NSW redistribution boundaries – the next day

10

A substantial amount of analysis was produced yesterday about the draft boundaries for the NSW redistribution.

You can look at the maps here.

Antony Green has posted his estimated margins for each electorate.

He estimates that the ALP has lost two seats net to the Liberal Party. A Nationals seat was abolished in Western Sydney, while the new seat of Newtown was created, and is considered to be notionally Green.

As expected, there was a significant knock-on effect through southwestern Sydney and southwestern NSW.

This knock-on effect sees the seat of Goulburn changed dramatically. The town that gives the seat its name is now at the eastern edge of the seat, while Goulburn has gained large parts of Burrinjuck, including Yass.

The remainder of Burrinjuck has been merged with eastern parts of Murrumbidgee as the new seat of Cootamundra.

The three seats of Goulburn, Burrinjuck and Murrumbidgee are all held by ministers: Pru Goward, Katrina Hodgkinson and Adrian Piccoli. These three seats have been reduced to two, and this could see a clash between ministers, or force one of them to grab a seat off a neighbouring MP.

The seat of Murray-Darling has been renamed to Murray with the loss of Broken Hill, while Barwon has grown even larger to cover the sparsely populated north-west of the state.

Bathurst has been largely left alone, while Dubbo and Orange have swapped quite a bit of territory, shifting from a north-south axis to an east-west axis.

Changes were relatively mild in other parts of regional New South Wales.

In Sydney, the north shore has been left alone with only minor changes. The biggest changes start with the creation of the seat of Newtown, which has absorbed most of the excess quota from Heffron and Sydney and allowed those two seats to largely remain intact.

Antony Green estimates that Newtown is a notional Greens seat. I haven’t had a chance to crunch numbers myself, but this makes sense. The Greens seat of Balmain has largely been left intact, except for the loss of the suburb of Haberfield, which is considerably more conservative than the rest of the seat.

The ALP should have less trouble holding the new seat of Summer Hill than its predecessor of Marrickville, although the seat is still likely to be strong for the Greens.

Quite a few more seats are reshuffled throughout south-western and north-western Sydney. The seats of Menai and Smithfield have been renamed as Holsworthy and Prospect respectively. The ALP seat of Macquarie Fields has shifted south, gaining areas in the seat of Campbelltown which swung much more strongly to the Liberal Party. This is enough to switch the seat from notional Labor to Liberal.

Former Premier Nathan Rees’ seat of Toongabbie has shifted significantly and has been renamed Seven Hills, and his margin of 0.3% has become a Liberal margin of 8.5%.

2011 was a terrible result for Labor, and it’s probably not worth focusing too much on seats right at the bottom of the pendulum. Labor will presumably gain at least some swing back to them, and if there was to be a competitive election, the seats on current margins from 10% to 20% that would prove decisive.

So far, the boundaries seem very sensible, and a good attempt at dealing with all of the contradictions and demands that come with electoral redistributions.

I have started work on my Google Earth map of the new boundaries, but won’t have it finished until later this week. I will come back with those when they have been completed.

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10 COMMENTS

  1. Can you tell me what the reasoning behind moving boundaries is please? Other than to cost the tax payer money. Sorry to be so cynical, that’s what I see it as.

  2. Shril, the reasoning is that different electorates had vastly different numbers of people in them. For example, the electorate of Sydney had more than 10,000 people more the average electorate, while the electorate Barwon had about 10,000 people fewer. If this was let to continue, some electorates would end up with far more voters than others, which would mean that some votes would be worth more than others. By changing the boundaries the Electoral Commission has brought all of the electorates back to the same number of voters (or very close to), ensuring that all votes are of equal value.

  3. The possible clash between Ministers in Murrumbidgee/Goulburn/Cootamundra is particularly interesting to my mind. The other changes are fairly pragmatic but this one has very juicy political dimensions. It seems also that the committee played into this, subtly, by choosing to state that Burrinjuck had been renamed while Murrumbidgee is abolished. One of the three (Goward, Hodgkinson, Piccoli) will either have to retire or find a spot in the upper house.

