Federal redistributions in Australia rely on two sets of numbers – the actual enrolment numbers at the time that the process commences, and an estimate of how many voters will be enrolled at a future point, about three and a half years after the conclusion of the process. While electorates need to be drawn within 10% of the average enrolment at the start of the process, the projected numbers are far more important, since seats need to be drawn within 3.5% of the average on those figures.
These projected numbers ensure that electorates are drawn so that faster-growing seats have smaller populations, and slower-growing seats have larger populations, and thus population change reduces malapportionment, rather than increasing it.
Unfortunately, if those projected numbers are no good, the whole thing is undermined.
The projected figures for the Victorian federal redistribution were released in October, and I posted about them here.
There have been a number of people raising concerns about those figures in the comments, and earlier this week the AEC acknowledged the issue, saying that “The AEC has been informed by the ABS that there was an error in the initial enrolment projections supplied for use in the redistribution of Victoria.” They have now released this corrected data, and it does change the distribution of population in a way that will favour outer suburban growth areas, which will be drawn with smaller electorates than if the original projections had been used.
I haven’t personally investigated the problem with the projected numbers, but as an example Zac Gross posted this graph, showing that almost all Victorian SA1s were assumed to have growth of almost exactly 10%, whereas in other redistributions the growth rates vary (as you’d expect).
First up, I’ve modified the following table that I posted in October which breaks down electorates in Melbourne into different parts of the city north and south of the Yarra River, and breaks rural Victoria into east and west.
The original projections had the 26 seats of Melbourne collectively about three-quarters of a seat under quota, but that deficit was spread out across the city. The 16 seats south of the Yarra were about half a seat under quota, while the 10 seats north of the Yarra were about a quarter of a seat under quota. It was particularly surprising that the six seats of western Melbourne, an outer suburban area where you’d expect fast growth, was projected to barely gain any population relative to other parts of the state. This looked very different to the trends in the NSW redistribution, where Western Sydney is set to gain a seat while the eastern half of the city loses two.
But this picture looks different with the new figures. The ten seats north of the Yarra are pretty much spot on quota, although the central city seats are under quota and will probably need to expand to take in surplus growth in the western suburbs. The 16 seats south of the Yarra are now 84% of a seat under quota, rather than 50%. Indeed the eight seats I defined as “eastern Melbourne” are almost half a quota under themselves.
This makes a huge difference to the implications for the redistribution. It’s now clear that the seat to be abolished will be in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne.
This doesn’t mean that other areas won’t be affected – overall the seats north of the Yarra (urban and rural) fall short of their quota by 17% of a seat. It’s possible this deficit could be spread out amongst the 19 seats on the north side and thus doesn’t require a seat to cross the Yarra, but there will definitely be a need to distribute population differently within that area.
Another way to look at the figures is via this map. It has two layers. The first shows the revised projected quotas for each seat, while the second shows how much each seat’s projected quota was changed by the revisions.
The first map now makes a lot more sense. Most seats in Victoria are under quota (as you would expect when a seat has been abolished), but the outer suburban fringe on the north-west and the south-east both tend to be over-quota. This was not the case on the original figures.
When you toggle to the second tab, it’s very clear that the new projections have favoured outer suburban areas.
La Trobe, Lalor and Calwell were all projected to be under quota but are now projected to be well over quota. The change in La Trobe was 13.2% of a seat’s population!
It’s quite unfortunate that this mistake was made after the first two rounds of submissions, which would have been made based on those projections being correct. The mapmakers will be able to use the correct figures, but will be relying on public submissions based on entirely different numbers. But I’m not sure the alternative of allowing further rounds of public submissions would have been viable. At least the problem has been identified and fixed. It would have been far worse to continue with incorrect numbers, that would have likely led to fast-growing outer suburban areas being under-represented.
Western Australia was also affected by this issue, and I’ve got a blog post coming up covering WA this afternoon.
