New South Wales Archive

More redistribution news

By
Ben Raue
 – September 30, 2011

Following on from my post earlier in the week after I posted new electoral maps for Victoria and South Australia, there was more news yesterday on redistributions.

The final boundaries for next year’s ACT Legislative Assembly election have been announced. The committee reverted to the first draft, which was a minor change bringing Ginninderra and Molonglo into quota. The second draft had proposed radical changes to the boundaries, reducing Molonglo to a 5-member district and making Ginninderra a 7-member district, but these were rejected after vocal opposition. I have now posted the final version on the maps page.

In other news, the latest report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on population for each state and territory makes it clear that there will be no changes in the number of seats for each state and territory at the next federal election. In the next month the AEC will make a determination about seat numbers, and this data makes it clear they will remain the same. This will mean that no more federal redistributions will be held in time for the next federal election once the current South Australian redistribution is completed.

An ACT redistribution is due in 2013, but won’t be finished before the election. Antony Green has also blogged about the new update.

So with the NT and ACT territorial boundaries now completed, the only redistribution map I need to work on now is the draft boundaries for next year’s WA state election. Later this year we will be getting final boundaries for the WA state election and for SA federal boundaries. I’ll keep you posted.

Apart from those, I am also looking to update my ward maps for New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, as all three big states have council elections next year. Sorry Western Australia and South Australia, I just haven’t had time to cover those states.

Anyway, Victoria and Queensland’s state electoral commissions are doing a good job of covering the redistributions being held for council wards on their websites, but not in New South Wales, where it seems to be a job for the individual council.

So I’m calling on my readers to help me out by posting here any news about New South Wales council ward boundaries:

  • A decision by a council to get rid of or implement ward boundaries.
  • A clear decision to redistribute the boundaries, preferably with a link to the maps
  • A clear indication that ward boundaries are not changing.

This will make it a lot easier to produce a state ward map well before the September council elections.

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Wollongong and Shellharbour results

By
Ben Raue
 – September 3, 2011

11:50pm – So at the end of the night it seems most likely that the council will consist of an independent Lord Mayor, Gordon Bradbery, alongside four Labor councillors, four Liberal councillors, two Greens councillors, and two independents, Vicki Curran and Greg Petty. There is also a possibility that Petty could lose out to a Labor candidate, Liberal candidate or independent Labor candidate.

11:48pm – While we have 26-27,000 votes counted in each of the two northernmost wards, we only had 17,000 votes counted for Ward 3 at this time. We’re expecting this vote to go up and so these figures are not final. Labor leads with 2.09 quota, followed by Liberal on 1.31, and then independent Vicki Curran on 0.78. They are a long way ahead of other groups, with the next closest being Trevor Mott on 0.29. So despite the vote-count being slower it seems likely that the councillors will be Chris Connor (ALP), Ann Martin (ALP), Bede Crasnich (LIB) and Vicki Curran (IND).

11:44pm – A final update just came through for Ward 1, excepting special votes, Wollongong Town Hall and Tarrawanna. The Liberal Party leads with 1.46 quota, followed by ALP on 1.27, the Greens on 0.71, and independent Greg Petty on 0.51. Petty is under threat for his seat from a number of possible challengers – the second Liberal candidate is only trailing by 0.05 quota. Also, if you combine the second Labor candidate’s vote with the vote for Labor independent Sara Howson (who was permitted to run by the party and swapped preferences with the ALP), it adds up to 0.59 quota. So it seems clear that Leigh Colacino (LIB), Janice Kershaw (ALP) and Jill Merrin (GRN) will win, with the final seat a race between Greg Petty (IND), David McKenna (LIB), Ian Hunt (ALP) and Sara Hawson (ALP-IND).

11:4opm – Nearly all primary votes have been counted in Ward 2, except for Wollongong Town Hall and the special votes. The Liberal Party leads with 1.83 quota, followed by Labor on 1.16, the Greens on 0.74 and former councillor Andrew Anthony on 0.53. That’s a substantial gap between the final seat and the last candidate to be excluded, so barring anything dramatic the seats should go to John Dorahy (LIB), Michelle Blicavs (LIB), David Brown (ALP) and George Takacs (GRN).

11:39pm – I’m going to go to bed now, so here are my final summaries for each ward of Wollongong Council.

