I wrote a piece in Wednesday’s Crikey summarising the seat-by-seat comparisons I posted on this blog that same day. I’ve posted it below the fold. In today’s Crikey, Charles Richardson has written a piece exploring how, in spite of all the work the parties put into their submissions, the Australian Electoral Commission largely ignores their proposals:
Australia has gone to great lengths to ensure that redistributions are above politics. The members of redistribution committees are appointed automatically, most of them have security of tenure, their proceedings are non-partisan and open to public scrutiny at each stage and their final determinations take effect without parliamentary approval. In this area we are a world leader.
Yet, in both New South Wales and Queensland the ALP and Coalition parties have put considerable time and resources into very detailed submissions to the committees as to where they should draw the boundaries. (I was hired by the Victorian Liberal Party once to do this, so I know something about what’s involved.)
We know from past experience that the committee members will pay polite acknowledgement to these submissions, but basically ignore them. They would be fools to do otherwise, since, as Ben explained yesterday, they are tailored primarily to political advantage, often at the expense of the most elementary geographical logic. So why do the parties bother?
Oh, by the way: Charles, if you read this, I did see and read your submission. Indeed, as MDMConnell pointed out in comments, there are detailed statewide proposals from Charles, as well as Mark Mulcair and John Lush. It’s just much harder to do a six-way comparison, rather than a simple two-way comparison. Bearing that in mind, I still plan to do my own one this week, if only for the purpose of seeing what I come up with. I think readers may well find it useful to read submissions from a non-partisan psephologist like Charles.
So I have a question for all the blog readers out there: which seat would you chop, if you were to decide. I’m personally leaning towards Farrer. I think it has to be a country seat (although some proposals have focused on the Bankstown area), and Hume and Riverina are both federation seats. Although I would consider Riverina, as it is a geographical name which is generally frowned upon. So which would you pick?
The Australian Electoral Commission determined in February this year that New South Wales will lose one of its 49 seats in the House of Representatives, with Queensland gaining another, bringing its delegation up to 30 seats. This process requires a state-wide redistribution in both states, the first step of this process concluded in the last two weeks, as the first round of suggested redistribution decisions were published by the AEC.
Submissions regarding the New South Wales redistribution were published on Monday. The vast majority of submissions come from residents of country seats (in this case, they mostly reside in Kay Hull’s seat of Riverina) begging the AEC to protect all of New South Wales’ country seats, in spite of the declining country population.
As well as a handful of submissions from local councils and other interested persons, the most interesting submissions come from the Labor, Liberal and National parties, who all present their own detailed submissions. All three parties provide submissions that propose a state-wide redrawing of boundaries, which fulfils the legal requirements, but subtly (or not so subtly) favour their own party’s interests.
Each party has presented differing proposals as to which seat should be abolished. The ALP proposes to abolish the south-west Sydney seat of Macarthur, currently held by Liberal MP Pat Farmer by a slim 0.6% margin. The Liberal Party proposes abolishing both the safe Liberal seat of Hume (centred on Bowral and Goulburn) and the Nationals seat of Riverina (centred on Wagga Wagga), with the two seats to be produced by the seat of Bradman, which would surely find favour with their former leader. The Nationals, who would surely be displeased with losing one of their four remaining NSW seats, instead propose the abolition of Banks, in southern Bankstown and Hurstville.
When you start comparing ALP and Liberal proposals for each seat side-by-side, you can see that the Liberal Party has chosen to keep most of their recommendations more subtle, with current boundaries being maintained wherever possible, while ALP proposals see boundaries shift more dramatically. In a few examples, the ALP’s proposal clearly provides them with a significant advantage.
The ALP proposal for the Hunter seat of Paterson is one example. The ALP proposes the removal of Liberal-voting Bulahdelah from the centre of the electorate, leaving a V-shaped electorate that connects the coast of Great Lakes Local Government Area (LGA) with Dungog and a majority of Maitland LGA, which seemingly shifts the marginal Liberal seat closer to becoming a Labor seat.
