This weekend’s Tasmanian state election is likely to be the last major election in 2025, barely halfway through the year, but that means the rest of this year will be redistribution season.
Two federal redistributions, in Queensland and Tasmania, are set to resume later this month when Parliament returns. Federal redistributions in South Australia and the ACT are also due soon. I will return to this topic in the next few weeks.
But the first redistribution of 2025 is the state redistribution of Queensland. The last redistribution took place prior to the 2017 election, and those boundaries have now been used for three state elections – no other state holds redistributions so infrequently.
Submissions from the public are now open. They will close on August 6. The Commission has not set out precise dates for the rest of the process, but they expect the draft boundaries to be published in early 2026.
For this post, I am going to run through the current population statistics and what that suggests for where seats may shift. There has also been a lot of comments about this redistribution in the comments sections of Queensland 2024 seat guides – you can bring the conversation to this post.
The Queensland Redistribution Commission (QRC) has published their own helpful discussion paper that covers a lot of the same data I will be analysing here. It’s worth examining because it also runs through the criteria the Commission will need to consider.
In short, each electorate needs to fall within 10% of the average enrolment (or ‘quota’) as of May 2025. There is also a ‘large district number’ which means that electorates with a land mass of over 100,000 square kilometres are granted ‘notional electors’ equivalent to 2% of the square kilometres in their electorate.
Right now four seats benefit from these notional electors, and they make up the equivalent of 70% of an electorate. Three of these four seats are currently below the average quota even with those notional electors, with one of them more than 10% under. All three of those seats are projecting to be more than 10% under the quota by 2032. So it is likely that the land mass of these seats will grow. There are two other seats with a land mass of 70-80,000 square kilometres, so it’s possible another seat could benefit from this rule.
This produces a conundrum when it comes to calculating how big a seat should be. The ‘average’ is based on a total population divided by 93 seats. But the actual number of electors that can contribute to a seat’s enrolment is actually about 93.7 seats, likely to go up slightly more. So the average seat should be drawn to be slightly above the average.
The QRC has also published enrolment projections for June 2032. These don’t appear to carry the same weight as the current figures. Unlike in a federal redistribution, there is no requirement that every seat fall withins a certain range, but a sensible Commission would aim to draw the faster-growing districts with a smaller starting population. Mapmakers are often conservative and thus do the opposite, making minimalistic changes which leave the faster-growing areas with above-average enrolments, but they shouldn’t.
Further down in this post, I’ve posted a map showing how much each seat varies from the 2025 and 2032 quotas. But I’ve also summed up the totals for each geographical region of Queensland.
Where one seat is under quota and its neighbour is over quota, it is relatively easy to adjust the border without making more dramatic changes. But when whole regions are well under- or over-quota, that is when more significant shifts are required, and potentially could see seats abolished or new seats created.
The first two columns of data reflect how much each seat varies from the actual quotas. Those quotas do not factor in the notional electors in the large districts, although those notional electors are included in those seats’ fulfillment of the quotas. That explains why these numbers don’t add up to zero. The last two columns adjust the quota upwards to include the existing notional electors, but can’t take account of new notional electors created if those seats are made larger. They do add up to zero.
The seats of urban south-east Queensland are significantly over quota. If it weren’t for the large district allowance, I’d argue that we’d see a seat in the regions abolished and one created in the city, but that may not happen. By 2032, the 61 seats in this area are expected to contain almost 63 quotas of electors.
When we look at a closer level, we can see that Ipswich and the Sunshine Coast have grown the fastest, with Ipswich expected to have a lot more growth over the next seven years.
The southern half of Brisbane is a third of a seat under quota. One difference between my analysis and that of the QRC is that they have split out the suburbs on the southern fringe and northern fringe of Brisbane, and merged Brisbane City into one area. There are a handful of seats in southern Brisbane that are well over quota: Logan is particularly over quota, as is the neighbouring Jordan (included in Ipswich) and Coomera (included in Gold Coast). But more established southern suburbs are consistently under quota. Those seats will likely have to expand south to absorb the surplus population in Coomera, Jordan and Logan.
