The process of redistributing Western Australia’s electoral boundaries has now commenced, with the first round of submissions closing next week.
Western Australia’s 59 electorates will be redrawn over the next few months, with the draft boundaries due out in July.
The electorates in the Perth area are generally over quota and it appears that at least one regional seat will need to be abolished and replaced by a new Perth seat, but it is complicated by the use of a provision to allow smaller electorates to be drawn in the most sparsely-populated parts of the state.
First, the redistribution rules. In theory, electorates must fall within 10% of the average, based on enrolment numbers as of March 2023.
But there is also a Large District Allowance, which is equal to 1.5% of the number of square kilometres in a district where it is more than 100,000 square kilometres in size. In 2019 this applied to six electorates.
The LDA is added to the enrolment of that seat to help it meet the enrolment quota, but seats with an LDA can fall up to 20% short of the average.
It’s also worth clarifying that the LDA doesn’t get included in the statewide enrolment number for calculating the average. So it doesn’t make the overall average go up, and it means that once you add up the deviation for each seat it adds up to more than 59 seats worth of quota. The LDA in 2019, when applied to the 2023 enrolment, is worth just over one seat’s worth of enrolment.
This map shows how much each seat deviates from the quota, counting the LDAs as they currently exist. It can also be toggled to see the 2019 quotas that were used to draw the map originally.
The LDA tends to mean that seats outside of this region have to be drawn slightly larger to absorb the extra voters who aren’t being allocated to those six seats, which means even in 2019 most Perth-area seats were above the quota, with Kimberley and North West Central drawn 15-16% under quota as of 2019.
These trends have been exacerbated over four years.
Eight Perth-area seats are now larger than the maximum allowable enrolment: Perth, Midland, Mandurah, Armadale, Jandakot, West Swan, Baldivis and Butler are 10-20% over quota. In themes common to other redistributions I’ve recently examined, most of these over-quota seats are in the outer suburbs.
The regional seats of Moore and North West Central are under the minimum permissible population. Kimberley is 19% under, but since it has an LDA it is allowed to be 20% under. Moore does not get an LDA, so it’s 11.4% under quota is outside the rules.
Western Australia has until now been split up into six upper house regions, but those regions won’t be used for this redistribution, since the 2025 election will see Western Australia’s upper house elected as a single electorate.
43 out of 59 seats were in one of the three metropolitan regions. These 43 seats were collectively drawn 1.49 seats under quota in 2019. That figure has now increased to 1.69.
The South West region was also drawn with 38% of a seat’s surplus quota, and that figure is now 45%. That means there is two whole seat’s worth of extra enrolment in the 51 seats in the south-west and Perth metropolitan area.
Once you factor in the LDA, the eight seats of the Agricultural and Mining and Pastoral regions are collectively 95% under quota.
The LDA rules do allow some substantial malapportionment for a handful of large regional seats in the north of the state, but I don’t see how they could avoid expanding those northern seats and possibly even abolishing one of them, and thus creating a new seat in the Perth metropolitan area.
If they do create a new seat, the best candidates appear to be either the south-east around Armadale or the north-east around Midland and West Swan.
Submissions close next Monday, May 1, if you’d like to have your say. The draft maps are due out in July 2023.
il be proposing that Pilbara be abolished and a new division created between Swan Hills, Midland and Kalamunda in what is effectively the Shire of Mundaring. I’ve made it so Roe and Central Wheatbelt no longer require a LDA but Moore will now have one. I have renamed divisions as the names are no longer suitable due to the namesake no longer being relevant. I’m just ironing out the details and correcting any errors ive made should be ready by the weekend. I’ve already prepared the new maps of the regional and rural divisions and just finishing off the metropolitan ones which should be completed by the may 1 deadline. il also be proposing Nedlands be abolished and a new divisions created which is centred on the city of Vincent.
I think abolishing the old regions will help in drawing boundaries. One good way of improving community of interest would be redrawing North West Central, losing its remote interior communities to Kalgoorlie and be reconfigured to a more coastal alignment by absorbing large parts of Moore.
@yoh il be proposing nwc takes in karratha and port hedland and moore will take most of nwc and kalgoorlie take ngaanyatjarraku
Potatoes – so in effect abolishing North West Central, with it being split three ways between Kalgoorlie, Moore and Pilbara. Agree that district lacks a clear community of interest and breaking it up is the best solution.
