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.
An Upper House whose members are mayors of LGAs? Sounds like next-level Bjelkemandering to me. One-fifth of the population (Brisbane City) would be represented by 1.3% of the chamber.
@Nicholas That’s how Upper Houses work, and why Tasmania has the same number of Senators as NSW.
Mark, actually more states have moved away from a region based model to an at large system. Only Victoria retains a region system since WA moved to an at large model for their 2025 election
It’s an obscenely anti-democratic idea that Mark has been pushing for a while. It’s also fractally anti-democratic – it also disadvantages the bigger regional cities in favour of the smaller towns.
And it’s not how “upper houses work” – there is just one upper house that is malapportioned, which is the Senate. That was a condition of the deal to establish the Federation. No state has significant upper house malapportionment anymore.
Parliaments should be elected not appointed. That’s anti democratic.
@real talk how so
@mark how will south Brisbane and mcconnel become a problem. I’m expecting a new seat on the Gold Coast and one in Ipswich. The Sunshine Coast would be a hybrid Moreton Bay seat I’d say.i got rid of Mirani this time and hope to do something with callide next election. At very least get rid of that bit of western downs
In regardsto ghost voters they exist because these are areas that feed the qld economy and put food in the mouths of people in qld including those making the laws. That’s why they are afforded these voters because they don’t naturally have the same population booms as they are just large swaths of mining and farm lands.
Neither will happen as the qld go t would never sign over the land that keeps qlds economy in the black without those areas seq would die slowly. Seq needs nwq more then nwq needs seq. My proposal drops Mirani it’s the least working seat. That can be swapped for a Mackay seat, a rocky seat and the in between seat attached to something else. Warrego is technically in quota however ive propped it up with the former Wambo Shire from Callide. The plan is to move more next time.my new distribution pushes North down to 10 seats and South to 11.
In regards to Tasmania thats a constitutional thing. Adding new state will just create another malapportioned state. They guaranteed the smaller states equal representation in exchange for federation other wise the bigger states could easily outvote the smaller states
The problem with qld is no state government is going to deliberately hamstring itself
Real Talk i think i beat your 8300 words.
Wowsers. I thought Mark was joking. I didn’t think it was necessary to point out the proposition of an upper house with members representing between 270 (Croydon) and 1.264 million (Brisbane) people. Perversely this would make the local government minister one of the most powerful people in the state. Upper house not voting your way? Create a bunch of new shires, or simply sack some mayors!
Queensland is not a federation of shires. Hence it’s not comparable to the Senate.
John, I was referring to the user banned for a month (and unless it was shortened, is still banned) by Ben for making idiotic comments in the Kiama thread. He usually spelled his name with a lower-case letter. I was making a cheeky reference that both he and Darth were making exactly the same style of submissions, and both had posted they had exceeded the character limit (not literally, just on the ECQ website).
Also John: “They guaranteed the smaller states equal representation in exchange for federation other wise the bigger states could easily outvote the smaller states” – Yes, but that guarantee only applied to original states at the time of Federation. Any future states will have to negotiate and accept whatever number of senators they are given. If the NT referendum succeeded in 1998, they would have had three senators, not 12.
Darth, it was Mark who had 8300 words, not me.
Sry i meant mark
I can’t see why any new state would accept any less then the others. They could simply refuse to be apart of the federation in return. That’s why equal representation was given to get them to sign up to federation otherwise they would never have accepted it.
@John re: South Brisbane and McConnel Both seats are constrained to mostly fixed borders. Both seats are also going to go through some pretty substantial growth in the lead up to the 2032 Olympics. The Kurilpa Precinct in West End now goes to the CBD height limit of 274.3 metres. Some parts of the CBD are also getting a kick along as well as the Hamilton Northshore Priority Development Area in Clayfield. That’s why the projected numbers for those areas are a little wonky – the 2026 Census numbers are going to be interesting.
@Real Talk Agree on Ministerial changes – the only way to do it would be to lock the Local Government areas down. Brisbane is already in that spot due to having it’s own legislation, the City of Brisbane Act. At the moment the Independent Change Commission makes minor changes to council boundaries and the Minister has the power to dismiss Councillors outside Brisbane.
@Ben Raue – any form of government is undemocratic to varying degrees. The original Queensland Upper House, the Legislative Council, consisted of people appoint by the Governor for life. The abolition of this chamber in 1922 arose after a referendum that voted against this, through a process that installed people who voted to kill it. Funnily enough, both the decision to remove a House of Review and the weighted vote for regional Queensland (both from the ALP by the way) enabled the excesses of the Nicklin and Bjeke-Petersen eras. Karma is funny like that.
@John And that’s where the Territories get problematic… The ACT is on track to exceed Tasmania’s population, they’re about 100,000 under at the moment. However the representation – 2 limited-term Senators and 3 Members, versus 12 Senators and 5 Members, is difficult to reconcile. However, reversing an arrangement made to get Tasmania into the Federation in the first place is also difficult. Additionally new states are not guaranteed equal arrangements with the existing states, that’s a matter of negotiation. s121-s124 of the Constitution makes it a take it or leave it exercise.