The northern half of Brisbane has grown faster, and this growth is more even, although Murrumba has grown very fast. While the Gold Coast is due to grow, the region currently has about the right number of voters for its eleven seats. Gaven is well under-quota, but Coomera has enough surplus voters to top it up.
The seats of regional Queensland are consistently under quota. The seats around Cairns are about in line with the quota, but seats further south will likely need to grow. The three Townsville seats are about a quarter of a seat short of the third quota, and are surrounded by other seats falling under quota.
Submissions will close in early August, and I am planning to make a podcast to discuss those submissions along with the federal redistributions. There are plenty of directions the Commission can go in, but it seems likely that seats in the urban areas surrounding Brisbane will get smaller, potentially with a new seat created on the southern or northern edge of Brisbane, and the regional seats will have to grow. But there are a range of options for how the map can be drawn.
Finally this map shows how much each seat deviates from the average, both in 2025 and the projected numbers for 2032.
Thanks for the analysis Ben. The large district allowance really does complicate things, and it’s going to be interesting to see how Burdekin, Gregory and Traeger compete for limited space and electors.
Hope this is okay, but just wanted to make a quick plug for a redistribution tool that I shared on the Caloundra thread in case anyone in the community finds it useful.
https://github.com/auredistribution/qld-state-redistribution/blob/main/QLD-State-v0.1.zip
“To get going you’ll need to download the ZIP file and open the contained webpage. The file is around 50MB as it contains the shape data for all 12,545 SA1s in Queensland. Try not to open it while you have too many other tabs open as it takes up a fair bit of memory.
Once it’s up and running, I’m hoping everything is relatively self-explanatory, but if anything breaks or is unclear, just let me know. Any feedback is welcome.”
For some odd reason the QRC has decided to use red for the over quota seats and blue for the under quota seats.
Yes I noticed that. But I have stuck with my previous colour scheme.
Thanks heaps @Angas it looks very useful!
@angas I’ve already solved all 3 of those
@Angas – thank you very much for this tool! Super easy to use and really good to see gradual projections for each electorate created.
I’ve had a fiddle around in the sunny coast and I’ve got an extra seat and balanced everything. I stuck the extra seat in Caboolture (Morayfield slides down in a complicated effort to fix the imbalance on the northside), Pumicestone slides up to Pelican water along the coast, Kawana takes bits from Caloundra and Buderim, Glass house takes Mapleton, Landsborough and Beerwah, Nicklin slides down to Steve Irwin Way, and Noosa takes Eumundi. Caloundra cannot be within quota both at 2025 and 2032 as far as I can tell, I’ve got it on -11.85% and 12.2%. Anyone know how the commission would handle that?
@John interested to hear how. Also have you got down to Mirani, Keppel Rockhampton yet? That’s where my NQ chain broke, and I’m having trouble seeing how to fix it.
I’m confused how to use the tool it’s just a single page document
In regards to Caloundra they would basically have to tear apart the whole seat and create a new one and use parts of neighbouring seats I guess
Absolutely first class work Angus, thank you very much.
John if you extract it and then open the file it goes to a web tool.
Also I’ve just realised almost all of Caloundra’s growth (like 20% plus) is in one SA1: 31602158001 (hope I’ve got that right, can’t copy-paste off the app). So basically that just needs to be split and the problem’s solved, but it’s sub-SA1 so it’ll be very hard to accurately do that, and project at that level.
And I’ve got all of regional QLD in quota, abolishing Burdekin. I’ll need to have another look over the communities of interest, but it looks promising.
As in 20% of the whole seat’s quota in that one SA1, that was a bit ambiguous sorry.
No it doesn’t it just opens a single page document at least that’s what mine does
Have you extracted it?
Yes. It a 50mb file and when I open it it’s just this
Queensland State Redistribution Tool
Context
Queensland is divided into 93 state electoral districts, which must be drawn within 10% of the average district enrolment of 40,264 (ie. between 36,238 and 44,290).
Districts larger than 100,000km2 are given additional ‘virtual’ electors equal to 2% of the total area of the district.
The Redistribution Commission may also consider projected district enrolments, with an aim for districts to also be within 10% of the average projected district enrolment of 44,679 in 2032 (ie. between 40,211 and 49,147).