@ John
The reason it may help IMHO for Labor to get a 2PP swing is that a lot of the poorer suburbs in Melbourne had an anti-lockdown backlash a lot of them has a large Muslim Community. Many Muslims who were angry with lockdowns and may have voted for the UAP in suburbs such as Meadow Heights which had the biggest anti-Labor swing. This was not due to religion but SES. Some of commentators see link below have used that to suggest that the Libs should focus on seats such as Calwell, Scullin etc rather than Teal seats. A friend of mine who is a rank and file liberal member and a very socially conservative one previously suggested to me on winning Muslim voters as they are more socially conservative and working class by focusing on LGBT issues. The issue now is that Muslim voters will be more focused on Gaza and not care about the lockdowns or even Trans issues etc they may vote Green/VIC socialists instead of UAP etc and with a disciplined flow of preferences will just boost Labor’s margin in seats where it is a ALP/Lib contest.
https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/the-liberals-need-to-embrace-their-working-class-voters-to-win-over-the-outersuburban-freedom-fighters/news-story/2213b607fc9c81f8627de427f92871f8
Agree Nimalan, I think the same or similar factors were also in play generating swings against Labor in Western Sydney suburbs that featured high concentrations of Muslim voters which were also impacted by COVID lockdowns.
It shows that the Muslim demographic is quite volatile and will gravitate to what seems to be ‘the issue of the day’, so the LNP/Coalition should look to secure a more stable source of voters (white working-class voters in rural districts dominated by primary industries).
@nimalan in regards to teals they dont have a chcne of beating most of them at the moment (the exception being Ryan in Kooyong due to her [ublic battles and the strong candidate the libs have put forward and Kate Cheney in Curtin in WA which will be helped by the redistribution and the normalising of the liberal vote after the huge swing in 2022 also given shes on such a small margin. the rest the liberals only have to wait until they retire or as i suspect they will back in a labor minority government whcih should cook their goose in 2028. these arent generational seats unlike the greens who can mereley out in another candidate. as you saw in 2019 the libs almost took back indi. in regards to outer suburban seats i think dunkley will be in play and mcewen will probably be more favourable as it will lose either labor kilmore to nichools and menrda north to scullin. at which point it should take kangaroo ground and warrandyte north which have better liberal 2pp votes in fact im saying mcewen will flip. other then taht the deakin ive made is stronger but makes chisholm stronger for labor and the menzies/jagajaga would be marginal labor meaning that could be potentially be in play. other then taht yes as we saw in the vic state election labors heartland in the north became more vunerable even though they held on in the east. i dont think they can hope for any other gains this election though at least in vic but losing those and probably wills to the greens puts them in minority already
@ Yoh An
100% Agree, if the Libs want to win working class voters they are better off targeting white working class voters such as Lyons where as you said primary industries dominate rather than ethnic working class seats where there totally different issues. I never thought people will remember lock downs forever and while there maybe some level of social conservatism in ethnic communities especially Muslims on certain issues it does not mean they are conservative on all issues such as race relations, the Voice, flags, foreign policy etc. For example Lakemba, Wiley Park had a strong YES vote for the Voice same with Kuraby in Brisbane.
@ John
I actually think for McEwen to improve for the Libs it should go into Yarra Ranges LGA or Murrindindi shire as it did prior to 2013. I actually live close to Kangaroo Ground and North Warrandyte those areas are very low density, not growing in population, better educated and quite Tealish demographically. I think before there is anti Labor swing in McEwen there will be a correction from the anti-lockdown backlash in the Growth area suburbs first. Also the Growth area suburbs in McEwen such as Donnybrook, Wallan and Beveridge are becoming more diverse like Casey LGA which i mentioned previously. Macedon Ranges is also quite Tealish demographically. Trent actually submitted a submission to the redistribution which i endorsed that actually makes it better for the Liberals
https://www.aec.gov.au/Electorates/Redistributions/2023/vic/files/suggestions/Vic24%20-%20Suggestion%2053%20-%20Trent%20Wilson.pdf
2 problems Indi is at quota and can’t afford to shed murrindindi and they won’t cross the ranges as that serves as a good boundary
@ John
i really wish we all knew about the projection change before we made our submissions to the AEC. In any case, what does your version of McEwen pick up after it shed Kilmore and Mernda apart from Kangaroo Ground, Warrandyte North.
