This includes profiles of the three electorates, maps and an overall summary of the ACT political situation.

This doesn’t mean I will necessarily be producing similar guides to the upcoming Northern Territory election. I am currently working on the federal election guide, and 25 separate profiles for the NT is a lot more work than three for the ACT.

A by-election will be held soon in the state seat of Melbourne following the resignation of Labor MP Bronwyn Pike. The race is expected to be a head-to-head contest between Labor and the Greens.

A by-election is expected for the state seat of Sydney later in the year after legislation was passed prohibiting state MPs from running for council. The law was universally considered to be targeted at Clover Moore, the independent Lord Mayor of Sydney and local state MP. She will need to resign from Parliament in order to run for a third term as Lord Mayor in September. Her seat will likely be a contest between the Liberal Party and the Greens, although another independent or Labor candidate could also be a contender.

I have also recently completed the Google Earth map of Victorian wards, updated for the 2012 local government elections. A number of councils have changed their ward boundaries since the 2008 election map was produced.

Apart from updating those two by-election profiles, I don’t plan to post any more on the blog over the next few months. I’ve just started a new role that will occupy most of my spare time until the NSW council elections in September. In my spare time I have started working on maps for the 2013 federal election guide. If I have time I will also be covering the elections in the ACT and the Northern Territory, but most of the time will be spent getting the federal guide ready.

The system varies wildly – with some areas not voting, and with many parts of England covered by two different levels of local government. Scottish voters will be voting using the proportional representation, while English voters will be voting using first past the post. Some councils will be voting for a directly-elected Mayor, while others will be voting on whether their council should directly elect their Mayor in the future.

I’ll be focusing on the biggest of these elections, which is that for Mayor of London and the London Assembly.

The Greater London Authority (GLA) was created by the Blair Government in 2000, covering the entire London metropolitan region, which has a population of over 7.7 million people.

The Greater London region consists of 32 Boroughs, as well as the City of London (counted here as a borough). Each of these boroughs have their own elected council underneath the GLA.

Map of the 32 London boroughs and the City of London.

The Greater London region and the boroughs were created in 1965, and from 1965 to 1986 they were led by the Greater London Council (GLC). The GLC came into conflict with Margaret Thatcher under its leader Ken Livingstone, and in 1986 the GLC was abolished. There was no London-wide level of local government from 1986 to 2000.

The GLA was established as part of the Blair government’s program of devolution, which also saw the creation of the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly.

The Mayor is elected by a ballot of all voters in the Greater London region, using a modified version of preference voting. Voters can only mark two preferences. After primary votes are counted, all candidates other than the top two are eliminated, and preferences are distributed.

The London Assembly is elected using the Mixed Member Proportional, similar to that used in Scotland, Wales and New Zealand. 14 members are elected to represent single-member districts, using first past the post. A further 11 members are elected on Londonwide lists as a top up. Parties must win 5% of the vote to qualify for seats.

London Assembly constituencies, showing election result from 2000 and 2008 elections.

The first Mayoral election in 2000 was won by Ken Livingstone. Livingstone had served as Labour leader of the GLC from 1981 to 1986, but he was blocked from running as the Labour candidate for Mayor by Tony Blair. He won with 57.1% of the two-candidate vote.

The first London Assembly election saw the Conservatives win a majority of districts, winning 8 seats to 6 for the Labour Party. Overall Labour and Conservatives each won 9 seats, the Liberal Democrats won 4 and the Greens won 3.

Livingstone rejoined Labour in early 2004, and was re-elected as Mayor as the Labour candidate, with 55.4% of the two-candidate vote. Labour lost two of their seats on the Assembly, while the Greens lost one, with the Lib Dems gaining one and UKIP gaining two.

Results of the 2004 Mayoral election by borough, Livingstone in red, Norris (Con) in blue.