The ALP also proposes a redrawing of boundaries at the southern edge of Sydney which would likely favour the party. Bizarrely, the ALP proposes extending the northern Wollongong seat of Cunningham deep into the Sutherland Shire, including a small area right in the centre of Sutherland itself. This is despite the majority of the electorate remaining based around Wollongong. This allows Cunningham to absorb Liberal-voting areas in south-western Sutherland, which in turn shifts Hughes deeper into South-Western Sydney. Hughes, which has been held by Liberal MP Danna Vaile since 1996, is currently a Sutherland-based seat including parts of Liverpool. The ALP instead makes the seat a seat based in Liverpool and Campbelltown, with a smaller part in north-western Sutherland. This would appear to make the seat either a marginal Labor seat or a much-more-Marginal Liberal seat, and could be an attempt to kill off Vaile’s career.
To the west of Hughes, it appears that both major parties have worked to destroy the existing seat of Macarthur. The 2000 redistribution shifted Macarthur from the Southern Highlands to be a seat based on both Labor-voting southern Campbelltown and Liberal-voting Camden, along with parts of the Wollondilly Shire. The seat was won for the Liberal Party in 2001 by ultra marathon runner Pat Farmer despite the redistribution making it a notional Labor seat. In 2007 Farmer’s 11.1% margin was eliminated and the seat almost fell to low-profile ALP candidate Nick Bleasdale.
While it already appeared likely that Farmer would either retire, lose preselection, or lose the seat to the ALP in 2010, both parties’ proposals destroy his seat. The ALP proposal would see Macarthur abolished, replacing it with a safe Labor seat in Campbelltown (Werriwa) and a safe Liberal seat from Camden to Bowral (Hume). In practice, the Liberal proposal would produce a similar outcome, with the Labor and Liberal-voting parts of the Macarthur region being cleanly divided between safe seats for both parties.
Comments on the first round of suggestions will close next Friday, May 15, before the AEC will produce draft boundaries. The redistribution will conclude this year. If a double dissolution is called before the redistribution is concluded, however, the AEC will be forced to quickly abolish one of New South Wales’ 49 seats, which they will do by merging the two bordering electorates with the lowest population in the state. This would see Sydney and Lowe being merged to form a vastly overpopulated electorate, despite the fact that the only boundary between the two electorates running through Sydney Harbour, with the seat of Grayndler sitting between them.
Well.. the ALP proposal for Cunningham does kinda have precedent. The NSW state seat of Heathcote was redistributed before the last state election to cover the northern Illawarra, the Royal National Park and some parts of the Sutherland shire. Not an obviously sensible arrangement for sure. Is the NSW process more politically influenced perhaps?
Actually, there is another statewide proposal: Martin Gordon. I overlooked that.
Martin Gordon, John Lush and (obviously) Charles Richardson have made submissions to previous redistributions. I note Mark Mulcair has also made suggestions for the Queensland redistribution this time. There’s also another guy, John Encel, who pops up from time to time. It’s really pleasing that there are independent (I assume) people who are interested in this stuff and make submissions. Provides a change to the usual partisan proposals.
“To the west of Hughes, it appears that both major parties have worked to destroy the existing seat of Macarthur”
Possibly more accurate to say they both destroyed Hume. The old Macarthur was a Camden-Southern Highlands-Goulburn seat. The Liberals and Labor have just returned it to its old boundaries, except Labor calls it ‘Hume’ (to try and provoke a spat between Alby Schultz and whoever replaces Pat Farmer, perhaps?)
Robert,
The problem is that the coastal seats from Hughes south are all under quota, so you have to do something strange to one of them to give it more electors. So you have to either:
* Push Cunningham into Sutherland shire and then force Hughes into Campbelltown (Labor) or across Alfords Pt Bridge (Nats).
* Take Eden-Monaro north into Goulburn (Libs) or Yass (Richardson).
* Push Throsby (Mulcair) or Gilmore (Gordon) back up into the Southern Higlands
* Abolish a seat in the area (John Lush abolishes E-M).
Whatever happens, there is going to be significant change to those south coast seats. There’s no getting around it. The question is which is the ‘least worst’ option.