I haven’t had the time or energy to see how my proposal would work with the new figures.
I assume that a lot of it could probably remain the same, because I very deliberately kept the north/west areas at the lower end of the range and the south/east areas at the higher end of the range, and the revised figures mostly adjust those numbers back towards the centre. So it’s possible that actually some of the less desirable changes I had to include just to make numbers work might not be required anymore, but who knows.
I didn’t have anything set up well enough to make it simple to redo the numbers or automate anything, I did it very manually.
There’s no point anyway so I’ll just wait to see what the AEC Draft Proposal looks like and then use the new numbers for anything I may or may not include in an objection.
@nimalan ive already done my new proposal which il just submit as an objection
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1W1v9WS-4QC5lUiCUQWy0UZAU97fYkzP0 That’s my new maps and specifically mcewen https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uCwDy612tHunJB-QLCMogbO5oJRaHfAh/view?usp=drivesdk
@john what program/software did you use to colour in your maps?
Downloaded the maps and did it on my tablet with a stylus
I posted my redis a few weeks ago
https://imgbox.com/3RE5Ee7C
And now I’ve done some rough calculations of the TPP. In brackets swing to/or against Labor
La Trobe 58% LIB (0.7%)
Monash 53.2% LIB (-0.3%)
Menzies 51.9% LIB (-1.2%)
Casey 51.5% LIB (no change)
Aston 52.5% LIB* (1.1%) *not based on by election
Higgins 51% ALP (-1.1%)
McEwen 54.2% ALP (0.9%)
Bruce 54.7% ALP (-1.9%)
Chisholm 55.8% ALP (-0.6%)
Dunkley 55.9% ALP (-0.4%)
Hotham 56.3% ALP (-8%)
Hawke 57% ALP (-0.6%)
Holt 58.4% ALP (1.3%)
Jagajaga 59.4% ALP (-3%)
Macnamara 63.1% ALP (0.8%)
The Greens margin increases by about 1% in Wills/Cooper and the teals would have better margins in Kooyong/Goldstein.
The Higgins number would be worse than Labor but it’s hard to calculate the Caulfield postals being so much worse than the postals elsewhere. I also tried to work out the 3CP for Macnamara:
GRN: 34.8%
LIB: 32.8%
LAB: 32.6%
So it would be a Green seat but I’d expect the Lib vote to be worse if you actually correctly worked it out. So I think it would be ALP vs GRN which would be a Labor seat.
AEC twitter: Victorian proposal likely to be released ‘later in Q2’
https://x.com/AusElectoralCom/status/1777516633218810143
Drake I really like your proposal. Your Higgins & Macnamara are pretty much identical to mine but what you’ve done in the eastern suburbs especially is much better than my proposal.
Abolishing Deakin isn’t something I had really considered but works because Deakin/Menzies/Casey ended up being very awkward for me. Moving both Hotham & Chisholm north and effectively merging Deakin & Menzies solves a lot of the problems in that area from my proposal.
@trent agreed on higgins and macnamara and i think that is one of the consistent themes on the independant suggestions. i agree with you on moving chisholm and hotham north as well as well as merging deakin and menzies which ive also done
@Trent moving Hotham and Chisholm north and amalgamating Deakin and Menzies or amalgamating Chisholm/Hotham/Isaacs into two seats seem to be the only two options
i think after the amalgamtion of deakin/menzies or any other combination will result in jagajaga becoming less safe for labor and might be competitive in the right circumstances as it would take in liberal voting areas from menzies
I agree Henry. I abolished Hotham and split most of it between Isaacs, Chisholm and Bruce (with Hughesdale going to Higgins and a little bit of Bentleigh East going to Goldstein). While I think my proposal particularly improved Bruce and Isaacs, it left a real mess north of Chisholm.