11:29pm – The final figures for the night are in for Shellharbour. After the first five seats go to Labor, Liberal and David Boyle, Moran is leading with 0.53 quota for the sixth spot followed by Cook on 0.48 for the final seat. Following them is Stewart on 0.41, Quinlin on 0.35 and four other groups with between 0.25 and 0.34 quota. So while Moran and Cook are the favourites to take the final seats it will depend on how preferences flow.

10:50pm – Let’s take a look at Shellharbour. About half of the booths have reported. At the moment the ALP leads with 2.15 quotas, followed by the Liberal Party on 1.97 and David Boyle’s ticket on 0.91. The final two seats are very unclear at the moment, with Shane Cook on 0.52 and Peter Moran on 0.48, followed by a number of other candidates with a chance of gaining a seat on preferences.

10:44pm – The council race in Ward 3 is well under way, with 17,000 votes counted. Labor leads with 2.09 quotas, followed by the Liberal Party on 1.31 quotas, and then former Wollongong Council staff member Vicki Curran on 0.78 quota.

10:41pm – We have all of the votes for the night now in for the Mayoral race, and nothing much has changed. Bradbery is on 33.9%, Dorahy is on 23.4%, and Connor is on 19.7%. It is expected that Bradbery will extend his 10.5% lead over Dorahy on preferences and will win the race.

10:20pm – We’re beginning to get more council booths coming in for Wollongong. At the moment we have 8600 votes counted in Ward 1, 2800 in Ward 2 and 5300 in Ward 3. By comparison over 30,000 votes have been counted in Wards 1 and 2 for the Mayoral race. At the moment the Liberal Party is leading in Wards 1 and 2, while the ALP leads in Ward 3. If the current figures were final and preferences don’t change the order, Labor and Liberal would each win four seats, the Greens would win two, and the remaining seats would go to independents Greg Petty and Alice Curran.

8:25pm – We also have the council vote in from a single booth: Coalcliff in the far north of Wollongong. The Liberals polled 43 votes, the Greens 40, Petty 18 votes, and Labor 10 votes. I hope it doesn’t need to be said that this is far too early to make any predictions.

8:17pm - We now have over 27% of the vote counted in the Mayoral race and Bradbery is solidly in the lead, with 31.3% against 22.9% for Dorahy and 20.2% for Connor. It’s far too early to call it for him but it’s worth noting that, in a head-to-head race against Dorahy, he is getting preferences from Merrin, Organ, and Connor, and I believe he is getting preferences from most of the others. Those three polled over 30% between them. It will be very hard for the Liberals to recover an 8% deficit on preferences with Bradbery receiving such friendly preferencing.

7:44pm – The results diverge widely when broken down by ward. In Ward 1 (North), Dorahy is leading, while Labor’s Connor is being outpolled by independent Greg Petty, who is on 16%. Petty is almost outpolling Bradbery. The Greens’ Merrin is also on 12% in the ward. It’s a good sign for Petty and Merrin’s bids for seats on the council. In contrast, Petty is polling less than 1% in both the other wards. Bradbery’s vote varies from 36.5% to 17.2% between Ward 1 and Ward 2. Connor is leading in Ward 3.

7:41pm - We’ve got the first figures from the Wollongong lord mayoral race. With 11.9% counted, independent Gordon Bradbery is leading with 27.5% over Liberal candidate John Dorahy on 24.1% and Labor candidate Chris Connor on 20.3%. Overall the results are coming from all three wards, with slightly less votes coming from Ward 3 (South).

7:20pm – Polls closed in the Wollongong and Shellharbour council elections at 6pm tonight. So far no results are in but I look to be covering them tonight. We are looking at the election of the Lord Mayor of Wollongong, 12 Wollongong councillors across three wards, and 7 Shellharbour councillors elected across the entire council area.

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Councils to be restored in the Illawarra

By
Ben Raue
 – May 5, 2011

Voters in the UK are currently voting in a referendum on electoral reform, and the results should come in tomorrow morning. Closer to home, some electoral reform is taking place in two councils in the Illawarra area south of Sydney.

Wollongong City Council and Shellharbour City Council were both sacked in 2008 after allegations of corruption on the councils, and have been run by unelected administrators since then. Both of those councils previously were elected using a system of “winner takes all” preferential voting. Each council had six wards of two councillors each, along with a directly elected mayor. Each ward used a system that meant that the group winning a majority of votes after preferences would almost certainly gain both seats.

