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ACT redistribution – ‘Fraser’ renamed ‘Fenner’, loses southern edge

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on September 12, 2015

fennerdraftThe Australian Electoral Commission yesterday released draft electoral boundaries for the ACT’s two federal electorates.

At the moment, the ACT is covered by two seats: Canberra and Fraser. The boundary between these two seats follows the Molonglo River and Lake Burley Griffin which divide Canberra in half – all of the northern suburbs in Fraser, and all of the southern suburbs in Canberra.

Canberra’s northern suburbs has been growing faster than its southern suburbs, and this has pushed Fraser to be larger than the seat of Canberra, forcing the Committee to move some suburbs from Fraser to Canberra.

Download the map of the new ACT federal boundaries from this page.

The Committee has decided to move Civic and a number of neighbouring suburbs including Acton, Braddon, Campbell and Reid. In addition, the new estate of Molonglo Valley, which is only being developed now, was moved from Fraser to Canberra.

In addition, the Committee has renamed the seat of Fraser.

Fraser is currently named after Jim Fraser, who was previously the sole member representing the ACT in the House of Representatives. It is normal practice that seats are named after deceased former Prime Ministers, and with the recent death of Malcolm Fraser, the Committee decided to free up the name ‘Fraser’ to be used in the future as the name for a Victorian seat named after the former Prime Minister.

We are expecting a seat to be named after Gough Whitlam in the impending New South Wales redistribution, but the next Victorian redistribution is not due for at least three years, so in the meantime the seat name ‘Fraser’ is likely to be rested.

The former ‘Fraser’ has been renamed ‘Fenner’, after virologist Frank Fenner. Fenner died in 2010, and was a key figure in the global elimination of smallpox.

Interestingly, the Commission was split on whether there were strong reasons to rename the seat of Canberra, with two members supporting a change and two opposing, with the casting vote deciding against making a change. Those who supported change had preferred naming the seat ‘Churcher’ after Betty Churcher, former director of the National Gallery of Australia.

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By-elections triggered in Victoria

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on September 11, 2015

Following dual resignations of senior Liberals on August 31, we’ll be seeing two Victorian state by-elections in neighbouring rural seats in south-western Victoria later this month.

Former Premier Denis Napthine and former minister Terry Mulder both resigned from their seats on August 31, after losing power in November 2014.

Napthine’s seat of South-West Coast covers Warrnambool and Glenelg in the south-west corner of Victoria, and Mulder’s seat of Polwarth lies immediately to the east of South-West Coast, covering Anglesea, Lorne, Lismore, Colac, Camperdown, Terang and Mortlake.

Both seats are held by the Liberal Party by margins of around 11%. The Labor Party has announced that they won’t contest either seat, while the Nationals have announced they will run in both seats.

The date for the by-elections has not yet been set.

Read the guide to the Polwarth by-election.

Read the guide to the South-West Coast by-election.

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Redistribution updates – ACT and Brisbane

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on September 10, 2015

While I’ve been focusing on other projects, two of the ongoing redistributions have been finalised.

I covered the release of draft boundaries for redistributions for the ACT Legislative Assembly and the Brisbane City Council. In both cases, the final boundaries have now been released.

The ACT boundaries were first published as a draft at the end of March 2015, and were finalised in May. No changes were made between the draft boundaries and the final boundaries. You can read my analysis of the boundaries here.

The Brisbane City Council draft boundaries were released in July, with the final boundaries release in late August. There were a series of small changes to wards, while a majority of wards underwent no changes. The newly-renamed ward of Garden City reverted to its former name of Macgregor in the final version. Read my analysis of the draft boundaries here. I haven’t made any changes to my estimates of margins on the draft boundaries, as no polling places were moved on the final version.

You can download the maps from the maps page.

Brisbane ward boundaries are included in the Queensland wards map, which is currently incomplete as a number of other councils are still undergoing changes.

In other redistribution news, we’re expecting the draft boundaries for federal redistributions in NSW and the ACT to be released this month, and then we’ll be looking to see the final versions of the NT Legislative Assembly redistribution, the WA state redistribution and the WA federal redistribution.

I’m currently collecting information on WA ward changes, and in October and November will post updates of Victorian and Queensland wards in time for their 2016 elections.

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WA federal redistribution – download the map

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on August 28, 2015

The draft proposed boundaries for the Western Australian federal redistribution were released last Friday.

Western Australia gained a sixteenth electorate, and this new electorate has been drawn in the south of Perth. The seat has been tentatively named ‘Burt’ and takes in parts of Canning, Hasluck and Tangney. Interestingly, the WA Electoral Commission also renamed the state seat of Alfred Cove as Burt in the ongoing state redistribution, and it’s unclear whether either redistribution process will see either of the newly-named seats given a new name, considering that the seats do not overlap at all.