In 2008, Livingstone was challenged by Conservative MP Boris Johnson. Johnson had a high profile as a celebrity politician, and won 53.2% of the two-candidate vote. The Conservatives increased their seats from 9 to 11, while Labour also gained ground. The two former UKIP members lost their seats, while the BNP won a single seat.

Results of the 2008 Mayoral election by borough, Livingstone in red, Johnson in blue.

After Boris Johnson’s four years as Mayor, Johnson is again facing off against Livingstone. Johnson has led in most polls. In mid-April his lead narrowed down to 51%, but has since grown out to 56%. While it isn’t certain who will win, Livingstone hasn’t run a strong campaign and Johnson has held a lead in all polls.

Another question in the polls will be about the number of seats the Conservatives will win. The Assembly may amend the Mayor’s budget by a two-thirds vote of the council, so the Conservatives need one third of the Assembly (nine seats) to block the other parties from changing the budget set by a Conservative mayor. The Conservatives won nine seats at the first two elections and eleven in 2008. If they were to fall back to eight seats they would be forced to work with other parties in the Assembly to pass their budget. It seems unlikely, but the unpopularity of the Conservatives may see Boris re-elected but see his party lose seats in the Assembly.

You can download Google Earth maps of London boroughs and London Assembly constituencies from the maps page.

Brisbane elections are more like state elections than most local council elections, particularly in other capital cities. Brisbane’s city council  is elected by twenty-six single-member wards. These wards are only slightly smaller than a state electorate. The Council is led by a Lord Mayor who is directly elected.

This stands Brisbane apart from all other councils in Australia. While most other Queensland councils have a similar electoral system, their size doesn’t compare to Brisbane.

In many ways the City of Brisbane resembles a big American or Canadian city in the way that it is governed: large wards elected without proportional representation, a single government with a large budget and mandate, and a directly elected Mayor. Brisbane City elections are also dominated by political parties: in contrast most Australian council elections are dominated by independents, with political parties only dominating some urban councils in Sydney and Melbourne.

The Lord Mayor of Brisbane also has by far the biggest individual mandate for any single-member elected position in Australia. Over 500,000 people voted in the Brisbane mayoral ballot on Saturday. In comparison, approximately 90,000 people vote in each electorate at a federal election. Only Senators representing mainland states have more constituents, and they share those constituents with eleven other Senators.

The LNP’s Campbell Newman won the Lord Mayoralty off the ALP in 2004, with 52.5% of the two-candidate vote, but the ALP maintained a majority of councillors. In 2008, Newman was re-elected with a swing of over 13%, with the LNP gaining control of the council. Newman resigned as Lord Mayor in 2011 after he was elected as Leader of the Liberal National Party on a state level, and he was succeeded as Lord Mayor by Graham Quirk.

Result of the Brisbane City ward election, 2008.

The overall result on Saturday wasn’t dramatic. It was a big win for the LNP, but not quite as dramatic as the massive wipe-out that the ALP suffered at the March state election. The result also demonstrated that Brisbane voters clearly are able to differentiate between electing their local councillor and voting for a Mayor.

In the Mayoral ballot, Liberal National incumbent Graham Quirk won with a two-party result of 68.3%. This was a swing of over 2% to the LNP compared to Campbell Newman’s second big win in 2008.

When Newman had first won the mayoralty in 2004 he only won a majority in 12 of 26 wards. In 2008, he won all 26. In 2012, Quirk won a majority in 25 wards, with the ALP eking out a majority in the southwest Brisbane ward of Richlands.

The Greens’ candidate, Andrew Bartlett, won 10.7% of the vote, a swing of 2.3% compared to 2008. The Greens gained a swing in all but two of the wards. While this is a substantial swing compared to 2008, it was only a 0.6% swing compared to Drew Hutton’s 10.1% result in 2004.

