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.
Caloundra is easy just lose everything west of the Brice highway and everything south of bells Creek. As long as is under the 10% on current electors it’s fine. They can fix the projected stuff up in 7 years
i dont hink the state govenrment is gonna spend millions of dollars on a bridge just so you can make a road connection to an island to make a seat fit inside a quota
In relation to whether it is unreasonable to put Bribie Island in Caloundra given the absence of a bridge, I make a simple observation: The Division of Franklin exists. Actually, now that I think of it, I could also point to the Division of Wright!
In regards to bribe island why does it need to go in caloundra at all. In regards to Franklin that’s an issue that need to be solved. I intend to try and move some of that into Franklin by doing a 3 way swap with Clark and lyons
And with wright the solution is easy. The only problem is unlike the state redistribution the fedsral numbers have to be within 3.5% projected enrollment and the state it doesn’t matter
@Up the dragons @Lurking Westie
As a Callide resident, i think the name Callide is very appropriate – It’s not just the town of Callide, but the Callide valley, lake Callide, and especially Callide Power Station which is very important for the local economy here
Coalfields seems very vague and redundant
@john “i dont hink the state govenrment is gonna spend millions of dollars on a bridge just so you can make a road connection to an island to make a seat fit inside a quota”
I can be very persuasive… 🙂
Although as a general rule localities should always have an alternative exit (or entrance). At the moment there’s only the Bribie Island bridge in or out. We have the same problem in Airlie Beach – if Shute Harbour Road gets blocked then you just sit back and enjoy the weather.
So if it gets blocked because a truck stalls on the bridge, or roadwork needs to be done, or a cyclone hits Brisbane again, then you’re stuck.
They have these things called boats. If those things you just gonna have to wait until it’s fixed. The government isn’t gonna spend the money if they don’t have to.
After the abolishing of Mirani. My callide sheds Gladstone bundaberg and the eastern part of western downs. Keppel sheds Rockhampton to Rockhampton It then takes in the rest of Rockhampton that bordering the airport lagoon and railway station to the river. I thought about renaming it but the name was still relevant and the majority of the voters still came from the seat.
Thats good. Calliope should be in Gladstone and Gin Gin in Burnett. But then Callide becomes so large theres no real community of interest
Has anyone else arrived at the point where the last couple of seats left just don’t work? I think I’m going to have to start again from scratch.
I don’t know what your configuration of the seats are, but I managed to fix everything by putting the Toowoomba seats, Condamine, Nanango and Southern Downs over quota by about 0.3, which seems awkward – but it’s about all I can do (to make what I personally think is a pretty elegant map so far)
@dragons unfortunately theres always gonna be stuff that just doesnt fit especially in the regions where seats are always gonna be bigger, things have to go somewhere
@mark no how so?
@am whats your opinion of my Callide?
im gonna try and get my maps done this week so you guys can check them out prior to aug 6
@john I think it’s pretty outrageous that parts of the Western Downs (including Chinchilla) are included in Callide – So in my map I’ve drawn that part out of Callide to the seats of Warrego and Nanango
As a result Callide has to take in all of the parts of Burnett north of Bundaberg and the Burnett River – and I’ve moved Callide up into the seat of Mirani, taking areas like Mount Morgan (while losing Calliope to Gladstone)
All of these areas are much more connected to the seat of Callide than the Western Downs, which is entirely disconnected from the rest of Callide culturally – The new iteration of Callide that I’ve created is much more sensible and consistent as a community of interest
@am what ive dont is move it into Miranis parts of rockhampton and up to the boundary of the airport train station and lagoon. it loses the gladstone parts to gladstone, bundaberg parts to burnett. and jandowae to Waqrego.i wanted to move the whole of western downs but numbers didnt allow it.
Ive got Callide loses Chinchilla and Miles to Warrego. Gains Blackwater, Rolleston, Duaringa, Woorabinda, Bluff from Gregory. Gains Mount Morgan, Westwood from Mirani. Gains Booyal from Burnett. Becomes large district with -9% quota.
next time around i want to a more comprehensive shake up the seats especially gregory and traegar. but this time i went with the easier option.
what have you done with rest of gregory since central highlands is basically the anchor of the whole seat. dragons?
Gregory gains Clermont, Middlemount ,Dysart, Moranbah from Burdekin. Burdekin gains most the excess from merging Mundingburra/thuringowa
I seriously doubt they will merge mundingburra and thuringowa.
I mean abolishing one of the two . Doesnt matter which one. Townsville has one seat too many. Same goes with Toohey and Stretton in Sunnybank area
Not entirely true Townsville has exactly enough once you add in all the rural parts currently in burdekin.
But agreed on toohey and Stratton I’ve abolished both and built sunnybank
And I’ve dug into parts of the above quota surplus in hinchinbrook too.