I’ve just come across this site. As someone who has helped put together the ALP’s redistribution proposals since 1984;Qld in 2006 and 2009 and WA and Tas in 2008 I’d like to make my own observations.
1. It’s certainly true– as Charles Richardson has observed that sometimes political parties put together a submission for an internal audience only and therefore of no benefit to the Commissioners.
A case in point is the NP 2009 NSW suggestions.
Under the NP’s suggestion the six divisions running from Robertson to Hunter contain an average enrolment of 95, 647 at the projected time which or 3 260 below quota. This converts to the average enrolment of these divisions being 3.3% below the future quota!
Of the five north coast divisions, the NP places these at the projected date on average more than 2 000 below quota or on average 2.0% below quota. The average enrolment for rural divisions is also below average. Overall, the shortfall is more than 40,000 electors at the projected time for regions covering the North Coast, Central Coast/Hunter and the Inland Country.
The systemic way in which the NP places virtually all rural divisions and those divisions north of the Hawkesbury River so low is simply malapportionment. It’s also rather bewildering. It is not necessary to abolish a rural division; the NP should have directed its energies both to explaining why a rural division should not go and to putting together suggestions reflecting communities of interest
Consequently, the NP submission is only useful to the extent that it proposes certain arrangements between towns and cities especially in the country. But it cannot be taken as a proposal which even attempts to fulfil the criteria of the Act. As such the NP suggestions are akin to a letter to oneself with a CC sent to the Commissioners. Useful for propaganda purposes but not meant to be taken seriously.
2.All suggestions and comments on suggestions are being directed to four independent public servants in every State. These are the State Auditor General and the Surveyor General plus the AEC Commissioner and the AEC State Director.
These public servants are required to meet the numbers criteria and to use their best endeavours to satisfy the community of interest criteria.
For a submission to be taken seriously it must try to attempt the same reasoning process going through the minds of the Commissioners who will try to keep changes to a minimum and to establish boundaries where they can based either on existing boundaries; LGA; natural features eg rivers, main roads etc. When– as always happens, the community of interest criteria runs up against the requirements of the numbers, the Commissioners tend to (in the cities) to move whole suburbs.
So be it a party or some independent proposer, if you want your ideas to be taken seriously you must apply the same methodology throughout your submission.
As for political party submissions going straight to the bin it’s not my own experience, although sometimes you get one argument accepted but not the way you would do the consequential movements.
Let me give two examples. In 2008 for WA,in the ALP suggestions I went through all the options facing the Commissioners in drawing the Division of Swan and in so doing I predicted what the Libs would suggest and countered according to the community of interest criteria.
In 2006, in NSW the ALP provided detailed arguments explaining why there was little community of interest between the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury LGA’s even though both had been together in the Division of Macquarie from 1984. Effectively, the Commissioners accepted this argument but not the ALP suggestion of consequential boundaries.
3. In 2006, the NSW Commissioners spelt out detailed reasons for their general approach. They argued that besides the Southern Highlands the Hunter and Blue Mountains were also regions where the metropolitan areas could reasonably be connected with more rural areas and also satisfy the community of interest criteria. Hence the new Macquarie.
We can surely expect the Commissioners 2006 approach to be also adopted this time. That’s why all three major parties basically keep Macquarie as it was drawn in 2006. (But not Charles Richardson who tries to remove the Bathurst/Lithgow area.He can’t have either read or appreciated what the Commissioners wrote in 2006).
4.On Hunter/Paterson Ben Raue has criticised the ALP suggestion and he clearly thinks the Lib proposal is superior. I think he’s wrong and that he also doesn’t understand the implications of what the 2006 Commissioners meant. My mum lives in Forster and on my watch your not going to see an ALP submission saying that Tuncurry be split from Forster.( in his suggestion the MP for Lyne, Rob Oakshott also opposes splitting Tuncurry away). Sure, by taking out Bulahdelah, you’ll have a less satisfying line on the map but you’ll better fulfil community of interest.