The result was quite different when it comes to the wards. Overall the results were:

• Liberal National – 56.8% (+4.2%) – 18 wards (+2)
• Labor – 32.3% (-5.0%) – 7 wards (-3)
• Greens – 8.5% (-1.3%)
• Others – 2.4% (+2.1%) – 1 ward (+1)

Result of the Brisbane City ward election, 2012. Light blue wards were won by the LNP off the ALP.

The LNP maintained their majority on the council with a swing towards them. The LNP gained the ALP’s wards of Central, Doboy and Karawatha. The LNP lost the ward of Tennyson to independent ex-LNP councillor Nicole Johnston.

The Greens vote on the surface went down, but this is entirely due to a reduced number of Greens candidates. In 2008, the Greens stood in 23 wards. In 2012, the Greens only stood in 18 wards. When comparing the vote in those 18 wards where the Greens stood in 2012, the Greens vote increased by 0.02% – effectively the same result.

Overall this was a decisive endorsement of the Liberal National Party, with a very large majority for Graham Quirk in the mayoral vote, and a very solid LNP majority on the council.

The defeat of Labor by such a massive margin raises other questions about how well Queensland’s electoral system represents the will of the people, and whether it will be able to produce fair results in a multi-party system.

Our single-member-electorate system tends to produce results in Australia that are not proportional, but still give a solid proportion of the seats in parliament to the defeated major party. While the winning party usually wins a majority of seats without winning a majority of votes, the other major party (counting the Coalition as a single party) usually wins enough to be able to form a credible opposition. The lack of proportionality falls hardest on minor parties, who are usually locked out.

Yet there is nothing about single-member electorates that ensures such a balanced result, with one party winning a solid majority, but leaving the party enough seats to function in Parliament and serve as an effective opposition. The distribution of swings can mean the same statewide result can produce wildly different outcomes.

This can be seen in Queensland, where Labor managed 7/89 seats on 26.6%, compared to New South Wales a year earlier, where Labor managed 20/93 seats on 25.5%.

A large part of the explanation as to why Labor was hit so hard can be found in the high vote for minor parties. The Greens and Katter’s Australian Party together polled over 19%, with an additional 4% for other parties and independents.

When large minor parties take a large part of the vote and fail to win many seats, the result is that the dominant major party can win a super-majority with about half of the vote. This is particularly the case when most of those minor-party voters choose not to preference, as they did in Queensland.

A single-member system can become much more severely disproportionate and produce more lopsided results when a large number of voters cast their ballots for minor parties, and then choose to exhaust, effectively taking their votes out of the race. Katter’s party polled 13% and the Greens polled 7%. While there was a small number of seats where these parties were in the top two, most of these votes ended up exhausting, taking a fifth of Queensland’s voters out of the game.

As long as there are two large minor parties, a large proportion of voters will be taken out of play, and as long as those two parties take a large chunk of Labor’s vote away, the party will find it hard to compete. Even if the party can win back many of its seats in 2015, it will find it very hard to return to a majority without working more closely with either of those minor parties.

If Queenslanders continue to vote in such large numbers (over 23%) for candidates outside the major parties, the issue of proportional representation isn’t going to go away. We will continue to see around a quarter of the voters barely represented in that Parliament, and if the voters that Katter’s party and the Greens have taken from Labor don’t go back to Labor as preferences, it becomes very hard for the ALP to build the numbers needed to win government. This is going to be a long-term structural problem for Labor in both New South Wales and Queensland.

I think it’s a mistake for people to focus on campaigning for a proportional upper house. It is difficult to explain why we would create a second, less powerful house that would be elected by a different system. If the current system is unfair, why not change it? Extremely lopsided results like this one can make the issue of electoral reform relevant for people who wouldn’t normally see it as something that affects their lives.

In 2001, the governing centre-left New Democratic Party was decimated at the provincial elections in British Columbia, only winning 2 of 79 seats in the Assembly. The new Liberal government held 77. The extreme result was such that the issue of electoral reform took off, and a referendum on electoral reform almost passed at a referendum in 2005, only failing due to a 60% threshold imposed by the government.