Ive made Burdekin become Ayr/Home Hill seat now including Townsvilles outer southern suburbs with Bowen moved to Whitsunday . Burdekin becomes much smaller so Mirani and Callide dont have to be abolished . That way nobody has to travel too far to their electoral office
I’ve put burdekin with whitsunday.and it loses both Townsville and Isaac council. Mirani spans from Rockhampton to Mackay across two other councils…… By abolishing it Mackay can gain a second seat and Livingstone is in one seat. Callide then tops up Gladstone and bundaberg with their respective lgas and gains the Rockhampton parts as well as losing the former wambo lgala this makes callide smaller overall.
I restarted and it’s working out a lot better. I found that if I started with the Large Districts first and used a very light touch it worked out well. The four seats are all no more than 1.5% variance but I haven’t calculated the change with their additional area.
I still have a few problems with Mirani and, of course, Caloundra.
Ipswich worked out quite well once I started treating those massive super-developments as ticking time bombs and only put one per seat. I was even able to get a working Springfield!
I’ve tried to keep the seats balanced so they start under-quota and finish over-quota or vide-versa. I dropped Toohey, but because I split Sunnybank between Stretton and Algester I’m probably going to go with Runcorn and Algester. I put the new seat between Coomera and Logan and that knock on was why Sunnybank broke.
I also used Burdekin and Callide as my transfer buckets, so they’re a bit messed up. My Burdekin starts in Ayr and ends up just north of Beserker, but it reduces disruption to other seats. Callide starts in Biloela and finishes outside Dalby. Since I put all of River Heads in Maryborough I’m thinking about putting Fraser Island there as well.
Did I read that correctly? Burdekin extending to Beserker, as in, the Rockhampton suburbs? That would be quite something.
@Real Talk 🙂 That was me being tired and not realising that Mirani and Burdekin have the same colour on my map. Burdekin finished in Clermont – my rule was that if the SA1 has a mine in it, it’s going in Burdekin or Callide…
Only the Sunshine Coast to go…
Ive got Mackay gaining more northern beaches from Whitsunday and losing some of its southside to Mirani . Mirani isnt an awkward shape anymore just runs between Rockhampton and Mackay. Keppel stays the same pretty much
Townsville actually has 3.5 quotas.si should be able to have 3 full seats. There no point in having 2 full half seats and 2 3/4 seats. It’s completely unnecessary.
My Mackay simply extends to the Mackay ring road the new Mackay seat which I’m calling pioneer river is basically Whitsunday minus all the Whitsunday council and islands of course the little bit of Mackay from burdekin extending to alligator river. The.rst of Mackay and mirnais parts of Issac and livingstone join keppel and become Shoalwater. Rockhampton then takes in. All of Rockhampton from keppel
ok so new plan for the townsville and nq seats
1. cook takes all of the shire of mereeba from Hill
2. traeger takes shires of winton, boulia, and diamantina from gregory
3. Hill takes all of Cassowary COast from Hinchinbrook.
4. DUe to loss of namesake island Hinchinbrook is renamed Burdell or Northen Beaches as its effectively 70% townville seat anyway
4. Thuringowa takes in everything north of ross river road thats west of nathan street from Mundingburra
5. townsville remains the same
6. Mundingburra as before takes in all of Townsville from Burdekin.
then the rest is as before.
@John Interesting… My Whitsunday (-3.45%, +0.57%) stays more or less the same, losing Dingo Beach and Cape Gloucester, as well as the Pioneer Valley and Walkerston areas, to Burdekin (+1.1%, -6.31%). Mackay (0.18%, -6.55%) stays more or less the same, with Mirani (0.02%, -4.85%) starting just south of the airport.
Burdekin and Callide are doing the majority of the heavy lifting on my map. I’m also trying to get the current enrolment and projected enrolment to cross the zero mark along the way so my seats aren’t permanently over or under.
I admit defeat over Caloundra. It now starts at -8.29% and is projected to be +18.89%.
Because the Sunshine Coast has quite a few SA1s that zig-zag across the Bruce Highway to gleefully play in traffic I am going to manually adjust them and note that the numbers are only a rough estimate. I’m also making a list of the SA1s concerned to ask the ABS to lift their game.
@john The Townsville region can be tricky. I moved SA1 31802146908 into Townsville from Hinchinbrook to boost the projected number. It’s a greenfield development site with 0 voters now and a projection of 2,860 so it also reduces the growth for Hinchinbrook.
@Clarinet of Communists I’m reluctant to tinker with anything on that Enoggera Reservoir area because it’s a pretty good natural buffer for that odd BCC protrusion around Lake Manchester.
You can bring Moggill into line by adding Fig Tree Pocket south of Moggill Road and west of Coonan Street. I went over quota there because of the lack of future growth – +5.80% to -2.25%.
Maiwar makes up that loss by adding the area up to Hale Street from the overspill of McConnel.
Caloundra you pretty need to have a short term deceiver with a long term surplus. As long as it’s with the 10% on on current numbers it’ll pass. Then they can solve the problem with the surplus in 7 years much like Logan and coomera
Halifax might be a better named for Hinchinbrook given it emposses the entire seat.