    If anyone is interested, I’ve written up more detail on the Goulburn/Wollondilly/Kiama interface at my blog Highlands Votes, which largely concerns itself with the Wingecarribee Shire.

  4. Piccoli lives in Griffith which is part of Murrumbidgee and is now part of Murray. I think the Member for Murray-Darling who is not a minister will have to give way for him. Funnily enough in the 2005 redistribution Piccoli picked up the eastern councils which have now been taken off him and he regains part of what he used to have.

  5. I’ve put some rough numbers to Newtown’s notional status, by adding up primary votes for booths from the old districts of Marrickville, Heffron and Sydney that now fall into Newtown. Obviously this won’t capture absent and pre-poll votes, or people voting across the new district boundaries.

    Green: 9786
    Labor: 8719
    Liberal: 5619
    Moore: 2032

    Newtown looks like a good prospect for the Greens or a progressive independent based on these primary votes. I can’t estimate a 2CP since the Sydney and Heffron 2CP counts didn’t include the Greens.

  6. Edward Boyce may be excited by the prospect of a Greens or a progressive in a seat like Newtown, but those of us who live there will only be hoping we get effective representation. In Adjoining Balmain presently has a Greens member, but as his sorry (non-existent) record attests, that has been on little use to residents. He is no Clover Moore, and sadly, politicians of her ilk are rare.

    The real interest in Newtown will be the preference flow. The Libs may not direct them of course, in NSW they don’t have to. On those numbers they can’t win, and that’s unlikely to change. But they will be able to decide who does.

  7. The loss of Haberfield will have significant impact to the Greens’ chances of retaining Balmain. Ben, in saying the seat has been left “largely intact” you underestimate the demographic significance of the border change…

    Those better at number crunching than me will not doubt post more later, but the loss of so many Liberal votes (Haberfield) will lift the proportion of Labor voters in the rest of the electorate. And the Greens got few votes there, it was largely a Liberal/Labor contest – a one-sided one. This suburb is one of Sydney’s richest)

    Due to its large Asian population, Ultimo won’t bring much joy to the Greens either. Jamie Parker is in trouble.

  8. Hi Coco, your assertions about Balmain couldn’t be more wrong.

    Sure, Balmain has changed and lost the suburb of Haberfield, however I would argue that this does not mean Balmain is not “largely intact” – most electorates changed much more substantially than Balmain – the heart of Balmain is the Leichhardt LGA, and this remains intact, and very few areas have been added, with one suburb removed. Haberfield is a very different suburb to the rest of Balmain, so it doesn’t change the character of the seat substantially.

    On the numbers, you are completely wrong. Sure, the Liberal Party performed most strongly in Haberfield, and the booths in Haberfield are slightly below-average for Labor, but they are far below average for the Greens.

    If you ignore the Sydney Town Hall, Absentee, Postal, Pre-poll and other votes which can’t be geographically located, there are twenty booths in Glebe and Leichhardt LGA and three in Haberfield.

    The ALP polled 28.03% in Haberfield and 30.98% in the rest of the seat. The Liberals polled 47.28% in Haberfield and 30.66% in the rest of the seat. The Greens polled 19.31% in Haberfield and 31.65% in the rest of the seat.

    The ALP outpolled the Greens by 100 votes across Balmain’s regular polling places, but the Greens outpolled Labor by 205 votes in those parts that have stayed in the seat – the difference was Haberfield.

    So while Labor’s vote will go up very slightly without Haberfield, The Greens’ vote will go up more.

    While it’s true that Ultimo is not fantastic for the Greens, it’s no worse than Haberfield is, and only a small part of Ultimo has been added to the electorate, smaller than the population removed in Haberfield.

    Jamie Parker may or may not win in 2015, but he won’t lose because of this redistribution.

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