History of electoral reform campaigning in countries like New Zealand suggests that the issue gains power as minor parties grow stronger, and in different parts of the political spectrum. At the moment the issue of electoral reform in federal politics largely benefits the Greens. If a significant right-wing minor party was to emerge, the issue would have a much large base of support.

I don’t think Katter’s Australian Party are going to disappear overnight. Australia’s right-wing minor parties remain divided and scattered, with different parties in each state. As long as there isn’t a right-wing minor party with similar levels of success to the Greens, able to win ground from the Liberals and Nationals, issues of electoral reform and fairness will be confined to the left. If Katter’s party is able to replicate its success on a national stage, or could bring in people who have supported other small right-wing parties, it may well produce the kinds of results that usually force a change on this issue.

If Labor continues to have its base eaten away on the left by the Greens and on the right by parties like the KAP, the electoral system will become a long-term problem for the centre-left. If the issue is no longer seen as one that only benefits the Greens, we may see some real movement on it.

Considering the scale of the Liberal National success, I’m going to focus instead on the other parties. Needless to say, the Liberal National Party gained seats everywhere. They gained Labor seats on the Gold Coast and throughout Far North Queensland. They knocked off the last Labor seat on the Sunshine Coast and 1-2 of Labor’s three remaining seats in Central Queensland. Meanwhile they well and truly dominated the Brisbane area. Before the election the LNP held only six seats in the greater Brisbane area: now Labor only holds 4-5.

The LNP also managed to regain the seats of Burnett and Beaudesert off defectors Rob Messenger and Aidan McLindon, and regained the seats of Nanango and Maryborough off other independents.

Labor now holds 6-9 seats after the election. These seats are:

• Bundamba – Ipswich suburbs, 21.2% margin.
• Inala – Brisbane suburbs, 21.5% margin.
• Mulgrave – Cairns suburbs, 8.1% margin.
• Rockhampton – Central Queensland, 17.9% margin.
• South Brisbane – Inner Brisbane, 15.0% margin.
• Woodridge – Logan, 25.4% margin.

And they might also win:

• Bulimba – Inner Brisbane, 7.8% margin.
• Mackay – Central Queensland, 16.7% margin.
• Yeerongpilly – Brisbane suburbs, 8.7% margin.

If you look at these seats on the pendulum, it is a clear result. Bundamba, Inala, Rockhampton and Woodridge are the party’s four safest seats, with margins over 17%. The next two most marginal are Ipswich and Mackay. Mackay is currently undecided, and Ipswich was lost with a massive 20.8% swing, as predicted by commenters on this blog. South Brisbane is not much further down the pendulum. After South Brisbane you pass another ten seats before you reach Yeerongpilly, Bulimba and Mulgrave, which all had margins of 7-9%. Curtis Pitt’s survival in Mulgrave is largely due to a massive vote for Katter’s Australian Party undermining the LNP swing, while in Bulimba and Yeerongpilly the Labor MPs managed to keep the swings to lower levels from which they have a chance of survival.

Labor’s defeats put them in a severely weakened position. They now hold no seats north of the Brisbane, all the way until you get to Mackay and Rockhampton. They also hold no seats on the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast or in Townsville. In the area of Brisbane south of the river, Ipswich and Logan, the party has been reduced to 4-6 seats, compared to 19 before the election.

In addition, the party holds 1-2 seats in Central Queensland and only one in North Queensland. In 2009 Labor won all three seats in Townsville, as well as all four covering Cairns, and Mount Isa. Out of these eight, Labor has held on to one, losing six to the LNP and one to Katter’s party.