The ABS divides Queensland into 546 named Statistical Areas Level 2 (SA2s) which are divided into 12,545 Statistical Areas Level 1 (SA1s). These are the building blocks used to create electoral districts.
Some SA1s are actually split between multiple districts, however for the purposes of this tool SA1s cannot be split and have been fully placed in the most logical single district. As a result, some districts will have enrolment numbers that slightly differ from the offical figures.
Instructions
1. Click any district in the left panel to select or unselect it
2. Click on any SA1 on the map to transfer it into the selected district
3. Click on any transferred SA1s to return them to their original district
4. Shift-click can be used to transfer or return whole SA2s
5. New divisions can be created by clicking the ‘+’ symbol next to the group label
Disclaimer
The author of this tool has no political affiliation and has taken effort to ensure that no political bias has been introduced. All calculations are based on SA1 enrolment data provided by the Queensland Redistribution Commission, however no guarantee is made that aggregate enrolment calculations will be error-free. The tool is offered as-is, and any usage of the tool is made at the user’s own risk.
Contact
There’s no webpage or anything
@Clarinet @James @Real Talk
Appreciate the kind words, thank you!
@John
Are you seeing the map as well? I only tested the app on Firefox, but you should be able to scroll that text panel downwards to see the main list of divisions. Unless you’re using it on a phone in which case everything is probably stuck off screen.
I’m using an ipad
Can’t see why it shouldn’t work on an iPad/Safari, but it’s definitely possible that the app can’t handle that configuration unfortunately.
So there’s no way to tap or scroll the page to see the other parts?
It’s also possible that something’s blocking the Leaflet (the map library) from loading. Don’t know for sure but there might be a way to check the browser console or network settings to see if anything is wrong there.
Is it supposed to open a webpage? It only opening a file
Should look something like this when properly loaded:
https://ibb.co/YTyrZ6gf
What the html for the tool all my file does is open and show what is copied. It doesn’t open a webpage
When you open the page in Safari, are the titles in bold at all, or is it just completely plain text like in a notepad file? Maybe you need to ensure that it is opening it as a .html file?
Does it show the bit that says “Districts out of quota: 14” near the top?
I’m seeing some posts saying that Safari does not support opening local html files on iPhone/iPad, but apparently the Microsoft Edge app does. Might be worth downloading that and seeing if it works.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/73903200
It doesn’t open safari it just opens a local file on my iPad with the text istated
Yeah that’s quite annoying that it’s doing that. Might just be a limitation of the iPad.
I’m going to look into getting the app hosted somewhere so people don’t have to much around with zip files and such, but maybe these steps might work:
1. Install Microsoft Edge from the App Store
2. Open Files (or whatever file browsing app you like).
3. Open the file, then tap the Share button to send to another app.
4. Scroll across to “More…”, choose Edge, and voila!
Hopefully there’s a way to get it working, but if not, sorry for the difficulty.
Thanks @Angas this is great . I think new seat called Landsborough should be created including Beerwah, Eudlo and some of West caloundra . Glass house moves south takes in Caboolture outskirts
Once again, first class work Angus.
If I may be so bold to suggest some changes, can you define different shades of colour for Maroochydore and Ninderry, as well as Scenic Rim and Gaven. Also, Logan and Coomera.
I won’t bore everyone with my solutions yet, except to say if they came to fruition there would be a plethora of objections 😉
I’ll test it out on the computer in the morning
@real talk did you put the Brisbane cbd into traegar to make up the numbers
@Up the dragons @Real Talk
Cheers, much appreciated!
Good suggestion about the colours. I’ll do my best to get those updated tomorrow.
@John
I’ve finally found a way to host the app on neocities. Hope this works better for you.
[WARNING – 50MB – Takes a few minutes to download fully] https://auredistribution.neocities.org/
@John
Now that’s a creative solution… Nobody ever said that districts have to be contiguous!
Or better yet put part of caloundra into target that should solve the problem
Very helpful Angus. Can we count on you to do something similar for the upcoming federal redistribution?
Thank you very much Angus for your tool!
I have submitted my revised proposal and included images from @Angas’ great new tool.
