Queensland’s local councils will be up for election next March. Numerous Queensland councils, including the urban councils of the south-east, use single-member wards (called “divisions” in Queensland). As such, they are sometimes due for redistribution.
This term, only four councils were up for review, none of which are major urban councils. Those councils were Bundaberg, Fraser Coast, Isaac and Tablelands. All of the review documents can be found here. I won’t be analysing the changes in detail, except to note that the Tablelands wards were left alone.
I have updated my Google Earth boundaries file to the wards for the 2024 election, which involves changes to those three wards relative to 2020. That means I now have ward boundaries published for five successive Queensland council elections, all the way back to 2008.
I also noticed while updating these boundaries that there were some changes to the external council boundaries – so I have corrected those where I found them, and implemented those changes in a new 2024 LGA map and the 2024 ward map.
I started making these maps in the late 2000s when it was a lot harder to find boundary files. That’s no longer the case, and I probably will stop publishing my own electorate boundaries soon, but they can be useful for things like ward boundaries, and it’s nice to be able to compare old and new.For the ongoing WA state redistribution, I have not bothered to make my own boundary file. If you go to the link above, you can find shapefiles for the new ward boundaries for the three redrawn councils.
You can download all my Google Earth maps here.
Is there a set rule for these type of ward redistributions in Queensland or does the Electoral commission just do them as they see fit?
I know NSW councils have a 10% rule such that each council must have no more than 10% variance in enrolment between its smallest and largest wards although I don’t know whether Queensland is similar to that rule or not. They could use another numeric formula (like for state or federal redistributions using an average statewide enrolment quota) or just being time based every two election cycles.
Yeah it’s explained on this page.
It’s a 10% allowance for councils with over 10,000 electors, and 20% for smaller councils (although it seems like those councils would mostly be unwarded).
The Western Australian state redistribution has concluded with the final boundaries being released.
@nether portal wrong thread …
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/52885/comment-page-1#comment-796733