@yoh in my notes it says pilbara but it has the same effect. kimberley will get the rest of east pilbara while nwc gets karratha and port hedland and everything south and east of upper gasoyne goes to moore with the exception of ngaanyatjarraku.
I have a fully developed scenario that I’m not going to end up submitting because I’ve run out of time to document it – I have zero available time between now and the deadline.
My concept effectively transferred half a rural district to the city. I eliminated Roe – at the end of a big southward rural re-shuffle that saw Esperance move into Kalgoorlie
The “half” is that I have a district straddling the boundary at Rockingham-Mandurah. Notionally that district is a successor to Warnbro but it would be renamed. I created a new district centered on Ballajura and Lansdale, with the exiting district of Lansdale shuffling north and Wanneroo taking in Yanchep and Two Rocks. So the metro gains a division in the north, but there is a shuffle around the outer districts such that a southern district can extend as far as Meadow Springs.
It “works” but as noted, it will likely never end up in circulation.
@ dean ive done a similar thing with wanneroo taking in Two rocks and yanchep as well. i wanted to move esperance into kalgoorlie but opted against it for logistical reasons but that would definately be something i will consider again at the next redistribution.
Redistribution could give Labor an extra seat notionally, North-West Central is possible. Unless Churchlands pushes into parts of Cottesloe.
Considering the country seats are low quota it isn’t inconceivable that the margins will move around. Warren-Blackwood could become National and Albany could become safer for Labor depending on what happens.
One thing is for certain. There will be many unhappy incumbents especially if there are drastic changes in some seats.
Could this redistribution also help the Greens win their first ever seat in 2025? Perth is worth watching on where the boundaries shift.
@ Daniel the numbers ar the momentt are inflated towards labor. Most of not all of the regional seats will drift back to the nats and liberals. Kalgoorlie and Kimberley are the exception. Based on my numbers which Im only guestimating it will be a neutral shift. Greens will not win a seat here labor is still to strong on the left and any lost votes will be to the conservatives. I’m guessing labor will hold their majority in the lower house but lose majority in the upper.
In Perth I’d be inclined to abolish Forrestfield and create 2 new seats one each north and south of the river to accommodate the surplus voters in each area. The inner urban seats mostly need just a bit of a nip and tuck to keep them close to quota other than seat of Perth itself which is well over and is forecast to continue to grow faster than average – West Perth should be incorporated into Perth as it’s part of the same LGA and the northern boundary could then recede to around Anzac Rd and Angove St in the north, the excised areas could then be transferred to Balcatta and Mt Lawley.
It’s hard to work out how to logically redraw rurally. Kimberley doesn’t have any more logical LDA but if you don’t create some then the Pilbara gets split up probably halfway through Port Hedland lol. I think it makes most sense to abolish North West Central some mining communities from here can be transferred to Pilbara, Kimberley not given many more people but a lot more LDA in lieu. You then make the northern half of Moore and the coastal part of the old North West Central lets call it Northern Wheatbelt-Gascoyne the new frankenstein seat and then combine the rest of Moore with Central Wheatbelt and Roe to retain 2 predominantly wheatbelt seats.
You can see why WA decided just to have the Leg Council elected as just 1 state electorate, Perth is just getting more dominant in size relative to the rest of WA and so it’s only getting more difficult drawing any meaningful regional boundaries.
im feeling my submission was really in depth for a submission by an individual. im a little bit exited to be honest.
Hi “Potatoes”,
Would you mind sharing your real name so I can associate the submission with you?
Cheers
Mark
@Mark Mulcair B Close. please make sure to check out my comments on suggestion as well as there were several overlooked errors in the original submission that i cleaned up
i noticed in the comments on suggestions there were a heap of people just submitting the same basic template comment which i suspect were just people c+p the same memo as they were all identical
Mark, I like your submission and how you rebutted arguments made by the Liberals/Nationals that reduced rural representation would be bad.
One point that I do agree with the Liberal/National submissions is that representing the vast outback divisions can be tough, so one option could be to allow representatives from these remote districts to select a ‘non-voting’ representative from the same party that can assist with constituent concerns. That non-voting representative can also participate in debates and committees, but unable to vote on legislation or procedural motions in the chamber.