@Darth Vader Ingham is the central point on my map, so that’s what I’m going with. I’m keeping Palm Island in Townsville even though it also has transport links Cardwell in Hinchinbrook but it’s line ball.
@Mark this is what ive done with Sunny coast. Everything within quota and new seat created.
Landsborough created. Includes Caloundra West, Corbould park, Bells creek, Banya, Gagalba, Little mountain south of Caloundra road, Coochin creek, Beerwah, Landsborough
Ninderry gains Castaways beach, Marcus beach, Peregian beach, Lake Weyba from Noosa. Gains rest of eumundi from Nicklin. Renamed Bli bli or Irwin.
Noosa gains Cooroy from Ninderry. Gains small rural area from Gympie.
Buderim gains everything south of Maroochydore road, Kunda park, kuluin from Ninderry.
Nicklin gains Flaxton, Montville, Eudlo, rest of Palmwoods, Maroochy Hinterland from Glass House. Gains Palmview forest estate from Caloundra. Gains small rural area from Gympie. Renamed Nambour
Caloundra gains Currimundi, Aroona, Little Mountain north of Caloundra road, Meridan plains south of Kawana Way link road from Kawana.
Kawana gains Palmview, Mooloolah River national park, Mountain creek south of Sunshine motorway from Buderim .
Glass house gains rest of Elimba from Pumicestone.
Maroochydore remains unchanged.
@John not sure because Boulia community complained when it was proposed the town be moved to Traeger last redistribution . They preferred to remain in Gregory. I assume winton and diamantina would be the same.
Beggars can’t be choosers. It’s the only way to balance gregory after moving in Burdekin parts of issacs council
@mark I’ve moved the enoggera resoipvoir and the gap in ferny Grove after removing the parts of Moreton Bay into everton
So after some thoughts about the shape of my eagleby (macalister) and slacks Creek (springwood) I’ve decided to do a little readjustment and nowsince slackscreek is split i decidedtorevertitback to springwood since it contains a majority of springwoods electors and springwood is atthe centre ofthe seat..
Ive started dlojg my maps for you guys to check out
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1M27wyi1kSPrn033ZPpe3DMRmdF8k6FUf
@John
Your Springfield has my tick of approval. ✅
@John I moved Macalister back over the Logan River entirely and pushed Capalaba and Springwood into that area. So Macalister is now Eagleby, Beenleigh, Mount Warren Park, Windaroo, Bethania, Waterford and Edens Landing. It’s very much what the old Albert Shire boundaries were.
Springwood adds Underwood from Waterford and Woodridge by going to the BCC border along Millers Road and following Compton Road.
On the Sunshine Coast the SA1s that span both sides of the highway (starting with Pumicestone and Glass House) are triggering me. So I’ve decided that there are going to be some seats where the numbers are more fuzzy when I split the SA1s.
After all the substantial changes I was surprised to see that my electors moved was only 15.76%, but I still have the Sunshine Coast to go. There were a few areas where I arbitrarily swapped SA1s around that I’m inclined to swap back. I’m revisiting them to make sure the road connections work.
Most of my seats are within 3% of quota, except for a couple where the positive or negative growth projections push it further out. Bonney, for example, is at -8.14% and 7.21%.
Huge thanks to Angas for his redistribution tool. This has saved me so much time and allowed me to do “what-ifs” easily.
@John thanks for sharing, seems like some reasonable proposals and some good names for seats.
@nicholas thanks that map is currently incomplete myspri gfieldisall of greater springfirld + all of ofgoodna and bellbirdparkd southof redbank Plains Rd and queenstreet and the Ipswich motorway.
@mark my.capabla stays entirely within redlands city along with redlands oodgeroo there is enougbfor3quotas insideredkands city once you adding the parts in springwood.
My springwood is si ilar it loses redlands city and shailers creek but gains underwood and woodridge
Il keep updating the maps as I get more done and let you know when I’m finished
@mark I’ve solved pumice stone by just simply reducing it to berrburrmroad. Glass houseisimply split the more Moreton Bay parts to the new seat and then takes in the excess from Caloundra and Buderim
@np how deos this effect your seat ?
Out of curiosity, has anyone tried to make a minimalistic redistribution?
I’ve managed to shift just 3.39% of electors in a quick map this afternoon, but I completely ignored the 2032 projections. 30 seats will be over on future projections. No abolished seats in the regions, Toohey is still abolished, and a ghastly seat stretches from the Pacific Motorway to the Cunningham Highway via Jimboomba to soak up the excess.
(To be clear, I made the map as a thought exercise, not a serious redistribution)
Real talk there’s no quota for future projections they only need to be within current range.
In other news given Toowoomba is now across 4 seats. Toowoomba north and south are redundant given they are in the centre.
I have renamed Toowoomba North to Toowoomba and Toowoomba South to Harristown