I spent hours on it so I hope it’s good, but I have a feeling I made a lot of mistakes and it might not be a great proposal, but hopefully people like it. If my proposal is bad that’s my fault, not Angas’ or the tool’s fault.
I have credited the tool by providing a link in my submission summary.
can we see your work NP?
i should be putting mine together over the next week just been alil busy. and il be overses during the objection period
My new borders are done in Angas’ tool, I’m wondering if people are using any more polished tools for the maps, for instance that might allow borders other than SA1s?
Because some of the SA1s will break seats if they’re in just one because there’s so much growth in a single one.
@Darth Vader @Nether Portal
Thank you! The plan is to extend the app to also work with the upcoming federal datasets once they arrive.
It’s great to see that people are finding the tool useful, although there are a number of improvements I’d like to get done this week. If there’s anything that you find clunky or any features you’d love to see added, please let me know.
@Clarinet
I think it’ll be beyond me to add functionality to draw over or split up the SA1 shapes, but I should add the ability to highlight split SA1s like that monstrousity in Caloundra. For now you could possibly just assign the split SA1s to another division colour and then annotate the screenshot in paint.
One thing I definitely need to add is save/reload functionality.
I’m interested to hear what solutions people are landing on. Are people also finding that Burdekin Shire is best placed in Mundingburra?
I’m also finding that Southern Brisbane works out quite neatly. It seems possible to almost fully align divisions with the boundaries of Brisbane, Gold Coast, Ipswich, Logan and Redland councils. A new division slots in nicely by taking the Logan Council parts of Algester and Jordan. Algester and Miller can squeeze Toohey and Stretton into a single division as others have noted.
@John I’ve already sent it off, but once the proposals are published you’ll be able to see it.
I ended up abolishing Gaven and Mundingburra and creating a new seat on the western Gold Coast and one joining the southern outskirts of Ipswich with the southern outskirts of Logan, both quite large and will grow fast so they will need redistributing before the 2036 state election. I named the Gold Coast seat Nerang and the Ipswich/Logan seat Yarrabilba (even though the suburb of Yarrabilba itself is split between a few seats under my proposal).
I’ve also renamed Mermaid Beach to Varsity Lakes since most of Mermaid Beach was moved into Surfers Paradise. I also renamed Glass House to Irwin and Logan to Logan Reserve (again, to match the geography).
Every single seat in my proposal is roughly at quota, with every seat being between 10% over quota and –10% under quota but none over or under (–)10% of the quota.
Oh and Callide also ended up becoming a large district.
Any ideas with Caloundra?
I’ve got an under quota Kawana (I put little mountain and aroona south of parklands blvd/kalana road into caloundra to have the room) moving slightly south along the western side and I’m just gonna stick a boundary somewhere in that monster SA1 there because it single-handedly breaks any seat. I also moved Pelican Waters and Golden Beach into a quite radically remade Pumicestone which stretches from Sandstone point up to there.
@NP Did you make proper maps with something or just use screenshots from Angas’ tool?
Oh and I forgot I put Landsborough and Beerwah into Glass House (It sheds Flaxton in the north and bits and pieces down south).
I’ve got traegar taking in the bottom half of Tablelands council from Hill. HILL THEN MOVES INTO hinchinbrook surplus
@Nether Portal, curious about your Nerang boundaries, it would make sense having it look something akin to the previous Nerang division in the 1980s and 1990s.
Nerang has historically been a principal community of interest for much of the Gold Coast Hinterland, so logically works when encompassing Clagiraba, Mount Nathan and Numinbah Valley. The roads from those valleys connect directly through to Nerang. I’d personally advocate for a division representing Nerang’s sphere of influence: encompassing the 4211 postcode (up to the Pacific Motorway).
Whereas Springbrook, Bonogin, Austinville has been historically attached to Mudgeeraba.
The division boundaries start to look very odd though when you align these Hinterland localities with their respective major GC community of interest. Mount Tambourine is a tough one, it might be torn between Nerang and a new hypothetical Yarrabilba division.
With some further thought, Mount Tambourine would more logically be connected with a Theodore encompassing Oxenford, Wongawallan and parts of Upper Coomera.