Katter’s Australian Party performed strongly for a minor party, holding on to two seats and playing a large role elsewhere. The party focused on two elements: campaigning on coal-seam gas in rural parts of Southern Queensland, and campaigning on Bob Katter’s name in the far north. Poll Bludger’s regional breakdown of results shows that the party was far more successful in the north. The party averaged over 20% across the far north, the interior and the north coast, as well as winning two seats. While the party did well in seats like Nanango and Beaudesert, it wasn’t enough to pry them away from the LNP. Overall the KAP came in the top two in twelve seats.

The Greens saw their total statewide vote go backwards, from 8.4% to 7.6%. In the Greens’ key seat of Mount Coot-tha, the Greens went back 3%, with the sitting Labor MP Andrew Fraser going back by 8%. The Greens managed to come second in Indooroopilly, where the Greens and Labor went back by a total of 15%, leaving the sitting Liberal National MP with over 61% of the primary vote. I could only find one other seat where the Greens came in the top two, with the party winning 17% in Noosa, which put them ahead of Labor and the KAP. Looking at the breakdown, the Greens went backwards in every part of Queensland except on the Sunshine Coast.

I’ve now uploaded the updated version of the 2009-2012 map for Google Earth, with the seats coloured as of the latest results. You can also download a time-series map which allows you to flick between the results of the 2001, 2004, 2006, 2009 and 2012 elections.

Results of the Queensland state election in South East Queensland, including Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Ipswich and parts of the Sunshine Coast.

Results of the Queensland state election in Central Queensland, including Mackay and Rockhampton.

Results of the Queensland state election in North Queensland, including Cairns and Townsville

When you look at the voting figures, it is terrible, but not unprecedented. Labor’s primary vote of 26.6% is higher than the 25.5% recorded at the 2011 NSW election. Likewise, the two-party-preferred swing will result in a similar 2PP result to the ALP’s defeat in 2011 in New South Wales.

But when you look at the seat-by-seat results, this was devastating. The LNP’s vote was incredibly well distributed, and a primary vote of less than 50% allowed the LNP to win a massive supermajority in the Legislative Assembly.

As of 10:30 Queensland time, the ABC is projecting 78 seats for the LNP, 7 seats for the ALP, 2 seats for Katter’s Australian Party, and two seats for independents.

There are probably a number of reasons for this result. Part of it was caused by the high vote for Katter’s party. Along with winning two seats in far north Queensland, Katter’s party performed very strongly in a large number of seats, and outpolled Labor in many seats.

An immediate cause is Queensland’s electoral system. Optional preferential voting, single-member districts and a lack of ultra-safe Labor seats meant that a large LNP victory almost wiped out the Labor caucus.

This reminds me of a number of Canadian elections, including the 1993 federal election, when the governing Progressive Conservative party was reduced to only two seats. At the 2001 British Columbian provincial election, the governing New Democratic Party was wiped out, only holding two seats compared to 77 seats for the Liberal Party.

We don’t usually see these results in Australia, but there’s nothing about our electoral system that stops them. It’s possible for a single-member result to produce an overwhelmingly lopsided result which doesn’t reflect the votes. While we rarely get a result that proportionally reflects our vote, the result is usually diverse enough for both parties to remain viable. Both parties usually have a solid core of safe seats that sustain them in hard times.

In contrast, Labor is going to have an extremely tough time now. With only 7 MPs, they will be completely unable to serve as an effective opposition, and will have very few resources to keep the Newman government in check. It raises interesting questions about the need for proportional representation, but I will blog about that later.

I plan on writing a second blog post focusing on the pattern of results, but here I want to focus on the general trends.

First of all, as I said earlier, this is no ordinary Labor defeat. This is a severe defeat that will make it difficult for Labor to compete in Queensland in the coming years and will likely make life harder for Labor in Queensland at next year’s federal election.

As for the reasons, I normally shy away from mixing federal and state political issues, but I can’t imagine that the state of Labor federally didn’t play a role. Whether it is the Gillard vs Rudd feuding, the carbon tax or the hung parliament, Labor’s difficulties federally surely made life harder for Bligh and increased the walloping she suffered tonight. Suddenly it’s not so hard to imagine Labor getting all but wiped out in Queensland at the next federal election.