Next, examine the differences carefully between the ALP and Libs here. What the Libs are saying is that Mudgee, Muswellbrook and Singleton relate better with Myall Lakes than with Cessnock. But Singleton with around 14,000 electors and with around 20% of its local workforce also engaged in mining also has 22 coal mines employing nearly 7,000 people. Most of its workforce comes from Cessnock which no longer has operating mines. So that answers the question of which connects best with what.
5.Only the ALP has taken the 2006 Commissioners general strategy and then applied that reasoning to its own suggestions. We’ve just seen that in the Hunter and the same is true in the Southern Highlands. Check what I wrote in the ALP’s suggestions for the South Coast and in our comments to be released tomorrow (mon). The difference here between the ALP and Libs is that whilst we both move Hughes more into Liverpool, the Libs unlike the ALP attempts to replace Tumut/Tumbarumba(which we both remove from Eden Monaro) with Goulburn.
6. Raue thinks the ALP has made bigger changes than the Libs. In fact we suggest 14% of electors be transferred, the Libs 15.6%. both are below the 16.5% of the 2006 Commissioners.
7. Expect the Libs in their comments to rave on about political effects. In my view it’s never helpful to go in that direction as all the Commissioners will ever do is cherry pick ideas they might find helpful to themselves in discharging their obligations under the Electoral Act.
But permit me to observe that the effect of NSW losing seats in 2006 and this year must result in Paterson moving south; Dobell moving north; Gilmore moving north and Hughes taking more of Liverpool. These movements will all help the ALP and are the opposite of what happened say as a result of the 2000 redistribution which resulted in the ALP losing both Paterson and Dobell in 2001.
8. its no surprise that in QLD the LNP made no comments.
The MP for Maranoa, Bruce Scott has disowned the LNP suggestion that Mt Isa etc go into his seat with Warwick and Stanthorpe removed. He instead has opted for a hybrid of the ALP suggestion that Maranoa make up its numbers from Flynn.
The MP for Fisher, Peter Slipper has endorsed the ALP suggestion for his seat.
The MP for Bowman, Andrew Laming has disowned the LNP suggestions for his seat.
9.Beware the certain NP argument that the ALP suggestion will make the Division of Parkes cover half the State. Not a soul, no-one, nan nah thinks the western division towns relate more to Orange than to Dubbo.
Second the NP breathtaking hypocrisy is exposed once you realise that in QLD they have suggested that Maranoa be made more than 80% larger and that it be more than 20% larger than the entire state of NSW!!
10. Finally, in both NSW and QLD, in the ALP suggestions, some of our own marginals have been weakened. That’s because we decided to draw up submissions which had a consistent theme and approach throughout the State. To hope to be considered you have to be credible throughout. Of course, there are always other but if you look at both the ALP suggestions for QLD and NSW you’ll see that we’ve tried to reckon in the approach adopted in each State by the then Commissioners.
For a reader to judge these things he/she will need to both read the suggestions/comments of the parties and others AND also the proposals and final reports of the 2006 Commissioners.That way you’ll understand far more than either simply following your hunches or by allowing your prejudices to influence your opinion of these things.
Shane Easson
Shane Easson,
Your criticisms of the conservative parties putting Goulburn in E-M and Mount Isa in Maranoa ring a bit hollow, considering Labor proposed those arrangements last time.
Why were they good arrangements then but bad now?
Duh
Of course and our ideas in 2006 for the country in QLD and NSW were ignored. It allowed the Nats to in NSw to run its campaign re Calare.That still sticks in my craw and we’re not making the same mistake again.
But it’s not about what we said then etc……what counts is what is the Commissioners reasoning. Go back to what I wrote.
Not sure I deserved a “Duh”. It’s a reasonable question.
The post above speculated why the AEC tends to ignore suggestions from major parties. I’d say having the major parties passionately arguing for an arrangement at one redistribution, then arguing against it the next has a lot to do with it. As for Commissioner’s reasoning- cynics would ask what in their previous reasoning warrants major changes to Paterson, for example (or putting Mt Isa in Maranoa in 2006)?
