in the west after the original proposal had Parkes occupying the entire north-western quarter of the state. It has now traded in more than two-thirds of its total area as originally proposed for the Wellington and Mid-West Regional shires to the east of Dubbo. The state’s north-western vastness will instead be divided between Calare and Farrer, the latter of which loses the Murrumbidgee shire to Riverina. All affected electorates are safe for the Coalition except independent MP Peter Andren’s seat of Calare, whose centre of gravity has moved still further from his home base of Orange.

Elsewhere, a small amount of rejigging has been done around the junction of Paterson, Newcastle and Hunter; changes have been made to the boundary between Parramatta and Reid after the original redistribution deprived the former of the Parramatta town centre; and various adjustments have been made affecting the boundaries of Wentworth, Kingsford-Smith and Sydney. The comments thread of the previous entry contains much productive discussion of the likely effect of these changes.

The federal redistribution for Queensland has now been finalised. The most noteworthy amendment following the redistribution committee’s deliberations is that the new division will be called Flynn, in honour of Royal Flying Doctor Service pioneer Rev John Flynn, rather than the original proposal of Wright, in honour of poet Judith Wright (and not former Labor MP and convicted child sex offender Keith Wright, as locals had apparently assumed). There have also been the following amendments to the boundaries as originally proposed:

The augmented Commission acceded to three particular changes affecting the new division, Capricornia, Hinkler and Maranoa. First, the local government area of Mt Morgan was transferred from the Committee’s proposed new division to Capricornia; secondly, the local government area of Biggenden was transferred from the Committee’s proposed new division to Hinkler; and thirdly, the local government area of Wondai was transferred (in order to compensate for loss of enrolment in the new division by the first and second changes) from Maranoa to the new division.

Mount Morgan is a good Labor area just outside Rockhampton, so this amendment benefits Capricornia MP Kirsten Livermore at the expense of Labor’s chances in Flynn. Biggenden and Wondai are Nationals territory, so these amendments should cancel themselves out with respect to Flynn. Maranoa and the redrawn Hinkler are safe enough for the Nationals that the changes to them will not be significant. Based on the original proposal, Malcolm Mackerras calculated the margins at 3.8 per cent for Labor in Capricornia, 7.9 per cent for the Nationals in Wright/Flynn (a good 2 per cent higher than other estimates suggested), 8.8 per cent for the Nationals in Hinkler and 21.0 per cent for the Nationals in Maranoa.

Apologies for the inactivity – been a bit busy lately. Those who are interested will already be aware that Malcolm Mackerras has published his calculations of post-redistribution margins, answering (more or less) many queries raised on this site’s comments threads when the proposals were first made public. His figures offer a few surprises: Labor’s newly acquired seat of Parramatta has moved back into the Liberal column; John Howard has only lost 0.3 per cent from his margin in Bennelong; and Mackerras gives the Nationals a margin of 7.9 per cent in the new Queensland seat of Wright, whereas my own calculation (and reportedly that of the Nationals) had it at about 5.5 per cent. The following tables indicate which seats have shifted in which direction and by how much.

NEW SOUTH WALES
Coalition seats	NEW	OLD	SHIFT	MEMBER
Parramatta	1.1	0.7	1.8	Julie Owens
Wentworth	2.6	5.6	3.0	Malcolm Turnbull
Lindsay	2.9	5.3	2.4	Jackie Kelly
Eden-Monaro	3.3	2.2	1.1	Gary Nairn
Bennelong	4.0	4.3	0.3	John Howard
Dobell	4.8	5.9	1.1	Ken Ticehurst
Page	5.5	4.2	1.3	Ian Causley
Cowper	6.6	6.4	0.2	Luke Hartsuyker
Paterson	6.8	7.0	0.2	Bob Baldwin
Robertson	6.9	6.8	0.1	Jim Lloyd
Hughes	8.8	11.0	2.2	Danna Vale
Gilmore	9.5	10.0	0.5	Joanna Gash
North Sydney	10.1	10.0	0.1	Joe Hockey
Greenway	11.0	0.6	10.4	Louise Markus
Macarthur	11.1	9.5	1.6	Pat Farmer
Warringah	11.3	10.0	1.3	Tony Abbott
Hume	12.9	14.1	1.2	Alby Schultz
Berowra	13.1	12.3	0.8	Philip Ruddock
Cook	13.7	13.8	0.1	Bruce Baird
Lyne	14.1	13.0	1.1	Mark Vaile
New England	14.2	13.2	1.0	Tony Windsor
Farrer	15.4	19.9	4.5	Sussan Ley
Mackellar	15.5	15.9	0.4	Bronwyn Bishop
Bradfield	17.5	18.7	1.2	Brendan Nelson
Parkes	18.8	14.4	4.4	John Cobb
Riverina	20.7	20.7	0.0	Kay Hull
Mitchell	20.7	20.6	0.1	Alan Cadman
Labor seats	NEW	OLD	SHIFT	MEMBER
Macquarie	0.5	8.9	9.4	Kerry Bartlett
Richmond	1.5	0.2	1.3	Justine Elliot
Lowe	3.1	3.3	0.2	John Murphy
Banks	3.3	1.1	2.2	Daryl Melham
Prospect	6.9	7.1	0.2	Chris Bowen
Werriwa	7.1	9.3	2.2	Chris Hayes
Barton	7.6	7.5	0.1	Robert McClelland
Calare	7.9	21.2	13.3	Peter Andren
Charlton	8.4	8.0	0.4	Kelly Hoare
Kingsford-Smith	8.6	8.9	0.3	Peter Garrett
Newcastle	8.7	10.0	1.3	Sharon Grierson
Shortland	9.3	9.5	0.2	Jill Hall
Hunter	11.2	13.8	2.6	Joel Fitzgibbon
Cunningham	11.7	11.5	0.2	Sharon Bird
Reid	12.0	12.8	0.8	Laurie Ferguson
Chifley	12.1	13.0	0.9	Roger Price
Fowler	13.5	21.4	7.9	Julia Irwin
Throsby	13.9	15.0	1.1	Jennie George
Watson	14.6	15.1	0.5	Tony Burke
Blaxland	15.3	12.9	2.4	Michael Hatton
Sydney	17.3	16.4	0.9	Tanya Plibersek
Grayndler	21.3	22.6	1.3	Anthony Albanese