On a broader scale, I would argue that Labor’s collapse, both in NSW and Queensland, is in part the consequence of the ongoing crisis of identity that has racked the ALP, and this crisis of identity could see the federal ALP suffer a similar defeat in 2013. Greens preferences won’t save the ALP from itself – at some point the party needs to work out what it is about, and give people a positive reason to vote for them. Otherwise defeats like that seen in Queensland will be repeated across Australia.

It was clearly a brilliant result for the Liberal National Party, but I think it does indicate that, regardless of the details, the conservative side of politics was headed for a big win. I can’t imagine that the LNP wouldn’t have been able to win without Campbell Newman. Indeed I can’t see how Labor could have beaten an unmerged National-Liberal coalition, although they may have held on to a few more Brisbane seats.

It was an impressive result for Katter’s party. It is difficult for any minor party to win single-member seats, and they won two of them. They also won large proportions of the vote in quite a few electorates.

For the Greens, I think it was a decent result in a hard election. I’m certainly not going to claim it was a fantastic result. Overall the Greens vote went backwards and they didn’t manage to come in the top two in any of those inner-city seats where the Greens have tried to challenge the major parties. Interestingly the Greens came second in Noosa.

As I said after the election in New South Wales, I don’t believe that these kinds of elections are fertile ground for the Greens. The Greens’ big result in the federal election was in the opposite climate: where people are less focused on changing government and open to alternatives. Usually in elections like this one in Queensland people go straight to the major party headed for government.

After the New South Wales election, there was a lot of criticism, both internally and externally, blaming the NSW Greens’ structure, public image and ideological direction for the failure to win Marrickville and the relatively small swing gained. The Queensland Greens ran a very different campaign and work very differently to the Greens NSW, yet similarly were unable to turn a massive defeat for the ALP to their benefit. I think this suggests that greater forces are at play. This isn’t to downplay the importance of all parties being self-reflexive. It’s just important to understand that external factors can play a big role in electoral fates, particularly for a minor party.

Tomorrow I plan on posting some more information on the geographical breakdown, as well as some thoughts on what this lopsided result says about our electoral system. For now, here are some maps.

The following maps show South-East Queensland and Far North Queensland at the 2001, 2009 and 2012 elections. Red represents Labor, blue represents Liberal/Liberal National, light green represents National, light blue represents seats won by the LNP at the 2012 election, and purple represents One Nation in 2001, and Katter’s Australian Party in 2012.

Results of the 2001 Queensland state election in South-East Queensland.

Results of the 2009 Queensland state election in South-East Queensland.

Results of the 2012 Queensland state election in South-East Queensland.

Results of the 2001 Queensland state election in Far North Queensland, including Cairns and Townsville.

Results of the 2009 Queensland state election in Far North Queensland, including Cairns and Townsville.

Results of the 2012 Queensland state election in Far North Queensland, including Cairns and Townsville.

You might be interested in reading my prediction for the 2009 Queensland election. It appears in two parts.

For the record, last time I predicted a hung parliament (so trendy!), with 42 Labor, 42 LNP, 5 Independents and no One Nation or Greens. I overestimated the LNP total by 8, the independents by one, and underestimated Labor by nine. It wasn’t a great prediction.

The time I’m predicting a massive defeat for Labor. The overall figures are:

Liberal National 68 (+34), Labor 15 (-36), Katter’s Australian Party 3 (+3) and Independents 3 (-1)

I’m predicting that the two sitting KAP MPs, Shane Knuth and Aidan McLindon, will hold on to their seats of Dalrymple and Beaudesert, effectively making them losses for the LNP, who won them in 2009. I also predict that Katter’s Party will win Mount Isa, where Robbie Katter is running. I predict that three of the four independents will hold their seats, but that Dolly Pratt’s seat of Nanango will return to the LNP, although I think this will be the next best seat for the KAP.

