We’ve known it’s coming for about four years, but the Victorian government has finally implemented the final stage of legislation first passed in 2020, imposing single-member wards on all but one council across Melbourne along with many regional councils.
Legislation sponsored by then-local government minister Adem Somyurek in 2020 mandated that metro councils (excluding the City of Melbourne) along with a number of categories of larger regional councils would be required to use single-member wards for their elections. In some other regional councils, the option of having no wards at all, or having multi-member wards with the same number of councillors in each ward remained. The option of having wards with different numbers of councillors has been removed entirely.
I wrote about this a lot for the 2020 Victorian council elections. About half of the state’s councils were reviewed before the 2020 election, and these new rules were imposed on those councils. The remaining 39 councils had been spared this change until this election cycle, when they have also been reviewed.
While the panels themselves have been professional and done their best under the circumstances, options have been limited. Often a council has been presented with three different ways to split up its area into tiny single-member wards, all of them looking absurd.
Just yesterday, the minister finally published her approval and with it the final recommendations of the panels. I am still working on an interactive map allowing you to compare the previous and new ward boundaries for these 39 councils, but in this post I’m going to analyse the broader impact.
Firstly, this change is the culmination of a reversal in a twenty-year trend of a move away from majoritarian electoral systems in favour of more proportional systems. This chart shows how many councils use each of five types of system.
The number of councils gradually declined from 2004 until 2016, with even more planned to shift in 2020 before the change in legislation. 38 out of 79 councils (almost half) used single-member wards in 2004. This would have been just eight councils in 2020 under the old rules, but instead climbed to 16. It will now apply in 46 councils in 2024.
There had also been a growing use of multi-member wards with different numbers of councillors, and councils with a mix of multi-member and single-member wards. Both of these structures are now extinct. I’m not a fan of these structures, but they are preferable to single-member wards.
The number of councils using multi-member wards of equal sizes has also declined from a peak of twenty in 2016 to just eleven in 2024. A number of urban councils used this ideal system but have been moved to single-member, while some rural councils that previously used a mix of single- and multi-member wards have been moved to this system.
This next chart shows the average number of councillors per ward. This metric directly speaks to the proportionality of a system. While a 2-member ward might theoretically use “proportional representation”, it is far less proportional than a 5-member ward or a 9-member undivided council.
This metric had been increasing for both Melbourne and regional councils consistently until 2016. But the 2020 changes actually slightly increased this metric in rural councils, while leading it to crash in Melbourne. Well regional councils have also seen a big drop in 2024, while Melbourne has come close to a ratio of 1 (only avoiding actually hitting that ratio due to the City of Melbourne being undivided). I think this is because there have been more regional councils with single-member ward mandates this time around.
Of the 39 councils reviewed, four have been given multi-member wards. Three of these councils will lose a councillor, dropping from seven councillors to six, with three two-member wards. The other will remain the same with nine councillors, with three wards of three.
Another five councils will be undivided. All five of these previously had a mixture of multi-member and single-member wards, and are small rural councils.
In the other 30, single-member wards have been imposed.
Interestingly, the panel had the option of single-member wards everywhere but tended to reject it where they had a choice. Of the twelve councils where multiple options were available, the panel opted for single-member wards in just three. While this process has been clouded by the use of an independent panel, the shift in electoral structure is an imposition by the parliament, not a choice of experts.
The panel also had the option to change the size of each council. Generally I think Victorian councils are far too small, but it seems like they have generally acted to bring council sizes closer to similarly-populous councils. Four councils increased in size: Mount Alexander, Casey and Melton each gained a single councillor while Moorabool gained two. Three councils lose a councillor: Buloke, Northern Grampians and Yarriambiack each had seven, and were moved to a multi-member ward system with six each. With equal-sized wards, you can’t have a seven-member council unless you use a single-member ward system. Overall this means the number of councillors across the state has increased by two.
Finally, this map shows the structure used for every council. If you click on each council it will give you some basic information about the council’s electoral structure, and if it was reviewed it will give the same information for the former structure. The map is colour-coded by the new structure.
The map of Melbourne is a sea of single-member green. Outside of Melbourne, single-member wards can also be seen in Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat, Wodonga and some surrounding towns. Generally outside of these areas, multi-member wards tend to be used for neighbouring councils, and the same for undivided councils.
I’ll also be putting together an interactive map which will let you compare the old wards to the new, but that will be another post.
Did they ever offer a reasoning or justification for the change to single member wards? Because it sucks quite a lot.
The official line from the Victorian government yesterday was “these new electoral representation arrangements will ensure councils are more reflective of the communities they represent.”
Which is total nonsense.
