The Victorian state government last week announced the final ward boundaries for 39 councils for this October’s council elections.
I’ve been compiling those ward boundaries as a shapefile and that’s now finished.
The VEC published KML files for every proposed set of ward boundaries. Unfortunately these boundaries weren’t always used for the final boundaries, and no new KML files were published for the final version. About a third of the councils saw some wards changed, and another third or so changed the ward names.
I’ve also made an interactive map below the fold which lets you toggle on and off the 2020 and 2024 ward boundaries. You can separately toggle on and off the old and new ward names and the names of each LGA. It’s quite a complex map as so many new single-member wards have been created, but it lets you zoom in and look at whatever area is of interest. The total number of separate wards in the state has grown from 263 in 2016, to 309 in 2020, to 466 in 2024.
I’ll make a map later.
Just from a quick 5 minute look, I’m quite happy with Frankston City boundaries. They seem to have applied mostly logical ones, somewhat similar to my own suggestion. Definitely better than any of the 3 proposed ones. Happy they changed the names – some of the proposed ones were terrible – and seemed to take some of my suggested names too.