Or they could just increase the size of the Assembly. It’s barely increased in many decades while the population has increased at least sixfold.
while im a liberal supporter and rarely agree with anything labor says. the fact is the strong growth in numbers of perth and weaker growth in the regions demands the problem be solved now or it will be harder to manage later. you cannot ask districts in the metropolitan area to continue to burst at the seems while the regional seats are propped up by “ghost” voters. personally i hope they expand the number of seats to cater for this problem
@raue agreed that needs to happen and would solve everyones problems and would probaly see an increase to the number of regional seats.
Agree Ben and potatoes, increasing the size of the assembly is the easiest option and enables ‘one vote one value’ to be maintained without having rural districts increase in size too much.
Out of interest, to those who’ve suggested an increase, how many seats do you think the LA should increase to?
The problem is it doesn’t yet justify increasing it. Atm they are sitting at average of 30,000 electors per mp. Others states have a much higher limit per mp. QLD is at about 36,000 atm the moment. Victoria is about 40,000 plus so is NSW. Despite the fact they have more mps. So the problem will probably be addressed when they start getting over 35,000 electors per mp which is at least 2 elections away. So 2033 is when they will probably consider it for the 2037 elction
The commission needs to just bite the bullet and abolish one regional district. This will solve the long term unsustainability of the particularly rural districts population shortages and would make the other 15 sustainable for a long enough period until population growth returns to those areas. Another district can always be added in the future when people move out of the city and into those regional areas
Agree Potatoes, a radical redistribution is much better because the boundaries could be in force for a full eight years (two terms). Just tinkering around the edges isn’t really worth it because you keep having to make incremental changes every cycle, which inconveniences local residents who don’t know what district they are assigned to and who their local member is.
@yoh an the boundaries are redistributed after every election atm due to the low population any major increase would not last the full two terms as in other states. the other problem is that 30,000 doesnt include ghost voters from the LDA. even by removing one district they still need the lda to prop them up though not by as much. at the current rate of perths growth and the slower growth especially in the rural districts its all but inevitable that it will have to happen. as i stated in my submission rather then continue making short term solutions that will create long term problems its time to make short term problems to create long term solutions
what they should do is make an interactive map with all the data inputed so people can just move boundaries create/abolish divisions with ease it would make suggestions much easier to make
@potatoes
I managed to do that in the past. Downloaded the SA1 shapefile from the ABS and the enrolment data. Wrote a script to clean up the enrolment data into just a CSV with the SA1 ID and current and projected enrolments. Loaded OpenStreetMaps, the shapefile, and the CSV files into QGIS, joined the CSV to the shapefile, and then used this plugin (I forget its name) that allows you to easily assign polygons to “districts” and see the numbers.
@nicholas sounds diffiult wish they would just cut out the middle man. though i did find the data provided by the WAEC to be extremely easy to navigate. due to ADE limitations i couldnt be as radical as I wanted to in my proposal but laid the groundwork for the next redistribution by implementing a few stop gap measures
A number of state electoral commissions are starting to include a mapping tool for redistributions. Victoria had a fantastic one last time.
Hopefully it’s a bit of a trend and other commissions start rolling out something similar.
@mark mulcair state or federal?
also i was just looking at your past submissions and it seems we have a similaar idea in regards to the regions
Agreed @potatoes and @Mark Mulcair, would be good if these tools were provided to the public so it’s easier for people to contribute to redistributions and make maps. I got really annoyed going through the suggestions in the last NSW state redistribution as many didn’t include maps at all (and I don’t blame those who made those suggestions) so I had to construct them (either mentally or in QGIS) from tables.
@potatoes
It was the Vic electoral commission for state boundaries that had the really fantastic mapping tool.
Was so satisfying to use I could actually put a submission in! As opposed to when I tried to manipulating data for the last QLD redistribution, I gave up on GIS and just wrote some suggestions based on community of interest issues I saw. I am really hoping ECQ will have a similar tool in 2025 – if the government does not change next year, I won’t hold my breath.
@nicholas I just downloaded the maps provided from the previous redistribution and coloured them in to show the changes that I made. At least with the wa state they provided the current maps.
We should be getting the first draft in a week or so
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