Obviously the conservative parties are just as bad (eg proposing Sutherland into Cunningham last time and opposing it this time), so it wasn’t a dig at you personally or the ALP specifically, if that’s what you thought.
Does the AEC ever take into account minor party suggestions?
MDM- No offence taken.
Tom: Of course all suggestions would be considered by the Commissioners. I’d imagine they’d take note of Ind MP’s.But any submission, no matter who from would be of value provided the Commissioners think it helps them.
I’ve been trying to explain how I think the Commissioners work. I also think that in NSW the ALP suggestion has pretty much followed the logic of the previous Commissioners in 2006. That has particular relevance in the outer suburban and regional areas. Within Sydney itself I make no confident predictions.
Let’s assume I’m right re the Commissioners general strategy as it applies to the Hunter, Blue Mountains and the Southern Highlands. Also, further assume that what the ALP does with Hunter, Paterson, Eden Monaro, Gilmore and Hughes follows the logic of 2006.
If so, what would you do if your the Libs? The sensible thing to do is probably accept that the numbers don’t favour you this time and that the best that can be done is to propose the ‘least worst’ outcome from your point of view but also following what you think will be the Commissioners formulae.
But what if some MP or candidate gets some mad gleam in their eye. The MP for Paterson, Bob Baldwin was first elected in 1996, then lost in 1998 but won the seat back in 2001. At the 2006 redistribution a significant section of Maitland was removed from his seat which was crucial to him just scrapping back at the 2007 election. The next Parliament redistribution should mean that just as when Paterson was first drawn in 1991 that it will again be a Maitland based seat.
But Baldwin knows that the State seat of Upper Hunter, which contains Gloucester and Dungog also has Singleton and Muswellbrook. He thinks to himself, why, after all these years of struggle, driving a car with my name plastered all over it, can’t I have a decent seat where my heart’s not always in my mouth?
So, he comes up with the Forster to Mudgee seat. Bit of a problem with Lyne which has to pick up electors with the logical place to start being Gloucester. Problem solved if we just take Tuncurry out. (Stupid idea but not if your completely fixated on having a better seat).
His idea then goes to the Party organisation and to Don Harwin MLC ( my equivalent in the Libs for drafting redistributions).
The chances are that the Libs buy Baldwin’s idea. Why should they propose to surrender a seat. Besides, the knock on effects mainly just apply to the seat of Hunter.
To me that’s exactly what happened. Similarly with the idea of placing Goulburn in Eden Monaro.
However, to me the Libs really blundered with its country seats. (read the ALP comments o suggestions on the AEC website). I’m sure their ideas will be rejected. But the Commissioners, in trying to display fairmindedness may give the Libs most of their ideas in Sydney.
As for the Nats, they have to think about their own base. It’s mostly why they came up with a suggestion reeking of malaporionment. NB A consequence of their 2006 ‘size matters’ campaign is they are forced to persist with the ridiculous notion that Western Division towns can fit with Orange instead of with Dubbo.
Finally, don’t ignore that sometimes silly seeming arrangements either decided or proposed are the result of the knock on or consequence of what you’ve done elsewhere. That might explain the ALP’s proposed Goulburn in Eden Monaro in 2006 and the Commissioners Tumut/Tumbarumba in EM and Broken Hill in Farrer.
But it doesn’t explain our Mt Isa in Maranoa in 2006 or the LNP Mt Isa in Maranoa in 2009.
Simply put, we both blundered. For that there’s no excuse.
Shane Easson
I think Shane and I will have to agree to disagree about Paterson. While some of the specifics are a bit dodgy, I quite like the idea of a clearly urban Maitland/Cessnock seat and a clear rural seat beyond, instead of two mixed urban/rural seats.
I do agree though that apart from that, Labor’s rural suggestions are better than the Liberals. Leaving BH in Farrer is near indefensible, for example. But in Sydney I think the Liberal suggestions seem to work better. If the Committee did what Shane speculated and combined Labor’s rural plan with Liberals’ Sydney plan (maybe by merging Macarthur and Hume), it would actually be a pretty good outcome.