I then predict that the Liberal Nationals will gain a further 35 seats from the ALP, on top of the ALP’s loss of Mount Isa to Robbie Katter.

I predict that, after a close race, Campbell Newman will win the seat of Ashgrove and become Premier. Kate Jones has been a strong opponent, but I haven’t seen a single poll that has had her in the lead, even if they have been very close. I just can’t see her holding on against the tide.

It will be easier to list all the fourteen seats I expect Labor to hold on to, and these are Algester, Bundamba, Capalaba, Inala, Logan, Lytton, Mackay, Nudgee, Rockhampton, Sandgate, South Brisbane, Stretton, Sunnybank, Waterford and Woodridge.

I predict that the safest Labor seat to fall will be Ipswich (16.7%), which is their only seat with more than a 10% margin where they will lose.

In terms of geography, I’m expecting Labor to be wiped out in a number of regions. I expect the LNP to gain all four Labor seats on the Gold Coast and the last remaining Labor seat on the Sunshine Coast, as well as Toowoomba North and two of Labor’s three seats in Ipswich. I expect Labor to be wiped out in the Cairns and Townsville areas, and lose additional seats in Central Queensland, only holding on to the urban seats of Mackay and Rockhampton.

With the exception of those two central Queensland towns, I expect Labor’s survivors to be restricted to the greater Brisbane area, with most concentrated at the southern end of the metropolitan area.

Labor will hold on to four seats along Moreton Bay, and a block of eight contiguous seats in southern Brisbane, Ipswich and Logan. I expect Anna Bligh to be the only MP in the centre of Brisbane to hold on, while seats like Mount Coot-tha and Brisbane Central.

As for the Greens, I don’t think they will win any seats. However I think with the Labor vote collapsing the Greens should come second in Indooroopilly, Mount Coot-tha and possibly even Brisbane Central. I don’t believe the QLD Greens have ever come in the top two in a seat at a general election, and this will be a step forward.

Now here are some maps illustrating the prediction. Labor seats are red, existing LNP seats are blue, LNP seats gained off Labor and independents are light blue, Independent seats are yellow, and KAP seats are purple.

Election prediction for Queensland state election.

Election prediction for Queensland state election, zoomed in on South-East Queensland.

The following day, the Greens preselected Cr Irene Doutney as the party’s lead candidate and Lord Mayoral candidate for the election, which is due in September.

The ALP and the Greens, along with the Liberal Party, are all placed in opposition to the local juggernaut of Clover Moore and her allies. Moore has served as an independent member of the Legislative Assembly since 1988, and has served as Lord Mayor of Sydney since 2004.

She has been a popular Lord Mayor, solidly holding her state seat and easily retaining the mayoralty in 2008. Five of Moore’s supporters were elected to the nine-member council in 2008, along with two Greens and one each from the ALP and the Liberal Party.

As Lord Mayor, Moore has clearly appealed to the left-wing voters in the inner suburbs that make up the majority of the City of Sydney electorate, in suburbs like Glebe, Paddington, Surry Hills, Ultimo, Pyrmont, Redfern and the suburbs of South Sydney.

While this has allowed her to maintain her hold on her seat and her mayoralty, it has made her unpopular with the right-wing Sydney press. Right-wing shock jocks like Alan Jones and the Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph have targetted her policies, in particular her plans to encourage cycling in the city by building an extensive network of cycleways. She has endured similar attacks from Premier Barry O’Farrell and his ministers.

At the 2011 state election, Liberal candidate Adrian Bartels outpolled the Labor and Greens candidates, and reduced Moore’s two-party margin to 3.1%.

The Liberal Party clearly are aiming to see Clover Moore removed from power. Her agenda stands in direct contrast to the new Coalition government, and current figures suggest that the Liberal Party would be well-placed to gain her seat of Sydney if she was removed.