In contrast, most councils in NSW use some system of proportional representation, as is mandated for all wards electing at least three councils. Following the sacking of Wollongong and Shellharbour, the only councils still using the old system were Botany and Ku-ring-gai in Sydney and a number of small rural councils. There was an attempt to impose the system on a newly-created New England Regional Council last year, but the merger was scrapped and the electoral plan also went on the scrap-heap.

The new Coalition government has decided that the Illawarra councils will move away from the majority-rule system to the proportional system used in most NSW councils.

Firstly, they have decided that the two councils will face election this September, a year before all other councils in New South Wales are up for election. Secondly, they are making changes to councillor numbers and ward systems in both councils.

In Wollongong, the state government has decided that they will continue to have a directly-elected mayor and twelve more councillors, but they will be elected through three wards, each ward electing four councillors. This will mean that, rather than the majority winning all seats in each ward, a councillor will need to achieve a 20% quota to win a seat in any ward. This reflects many other councils in urban NSW, with 3-member or 4-member wards being the most common model.

In Shellharbour, the number of councillors will be cut to seven, with the mayor to be elected from amongst the councillors. No wards will be using, allowing candidates to win election with 12.5% of the vote in the council area. This is an extremely low number of councillors for a reasonably large council. Most urban councils in the Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra regions have between nine and fifteen councillors each. Kiama Council, immediately to the south of Shellharbour, has less than one third of Shellharbour’s population, but has nine councillors. The only councils in Sydney with less than nine councillors are Burwood (approximately 33,000 residents), Strathfield (approximately 35,000) and Hunter’s Hill (approximately 15,000). They each have seven councillors. Shellharbour, in contrast, has approximately 67,000 residents.

The Coalition government has made the argument that “Fewer councillors has shown that council can effectively focus on the bigger picture and seek whole of council outcomes”, but I don’t really see any evidence for that argument. Considering that councillors are paid very little money for their role, and considering the large size of Shellharbour Council, it seems like halving the size of their council brings little financial benefits while substantially reducing the link between the community and their representatives.

I have previously argued that councils in Sydney should be designed so that there are more councillors on each council, not less, and that bigger councils have more councillors. While the government’s decision makes these councils’ electoral systems far more democratic, the unnecessary reduction in councillor numbers in Shellharbour reduces democracy.

A note on my local government maps: New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland will all be holding local government elections in 2012. The ward maps I have on my maps page are for the 2008 council elections in those three states. At some point when I have time I will go through and identify which councils have redistributed their ward boundaries and produce new maps. Obviously I will have to produce a map of the new Wollongong City Council wards once they have been announced, which will be added to the 2012 ward map for New South Wales when it is produced. Sorry Western Australia and South Australia, I don’t think I’ll have time to do yours.

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Keneally’s grab for cash

By
Ben Raue
 – September 29, 2010

The NSW Labor government is currently using the cover of supposed “campaign finance reform” to rig the public funding system to give more money to major parties and radically cut the funding to smaller parties.

Last Tuesday, Keneally announced that she would be proposing campaign funding reform legislation before the impending state election. While the details were vague, they included a cap on donations of $5000 and a cap on spending of $100,000 per electorate. Pretty weak, but a step in the right direction.

Hidden in her plans was a vague reference to plans for a “tiered” funding system.

A Sydney  Morning Herald article on Saturday revealed that this plan is to fund a proportion of each’s candidate’s expenditure, with a greater proportion for candidates receiving a higher vote. This scheme would massively increase funding  to major parties, while slashing it for smaller parties, and forcing political parties, particularly smaller parties, to rely on even more donations to supplement the limited public funding.

In addition, it’s now been revealed that the Keneally government also plans to introduce a new scheme for funding of administrative party activities outside of election periods.

In New South Wales we currently have the “Political Education Fund”, which gives funding to all parliamentary parties for non-election work outside of election periods, based on the number of Legislative Assembly votes received at the last election. While it is meant to be spent on ‘political education’, all parties use much of their funding for general costs of running a party outside of campaigns.

The new administrative scheme would be based on the number of Members of Parliament each party has elected. It doesn’t need to be said that this would also massively assist the major parties, due to the current electoral system disadvantaging smaller parties by locking them out of the Legislative Assembly. It doesn’t seem clear to my why a party with more Members of Parliament, with all the extra resources that provides, needs a disproportionately greater amount of public funding to run their party.