The new electorate is notionally a marginal Liberal seat, and otherwise the number of seats remains at twelve Liberal and three Labor, although the margins have changed.

Both Antony Green and William Bowe have produced estimates of the margins in these new seats.

The biggest changes took place in eastern and southern Perth. The seat of Canning has been pushed further out of Perth by the creation of Burt, taking in areas from Brand and O’Connor. O’Connor loses areas to Durack, and gains Collie from Forrest.

In the eastern suburbs, the seat of Hasluck has been pushed out of the south-east by the creation of Burt, and has taken in the eastern hinterland of Perth from Pearce, making the seat semi-rural.

As always, I’ve produced a Google Earth map of the new boundaries. Download the map here.

And below is an interactive version of the map. Click on each seat to see the incumbent MP, and the old and new margins.

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WA federal redistribution – draft boundaries announced

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on August 22, 2015

The Australian Electoral Commission yesterday announced their draft boundaries for the federal redistribution of Western Australia.

WA had gained a sixteenth electorate, and the proposal recommends the seat be named ‘Burt’ after a number of members of a WA family who were senior judges or Attorney-General.

I’m currently working on my map of the new boundaries, which should be done around the middle of the week.

Meanwhile, William Bowe at Poll Bludger has estimated the new seat margins. In short, most seat margins change by relatively small amounts, while Burt is considered to be a marginal Liberal seat.

Read the full report here.

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Canning by-election guide posted

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on August 3, 2015

Canning1-2PPFederal Liberal MP Don Randall passed away during July, triggering a by-election for his seat of Canning.

The by-election date has not been set, but it is expected to be held in late 2015 – likely in September or October.

Canning is a seat on the south-eastern fringe of Perth – the seat has a tradition of being quite marginal, and the seat was closely contested as recently as 2010, but is now held by the Liberal Party by an 11.8% margin.

At the moment, no candidates have been announced.

You can read the guide here.

This guide covers the history of Canning, as well as the results of the last election in Canning, and you can join the conversation there about the by-election.

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WA state redistribution – draft map posted

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on August 2, 2015

In July, the draft electoral boundaries for the next WA state election were released.

I’ve now posted the draft boundaries for both the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council, and they can be downloaded from the maps page.

The below map shows the new boundaries, and Antony Green has calculated the new seats’ margins.

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WA redistribution and Canning – open thread

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on July 27, 2015

There are two major electoral events in Western Australia which kicked off last week. I’m still working on maps for these projects, so this is an open thread for discussion on these topics until later this week.

The draft electoral boundaries for the 2017 WA state election were released on Friday. I’ll be publishing an interactive map later this week. In the meantime, Antony Green has described the changes, and calculated estimated margins, at ABC Elections.

A federal by-election is also due for the WA seat of Canning following the death last week of Liberal MP Don Randall. I’m also working on a guide for the by-election, which should be up later this week.

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Map update – WA ward maps

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on July 15, 2015

Western Australia will be holding council elections on 17 October 2015 – over the course of the subsequent year, there will be local government elections across Australia’s four largest states.

Since the 2008 elections, I’ve produced ward maps for councils in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, but until now I’ve never done maps for Western Australia.

Over the last month or so, I’ve been working on a map of Western Australia’s local council wards, as of the last council election in 2013.

You can download the map here.

I’m now working on updated ward maps for Queensland, Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia. Conveniently, the electoral commissions provide a neat summary of which councils are changing their wards, along with the timelines and all relevant information. I’m not so lucky in the case of New South Wales and Western Australia.

In both cases, I am going to assume that councils without wards are undergoing no changes, and then go through the painstaking process of identifying which warded councils require changes, and identifying the new boundaries for those councils which are undergoing changes. If you have information about a warded council in NSW or WA, I’d appreciate it if you posted the information as a comment.

In the meantime, you’ll likely hear from me next when the next round of draft boundaries from the various federal, state and territory redistributions are released.

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Yes, rules matter, and they need to be fixed

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on July 6, 2015

On Saturday, Fairfax newspapers published an op-ed from Richard Denniss, chief economist at The Australia Institute, arguing against the proposed reforms to abolish group voting tickets (GVT) and introduce optional preferential voting (OPV) for Senate elections.

Unfortunately the article gets quite a lot wrong about the current arrangements, why there is a need for change, and who is supporting the change. I have written about group voting ticket reform a number of times recently (see this and this).

I wanted to specifically address a number of the claims Denniss makes in his op-ed. I’m going to respond to a number of the things he says, below the fold. There’s a lot to say. If you want a high-level summary of why reform is necessary, check out my two links above, or this piece from Antony Green.

Denniss correctly states that the process of deciding on our voting system is very serious, and it’s for this reason that reform is desperately needed. The current Senate voting rules are broken, and if we care about public faith in democracy and fair election results, change is needed.

Read the rest of this entry »

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