What’s the unofficial line? Is it to punish the Greens and stop the Vic Socialists making any further headways, therefore hampering future inner city progressive battles for State seats?
So there will now be single-member wards in all but two LGAs in Melbourne and Geelong. The only two that don’t are the unwarded LGAs of the City of Melbourne and the Borough of Queenscliffe. Queenscliffe is a tiny LGA just outside Geelong covering an area of 10.83km2, which includes the coastal rural towns of Point Lonsdale, Queenscliff and Swan Island. It’s also the only remaining LGA in Australia that’s officially a “borough”.
The suburb of Queenscliff is spelt without an e on the end, but the council has an e on the end of its name. Does anyone know why the council spells it wrong?
Witness, if that was the reason then I doubt it would work well. Brisbane City Council which also uses single member wards now has seen the vote for the Greens rise sharply. If the Greens vote is going to continue increasing at rapid pace, then no matter what changes the Labor government makes it will be futile in the end.
According to the Borough of Queenscliffe website: ‘Queenscliff’ spelt without an ‘e’ on the end refers to the township of Queenscliff.
‘Queenscliffe’ with the ‘e’ refers to the Borough of Queenscliffe municipality.
So, the two towns (Queenscliff and Point Lonsdale) together can be considered Queenscliffe.
I grew up in the area, and at school we were taught it was an earlier spelling of the town, but I don’t know if that is correct.
As an aside, Surf Coast Shire, also in Geelong area will retain a multi-member ward system of 3×3. The change in boundaries now places at least 6 of the current 9 councillors in the one new Otway Range ward.
@Wander West interesting. Thanks for the background info.
I guess it’s a bit like Victor Harbour in South Australia where the official spelling is Victor Harbor (which is an older spelling of the harbour that today only remains in American English), but it’s commonly spelt Victor Harbour because that’s how we spell the word harbour.
One of the most commonly asked questions about the town is “Why is it spelt American?”. According to the State Library of South Australia, it isn’t American-influenced (which is the reason the Australian Labor Party is spelt like that even though we spell the word as labour), but rather from an archaic spelling. This spelling is also found in at least two other towns in South Australia: Blanche Harbour (Blanche Harbor) and Outer Harbour (Outer Harbor).
Interestingly the train station there is officially known as the Victor Harbour railway station, so the train station is Victor Harbour not Victor Harbor.
Queenscliffe municipality/council seems to be a bit useless considering it covers just a tiny strip of land and only two communities. Even worse than Mosman council in Sydney (which also covers just a few communities, the main centre Mosman and one or two surrounding suburbs).
A better configuration if residents want to be considered distinct from Geelong is to unite Queenscliffe with the remaining Bellarine peninsula suburbs (extending up to Leopold and Lake Connoware) as a single council area with this municipality being called ‘Bellarine’.
The changes didn’t even succeed at effecting the cynical political reasons they were designed – many Greens got elected in single member wards and they for example retained a strong position in Darebin council.
If Greens can still dominate Moreland and Yarra in single member form then perhaps Labor will reverse the changes. Greens getting the 3rd seat in 3 member wards is usually helpful to Labor in middle and other suburban councils.
It’s going to hurt the socialist parties worst of all, probably fatally unless they manage to get up at the legislative council. It might be worse for Labor in a handful of councils but it will make them the only viable “”””””””””””left””””””””””” party in the vast majority of the city. Maybe the Greens benefit enough from the socialists’ demise to start making headway into the West but I don’t think Labor will be worse off there either. I think it worked well enough for them.
There goes the Average Joe and Jane independents’ chances, unless they are cashed up (like the teals) or are high-profile. Ex-state/federal MPs and councillors defecting from a major party also have a better chance than your average independent or minor party.
The Minister for Local Government is Melissa Horne, member for Williamstown. I believe Melissa goes by she/her.
Thanks, fixed.
I think the single-member wards will massively benefit the Greens in the inner councils.
In Port Phillip, I believe two elections ago the Greens finished 1st (Canal), 1st (Lake) and 3rd (Gatway) in the 3 wards, and at the last council elections reduced to 2 councillors finishing 1st (Canal), 2nd (Lake) and had nobody elected in Gateway ward.
Under the new single member wards, they could very realistically come first in all 3 wards covering Canal (Alma, Balaclava & Elwood) where they really dominate, as well as St Kilda Ward which is where most of their vote in the current Lake Ward would have come from.
So I’d expect they have a good chance of increasing from 2 councillors to at least 4 in the next round of Port Phillip elections, possibly even a chance at 5 because looking at the new maps, Lakeside Ward basically covers the St Kilda Road corridor, along with small parts of St Kilda & Windsor too.