QUEENSLAND
Coalition seats	NEW	OLD	SHIFT	MEMBER
Bonner	0.6	No change		Ross Vasta
Moreton	2.8	4.2	1.4	Gary Hardgrave
Blair	5.7	11.2	5.5	Cameron Thompson
Herbert	6.1	6.2	0.1	Peter Lindsay
Longman	6.6	7.7	1.1	Mal Brough
Wright	7.9	New electorate
Petrie	7.9	7.9	0.0	Teresa Gambaro
Hinkler	8.8	4.8	4.0	Paul Neville
Bowman	8.9	9.1	0.2	Andrew Laming
Dickson	9.1	7.8	1.3	Peter Dutton
Dawson	10.2	10.4	0.2	De-Anne Kelly
Leichhardt	10.3	10.0	0.3	Warren Entsch
Ryan	10.4	No change		Michael Johnson
Kennedy	10.5	9.0	1.5	Bob Katter
Wide Bay	12.2	12.9	0.7	Warren Truss
Fisher	13.0	13.0	0.0	Peter Slipper
Forde	13.0	13.0	0.0	Kay Elson
Fairfax	13.3	11.1	2.2	Alex Somlyay
McPherson	14.0	13.9	0.1	Margaret May
Fadden	15.3	15.3	0.0	David Jull
Groom	19.0	19.0	0.0	Ian Macfarlane
Moncrieff	19.9	20.1	0.2	Steven Ciobo
Maranoa	21.0	20.8	0.2	Bruce Scott
Labor seats	NEW	OLD	SHIFT	MEMBER
Rankin	3.0	3.3	0.3	Craig Emerson
Capricornia	3.8	5.1	1.3	Kirsten Livermore
Brisbane	4.0	3.9	0.1	Arch Bevis
Lilley	5.4	5.3	0.1	Wayne Swan
Oxley	7.2	9.7	2.5	Bernie Ripoll
Griffith	8.5	8.6	0.1	Kevin Rudd

The New South Wales federal electoral redistribution that was unveiled yesterday is of more than usual significance, at least if one school of thought regarding the prime ministerial succession is to be believed. It had been widely surmised that the Prime Minister was awaiting its impact on his precarious electorate of Bennelong, which he carried by an uncomfortable 4.3 per cent in 2004, before deciding whether to lead the party into the next election. Some hypothetical redistribution scenarios had Bennelong either being abolished or shifting westwards into Labor territory as part of a wholesale shake-up of Sydney electorates. The more dramatic of these scenarios were predicated on the assumption that a metropolitan seat would be abolished, but former Nationals leader John Anderson’s electorate of Gwydir has instead been nominated for the chop, cancelling out the good turn done to the Nationals by the Queensland redistribution. This means that adjustments in Sydney have been relatively modest, but they have been sufficient to make life somewhat less comfortable in Bennelong. According to an early estimate by Malcolm Mackerras (cited by Imre Salusinszky in The Australian), the electorate’s absorption of the Ermington area from Labor-held Parramatta will cut Howard’s margin to about 3 per cent.