Of course, my proposal was done on the old incorrect numbers so maybe on the new numbers it could have worked better!
I think in terms of naming Hotham is most still likely to retire. They will not abolish an indigenous name, name of former PM or a Woman. So Jagajaga, Deakin, Menzies, Chisholm and Aston are out of the question
Hi Drake. Your seems to have merged Deakin and Menzies, and keep the name Menzies. Given Alfred Deakin’s role in Federation, as a three term Prime Minister, and as founder of the first Liberal Party, the name Deakin will highly likely be kept. And given the desire to have more names commemorating women, if the VIC Rdistribution Committee decides to merge Menzies with Deakin, it’s likely that the commissioners will rename Casey rather than Chisholm to Deakin.
I agree in terms of naming. Merging Deakin/Menzies like in Drake’s proposal would still work but the new Deakin would just cover most of the old Chisholm, and the new Chisholm would just cover most of the old Hotham, with Hotham abolished as a name.
@nimalan in my estimation the majority of hothams voters will remain together. i believe jagajaga should go as its not named after any specifici person or place rather 3 elders from one aboriginal group and is the only one of its kind anywhere. i dont believe that a name should get special status unless its that of a PM
@Trent It is also possible to retire the name Casey, especially considering Richard Casey already has a local government area named after him.
@trent by your argument chisholm would need to be abolished. by aec rules the division name that has the most voters is retained. but given deakin is a PM that would overrule the rule. however it wouldnt be unprecendented for a PMs name to be abolished and then reincarnated later as in the case of Watson
@ John
Indigenous names get priority see below. Women are underrepresented. I cant seriously think of anyone who would want a name of a Foreign Colonialist to remain especially if it only dates back to 1969 and not Federation especially when weighed against an Actual Australian.
https://www.aec.gov.au/electorates/redistributions/guidelines.htm
@nimalan “as far as possible”. but this is different your transferring not one but 2 names this would be unprecedented tbh if i had a choice other then jagajaga i would transfer deakin to casy and abolish that
i believe divisions should be named and abolished not on gender or race but by relevance and merit. il note that even though the current cowan more resembles more of the old stirling i believe cowans achievements are more relevant and merit then the guy who founded wa. jagajaga has no relevance or merit as its just named after 3 elders who did a deal with john batman whos division was also abolished. jagajaga would have been more appropriate to rename Cooper since he was aboriginal and Batmans contribution were significant in my opinion
I just went and checked for my seats
Menzies: 51.6% Menzies and 48.4% Deakin.
Chisholm: 54.7% Chisholm, 28.7% Deakin, 16.7% Menzies
Hotham: 54.3% Hotham, 38.6% Chisholm, 7.1% Bruce
So I guess I’d suggest either abolish Hotham, and then say my version of Hotham is actually Chisholm, and Chisholm is Deakin. Or abolish Deakin, say they’ll use it for another time, and then just change the name of Hotham to something else.
@DRAKE i assume you transferred parts of deakin into casey? if not that would be ideal. my “hotham” contains around 80k original hotham voters hence why ive kept it. its menzies that gets abolished in my proposal but i transferred the name to jagajaga as the name doesnt have any relevnace to anyone or anything specific aside from 3 unnamed elders
Only about 10k voters from Deakin into Casey. It’d make sense changing the name of Casey as there is already a Casey LGA. There’s also a Monash and La Trobe LGA both not in the seats they are named after
The divisions are named after the person’s not the LGAs.
@Trent Looking at the 2021 redistribution the Labor Party and a few different suggestions advocated for Deakin taking in Box Hill, but the committee judged Menzies and Doncaster to be better suited to Box Hill than Ringwood.