The first part of the Liberal Party plan has already begun to unfold. The O’Farrell government has announced plans to ban Members of Parliament from running for local government elections.

There are currently a large number of councillors sitting in the NSW Parliament, including Liberals, Greens, Labor MPs and Christian Democrats. Amongst all of these councillors, Clover Moore appears to be the only one who plans to stand for another term.

If the planned legislation is passed, Moore would likely resign from Parliament before September, allowing her to continue as Lord Mayor. This will result in a by-election, which will likely be a contest between the Liberals, the Greens and possibly a Moore ally.

The puzzling element of this plan is that, while it gives the Liberals an extra seat in the Parliament, it leaves Moore solidly in control of the City of Sydney, and may indeed cause a backlash against the Liberal Party at the next council elections.

If the Liberal Party really want to remove Clover Moore’s influence over the City, I expect they will do the same as the last two state Coalition governments. Both the Askin government in the 1960s and the Greiner govenrment in the 1980s started with a large City of Sydney covering similar territory to the modern City, and then broke it in half, creating another municipality in the southern parts of the City.

Since most local government boundaries in the Sydney region were redrawn in 1947/1948, most local governments have not seen another change. Concord and Drummoyne were merged in the early 2000s, and there have been some other small changes. Apart from these, the only changes have been to the City of Sydney and its neighbours. In the late 1940s the City of Sydney expanded to cover a number of small councils covering modern-day South Sydney and other neighbours.

Since that time, every new government has redrawn the City for its own interests. Askin’s government shrunk the City, and then the Wran government expanded it. Under Greiner, South Sydney was restored, covering most of the suburban territory now part of the City of Sydney. Most recently, in 2003-2004 the Cities of Sydney and South Sydney were sacked and then merged, in the expectation that the ALP’s Michael Lee would be elected Lord Mayor. Lee was defeated by Moore, who had been a member of the expanded City of Sydney prior to its sacking in 1988.

There is intense speculation amongst local councillors around NSW that the O’Farrell government is planning a new round of amalgamations of local councils, but I don’t think that is their plan for the City of Sydney.

Any expansion of the territory of the City of Sydney in any direction would likely see Moore retain her control, as she is popular both amongst the Liberal voters to the east and the Labor and Greens voters to the west in Marrickville and Balmain. She would likely eat into the other parties’ votes in those areas, and would remain Lord Mayor of a more powerful and richer council.

If the government really wishes to undermine Moore, they would do what the last two Liberal governments did: cut it in half. Moore’s base is strongest in suburban parts of the City of Sydney. If most of these areas were broken off into South Sydney, or handed over to neighbouring councils such as Woollahra, Leichhardt and Marrickville, then the City of Sydney would be far more dominated by the Liberal-voting CBD and a small number of neighbouring suburbs.

If Moore wished, she could then seek to serve as Mayor of a new suburban council, but this council would govern without the prestige or the financial boom that comes from governing over the Sydney CBD. It is likely she would walk away from local government in such circumstances. If the Liberals have already forced her out of the Parliament, this would leave her without a platform, and the Liberals with a far more agreeable City of Sydney.

I expect this is their plan. It is the same as has been done by every conservative government since the War, and it would effectively end the rule of the City of Sydney by a populist centre-left politician who caters to the inner-city suburbs rather than the businesses in the CBD. It may only be a matter of time.

The electoral commissions in Queensland and Victoria provide an easy-to-follow page on their website with all the information about ward boundaries and what changes have been made.

I’ve now finished the map for Queensland. I’ve also posted the map for Victoria, although it doesn’t include nine councils whose ward boundaries are yet to be determined – these should all be resolved by the middle of April.

However NSW is much harder. I assume most councils won’t make a change to their electoral structure. There is no central source of information on what changes are being made, and short of searching through the entire minutes of every council it is difficult to definitively know what changes are made.

So if you have information about your local council and what wards they will be using in 2012, please let me know.