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Breaking down the NSW adoption vote

By
Ben Raue
 – September 6, 2010

Australia’s political parties tend to have very strong internal discipline, with Members of Parliament exercising a ‘conscience vote’ very rarely. We saw an example of this last Thursday when the NSW Legislative Assembly considered Clover Moore’s bill to legalise adoption for same-sex couples.

The vote split 46 to 44, passing with the narrowest of margins. The bill will progress to the Legislative Council this week, where it is expected to pass.

The current make-up of the NSW Legislative Assembly includes 50 Labor MPs, 24 Liberals, 13 Nationals and six independents. Despite the numbers being similar, the vote did not break down at all along party lines, with many Labor MPs voting no and many Liberal MPs voting yes.

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Deeply off the record…

By
Ben Raue
 – July 15, 2010

Many commentators have reacted with great surprise to how long it took the Liberal Party to preselect candidates for the Western Sydney marginal seats of Lindsay, Greenway and Parramatta. Parramatta was held by the Liberals until 2004, Lindsay until 2007, and Greenway is still Liberal-held, but the redistribution moved it into the Labor column, leading the sitting Liberal member to contest the neighbouring seat of Macquarie.

Yet despite these seats’ recent record of electing Liberals, the party has only preselected for Lindsay this week, with preselections to come on Saturday in Greenway and Parramatta.

It appears some light has been shed on the delays today when Barry O’Farrell, state Liberal leader, appears to have accidentally sent a message out publicly on Twitter when it was only intended to be seen by Fairfax Radio’s Latika Bourke.

The tweet appears to be in reference to the timetable for preselection in those seats and the struggle to find candidates – which would explain the low profile of all of those announced as contenders.

But it is still very unclear what the ‘internal poll’ could be telling them. It would be no surprise that the ALP would be favourites to win those seats, despite the ALP’s recent bed-wetting over the possibility of losing Lindsay. Yet how bad could it be that the party couldn’t find a candidate willing to take a punt on getting a federal seat, or so bad that they wouldn’t bother finding a candidate with enough time to win the seat?

The tweet has now been deleted, but it is sure to be highly embarrassing, and does suggest that the Liberals are struggling to compete federally in Western Sydney after their 2007 defeat.

Update: GhostWhoVotes in comments has pointed out that the original tweet still exists, even though it has disappeared from O’Farrell’s Twitter feed. It seems it isn’t so easy to delete tweets that have been retweeted.

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Guide to the Penrith by-election

By
Ben Raue
 – May 16, 2010

I have now posted my guide to the Penrith state by-election, to be held on June 19 following the resignation of Labor MP Karyn Paluzzano. You should also check out the guide to the federal election, as I have now finished all seats in New South Wales and South Australia, for a total of 98 seats.

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Seat profile #95: Mackellar

By
Ben Raue
 – May 14, 2010

Mackellar is a safe Liberal seat on the northern beaches of Sydney. It covers suburbs such as Frenchs Forest, Dee Why, Narrabeen, Avalon and Collaroy.

Mackellar is held by senior Liberal Bronwyn Bishop, who has held the seat since 1994 and had previously served as a Senator for New South Wales. Bishop was once considered a leadership contender, but her chances quickly faded, and she served only as a junior minister in the first two terms of the Howard government. The seat is very strongly Liberal and she should have no trouble winning re-election in 2010.

Continue reading…

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Seat profile #94: Bradfield

By
Ben Raue
 – May 13, 2010

Bradfield is a very safe Liberal seat on the upper north shore of Sydney. Bradfield covers most of Ku-ring-gai council area as well as parts of Hornsby. Key suburbs include Turramurra, St Ives, Killara and Wahroonga.

Bradfield was previously held by former Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson, prior to his 2009 resignation. The seat was won by Liberal candidate Paul Fletcher at a 2009 by-election, winning comfortably in a race without a Labor candidate, despite a strong Greens campaign.

Continue reading…

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Seat profile #93: Berowra

By
Ben Raue
 – May 12, 2010

Berowra is a safe Liberal seat covering parts of northern Sydney. It covers parts of the Hills district and most of Hornsby council area, including Hornsby, Berowra, Cherrybrook and Pennant Hills.

The seat has always been held by the Liberal Party, and has been held by Philip Ruddock since 1993. Ruddock had previously held other seats since winning the 1973 Parramatta by-election, making him the longest-serving current member of the Australian Parliament by a decade, and the fifth longest-serving member of Parliament ever. Ruddock should easily win election in 2010.

Continue reading…

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