This is why i think that under your proposal Menzies would move down to Canterbury Rd and Deakin would move further into Burwood East and Blackburn South, and that this is the more likely scenario overall with Hotham going. In saying that I would not be surprised if they decide to reverse course and abolish Deakin.
I reckon the Box Hill area will be a mess no matter what and that the committee will likely see moving Chisholm north to solve this as creating more chaos in Manningham and Maroondah.
@henry I reckon they should reduce the number of divisions Whitehorse is in using the freely as a boundary
@Trent I agree that amalgamating Deakin and Menzies or amalgamating Chisholm/Hotham/Isaacs into two seats are the only two viable options here.
In the former scenario, it’s likely that the merged seat will be named Menzies, and Casey would be renamed Deakin. The redistribution commissioners would want to preserve the names of former PMs, as well as the names of underrepresented groups including women and indigenous Australians. To do this, the commissioners will likely choose the simpler way of renaming Casey to Deakin rather than the more complicated way of renaming Hotham to Chisholm and Chisholm to Deakin.
In the latter scenario, the name Hotham (named after a colonial era Governor of Victoria and a British colonial administrator) will be retired, with most of Hotham voters going to either Chisholm or Isaacs.
In my opinion, abolishing Hotham makes more sense than abolishing Deakin because Deakin has a clear community of interest (it takes in all of the City of Maroondah and the eastern part of the City of Whitehorse) while Hotham doesn’t (the territory of Hotham is cobbled together from parts of Glen Eira, Monash, Kingston and Greater Dandenong Councils). I think the commissioners will likely choose the latter option for the reason I explained above and also to avoid controversy surrounding the naming of seats.
Its probably either Casey or Higgins or Hotham or Issacs that would be abolished as it isn’t an Indiginous, Prime Minister, Federation or Female name and all South of the River (Other than a brief part of Casey)
@ Marh
I think there will be a lot of fury if Issacs was discarded and Hotham was retained. Issacs was the first Australian to be GG and was Jewish so to discard the name associated with a CALD community and preserve the name of a foreign colonizer would be awful. I also believe Chisholm was the first seat named after a woman
I agree Joseph. Abolishing Hotham also makes the naming component easier because you’re abolishing a seat that has a name suitable for abolition too.
Quiet a few suggestions (including mine and Nimalan’s) proposed to abolish Hotham and not only is it a cobbled together seat with very little community of interest, but there are very clear and suitable surrounding seats for each part to go into which actually make the entire south-eastern suburbs more cohesive.
For example the areas around Clarinda & Clayton South fit perfectly with the Kingston-based Isaacs. Oakleigh & Clayton would be united properly in Chisholm. The eastern parts of the seat would move Bruce back to being centred on the City of Greater Dandenong again. Bentleigh East has the option of being united with Bentleigh in Goldstein, Murrumbeena in Higgins, or Moorabbin in Isaacs, all of which are much more suitable than where it currently sits with suburbs like Noble Park & Springvale in Hotham.
Overall it just fixes that whole region because the flow-on effects would unite more of Kingston in Isaacs, Monash in Chisholm and Greater Dandenong in Bruce.
Jagajaga isn’t named after anyone it’s after 3 unnamed elders of one particular tribe.
Ive tried on the new figures to abolish Hotham and I don’t know if it’s possible. Even if you give all of the Emerald-Cockatoo area to Casey, Pearcedale SA2 to Flinders, Mulgrave part of Bruce to Chisholm, you’re still left with 2.9 quotas for Bruce/Holt/La Trobe. Give it the Dandenong – South SA2 from Isaacs and you basically get 3 quotas. You’re then left with the question of what to do with Hotham’s share of Dandenong council?