Another leading Liberal to feel the pinch is Malcolm Turnbull, whose electorate of Wentworth will now extend westwards beyond blue-ribbon beachside suburbs and into the green-and-red inner city, reducing the return on his not inconsiderable investment. Turnbull won the seat with a 5.6 per cent margin in 2004, although the result was distorted by Peter King’s attempt to hold his seat as an independent (King won by 7.9 per cent in 2001). The addition of Woollomooloo and Kings Cross is reckoned by those in the know to have cut his margin to about the same level as Howard’s. It has been a much better redistribution for another Sydney Liberal newcomer, Greenway MP Louise Markus, who trades Labor-leaning outer urban areas for the Shire of Hawkesbury, formerly part of Macquarie. After winning the seat at Labor’s expense in 2004, Markus should now be fairly safe. Jackie Kelly has not done well out of the adjustments to her seat of Lindsay, where a move east into St Marys (formerly in safe Labor Chifley) will bite into her 5.3 per cent margin.

On Labor’s side of the ledger, Parramatta has been substantially redrawn so that the Parramatta town centre is now in neighbouring Reid. Opinion seems divided on who this will benefit, so it seems safe to conclude that Julie Owens’ 0.7 per cent margin will be little changed. Labor should get a boost in its other precarious Sydney seat, the southern suburbs electorate of Banks, which expands northwards to take Bankstown from Blaxland. Their other loseable seat, the inner west electorate of Lowe (3.3 per cent), has undergone a number of adjustments that should largely cancel each other out. Member John Murphy will suffer slightly from the loss of more than 10,000 voters in the Ashfield area to Grayndler to the south-east, and perhaps make a net gain from extensions to the south that add Liberal-voting Strathfield South and Labor-voting Croydon Park.

All of Sydney’s electorates have been altered to some degree, but the decision to abolish Gwydir means that the biggest changes are in country seats that are off Labor’s radar. Most of Gwydir’s geographical area has been absorbed by the already substantial seat of Parkes, which now accounts for about half the state’s territory and has only Dubbo for a large population centre. The most significant knock-on effects are on Calare, which moves inland beyond the Bathurst base of independent member Peter Andren (UPDATE: Andren’s electorate office is in Bathurst, but as Mountainman notes in comments, he is more closely associated with Orange which will remain in the electorate), and Macquarie, which fills Calare’s void by moving west beyond Sydney’s outskirts. Poll Bludger comments regular Geoff Robinson notes on his blog The South Coast that this roughly returns these electorates to the areas they covered before 1977, when Calare was a safe seat for the Nationals and Macquarie mostly held by Labor. Macquarie has since been won by Labor only in 1980, 1983 and 1993 (the current member, Kerry Bartlett, won by 8.9 per cent in 2004), while Calare was held by Labor from 1983 until Andren’s debut in 1996. Robinson notes that Andren must now decide “whether to go for Macquarie and hold it against Labor or to fight the Nationals in the new Calare”. It should not be inferred that Macquarie is out of bounds for the Coalition, but Labor won the corresponding state seat of Bathurst by 6 per cent more than the state average at the 2003 election, and the consensus view is that it’s a Labor-leaning marginal.

The redistribution has inevitably brought changes to the state’s rapidly growing and electorally sensitive north coast, though none are headline-grabbers. The northernmost coastal seat, Richmond, was one of three Labor gains at the 2004 election, when Nationals member Larry Anthony was voted out by the narrowest of margins. The redistribution has reunited the electorate with the northern part of the Shire of Lismore, which it last contained before the 1993 election. At the centre of this area is Nimbin, and it is accordingly noted for its strong counter-cultural element. This area has been added in exchange for Wollongbar and Alstonville in the electorate’s south, which split nearly 60-40 in the Nationals’ favour in 2004. While these areas only account for about 7000 voters each out of a total of 94,333, Labor member Justine Elliot will presumably enjoy a slight boost to her margin. However, this is a case of swings and roundabouts for Labor, since both areas have been exchanged with its very marginal neighbour Page, held for the Nationals by Ian Causley on a margin of 4.2 per cent. Page also gains about 5500 voters around Yamba from its southern neighbour Cowper, which is unlikely to make much difference. Cowper itself is potentially winnable for Labor, currently being held for the Nationals by Luke Hartsuyker with a margin of 6.4 per cent, which will not be much changed by its exchange of Yamba in the north for Kempsey in the south. The Hunter region seat of Paterson, where the Liberal margin inflated from 1.5 per cent to 7.0 per cent in 2004, exchanges a Labor area north of Newcastle for an even more Labor area further along the Hunter Valley, which should cut the margin slightly.

In a potentially bad omen for Labor, the famously marginal seat of Eden-Monaro has extended westwards into Farrer in exchange for the loss of its anomalous territory to the north of the Australian Capital Territory, a knock-on effect of Farrer’s gain of Broken Hill at the expense of Parkes. With the addition of the Shires of Tumut and Tumbarumba, Liberal member Gary Nairn should enjoy some extra padding on his current margin of 2.2 per cent.

UPDATE: Malcolm Mackerras has posted his calculations of post-redistribution margins at Crikey.

The Australian Electoral Commission has just released its proposed boundaries for the redistribution of New South Wales federal electorates. The main item is the abolition of former Nationals leader John Anderson’s seat of Gwydir. I’ll be poring through this for the rest of the day and will hopefully have something substantial up early this evening.