I think there is a bias against Hotham due to him being a white man from the time before federation if it was a woman there would be no hurry to abolish it
@Drake, I’m going to try to look at the spreadsheets I made before my original proposal and convert them to the new numbers to see how it all looks quota-wise, and then see what changes are needed (or what improvements may be possible on new numbers too).
Too late to do anything with it but could be useful before the next round of objections & comments anyway.
Problem is I just didn’t set anything up to do that very easily. But maybe this is a good opportunity then to actually be able to make a better workbook anyway.
Ok I’ve just redone my exact proposal that I submitted but with the revised numbers, and the good news is that 19 of the 38 seats are still within range.
On the revised numbers too, I no longer need to cross the Yarra at Docklands. Previously, moving Brunswick East from Melbourne to Wills had Melbourne just under quota but now all of Wills, Macnamara & Melbourne are within range without having to transfer Docklands.
The bad news is that while, for the most part (16 of the 19 seats that outside the required range) it’s only a small discrepancy that can easily be fixed and in some cases actually just undo awkward boundaries I had purely to make the numbers work OR neighbouring seats have discrepancies that can easy resolve each other with a single move (eg. Bruce is just under & La Trobe just over; Corangamite is over & Corio is under).
But there are 3 seats that end up way over, unsurprisingly all in high growth areas:
– Calwell ends up 8496 over
– Lalor is 10,002 over
– Holt is a whopping 21,243 over!
So I’ll need to do a bit of work to fix those ones and they might mess everything else up. But I’m hoping it just creates an opportunity to fix areas I wasn’t happy with like the outer eastern suburbs.
Question, does anyone know of a tool that converts a .csv mapping SA1s to divisions into an actual map?
James’ tool is excellent for building a division at a time, but if all the work is done in Excel first, just wondering if there’s any way to easily convert that into a shapefile and upload it into some sort of map generator.
I used QGIS to join the CSV to the ABS shapefiles. I had to write a script to deal with the cases where an SA1 is split between multiple divisions (as the enrolment CSV will list the SA1 multiple times). Once joined, I’m able to select SA1s on the map and see the enrolment totals for that selection.
Thanks! I’m downloading QGIS now to give it a go! I don’t even really need the numeric data, really just want to tell it to say ‘draw a division boundary around these SA1s’.
Working on the revised numbers now, and I can see a huge issue that a couple of other people mentioned as well, which I can’t see a way that even the commission will get around, and that is the 2023 vs Projected numbers for Holt.
The growth in that division is so ridiculously huge, that even if you get right to the top of the permissable projected range – I’m at 131,383 – I still end up 5775 electors short of the permissable 2023 range.
Part of this would be because I removed a couple of established areas (eg. Hampton Park) for growth areas, but in this part of the map it’s just really difficult to get the 2023 total over 105,205 while keeping the 2028 total under 131,691. I can’t really see how the commission will be able to draw that or how they’ll handle it.
Trent, looking at the existing boundaries I’m not sure if the issue with Holt can be resolved by having Flinders stretch further east into localities like Pearcedale (similar to its pre 2019 configuration). That way, Holt can still retain the more established suburbs at its northern end.
@yoh an flinders will expand into mt eliza due to communities of interest. holt will take territory from la trobe and then shed territory to bruce which will probably shed noble park to hotham. i agree that hotham needs to tighten its communities of interest and i think ive done that making it a monash/dandenong based seat and shedding glen eira and kingston
@John putting Mount Eliza in Flinders will make Dunkley much less competitive for the Liberals, though it does sort of fit with the community of interest (i.e the suburbs and towns on the Mornington Peninsula, as opposed to the suburbs around Frankston).
@np it wont be the entire mount eliza it will be a small portion of it. that will also allow dunkley to move up to the patterson river and take in places like carrum and patterson lakes whihc wouldnt influence it either way as one is labr the other is liberal. i reckon it will slightly increase the margin but i think the liberals can still win it now peta murphy is gone and jodie belyea will have to stand on her own record and lost the sympathy/personal vote of peta murphy