“any form of government is undemocratic to varying degrees”
Democratic systems are imperfect but I don’t agree with this at all. It’s certainly not a defence of creating a particularly undemocratic system.
Of course there is no guarantee of equal representation for new states but I think John’s point is that it would be hard to justify giving them less than the current equal representation, particularly if they are more populous than Tasmania.
I think a fair equilibrium would be to give all states larger than Tasmania the same entitlement as Tasmania, and any smaller ones have their Senate representation scaled to Tasmania’s. Which would significantly increase Senate seats for the territories.
@Ben Raue “I think a fair equilibrium would be to give all states larger than Tasmania the same entitlement as Tasmania”
Assuming Tasmania got ONLY what it was entitled to by numbers, their 410,162 voters over 5 seats is a quota of 82,032. If you only include the States, that takes the number of seats proportionally to 213.68 (call it 214). So that would put the Senate at 107 (108 to make it evenly divisible by the number of States) or 18 Senators per State, 9 at each election. That’s not including the ACT or NT, whose entitlement is basically an act of grace. The ACT would increase to 4 HOR seats, the NT would stay on the low side of 2. Constitutionally S.122 says representation for the Territories is for either House to determine “to the extent and on the terms which it thinks fit”.
A declining relative population in Tasmania would require an ongoing adjustment in the number of seats elsewhere – not a bad thing. The other option is to disconnect the Nexus provisions of S.24 to remove the requirement that the number of Members of the House of Representatives “shall be, as nearly as practicable, twice the number of the senators.” Much like the US provision that each State shall have two Senators, irrespective of size.
@Ben Raue “Democratic systems are imperfect but I don’t agree with this at all. It’s certainly not a defence of creating a particularly undemocratic system.”
Houses of review, Upper Houses, Senates, Houses of Lords – they’re all, to a greater or lesser extent, undemocratic. If you wanted them to have equality of representation you’d just copy and paste the lower house. Their purpose is to serve as a brake on the “tyranny of the majority”. That’s one of the reasons why almost half of the Australian Senate consists of people elected at the previous election. The problem with unicameral parliaments is that without oversight they have a tendency to do very undemocratic things to keep themselves in power.
So … how do you represent the minority, the people who may not have voted for the Government in power. In Queensland terms, how do you ensure that voices of the 31 seats outside South-East Queensland are heard? Unfortunately money tends to get spent where the votes are, not where the money is created in the first place.
I’ve put “A” proposal up. I’m interested to see your option, or whether you’re happy to move to a unicameral Parliament elsewhere.
Mark, the Legislative councils of other states have a different structure with proportional representation still allowing a larger proportion of minor parties (both left and right leaning) to win seats compared to the single member structure of the lower house. This will provide ways for minority voices to be heard.
I don’t agree at all that upper houses are undemocratic. While I am not a fan of electing half of the chamber at each election, they are generally more democratic than the lower houses. The use of proportional representation is what ensures minority representation. The difference in electoral method makes it much more likely that the upper house won’t have the same majority as the lower house and thus can work independently in holding the government to account. This is pretty basic stuff.
The problem with what you propose, like other malapportionment or methods like appointed upper houses, is that they put a skew on the upper house in one direction. By making them more conservative you protect a conservative minority in the face of a progressive government but do nothing in the reverse situation. And that’s before you deal with the absurdity of giving the seat to the mayor – someone who has a completely different job to do and is elected to deal with different issues and different circumstances.
I have also written quite extensively on structures for upper houses and the merits of semi-parliamentarism.
Mark, I was referring to Tasmania’s Senate entitlement. I am not particularly fussed by their minimum cap of five seats.
The difference between the act and tas is that tasmania is a federation state. The act is an adminjstrative territory created for the sole purppse of governing the country. Its the same with dc in america. They get no senators.
Remember the senate is the states house. They should be thankful they get any at all.
Arguably the maximum number of voters per electorate should be around 35,000 (+/- 10%), with the number of electorates being increased or decreased to maintain the quota at that number. At the current enrolment statistics that would be around 107 seats.
Additionally, the provision for adding “ghost electors” for large electorates should be removed.
You could possibly create a regions-based upper house (similar to Victoria’s) that is limited to providing advice on legislation relating to that region (similar to how the South African upper house operates). Honestly though, Queensland doesn’t need an upper house.
@RB maybe then people in SEQ can learn to grow their own food and mine their own resources.
Ah yes, because rural and urban Queensland are completely isolated economies not interconnected to each other or anyone else in any way
Who do you thi k would be worse off if a NQ state got up?
I “thi k” this thread has gone wildly off topic.
Not really. Rbs comment about maximum voters and no ghost voters is clearly about redistributions. The fact that nq would be worse off is not off topic
No, really. The Legislative Council is not coming back, and any proposals to alter the existing arrangements in regards to ghost voters is beyond the remit of this redistribution.
The only way a legislative council is coming back is if there is a minority govt where the crossbench hold the balance of power and demand it in exchange for their support.
By the way, going back to talk about the city of brisbane, does anyone know why we have such a big capital city LGA, while most other capitals have lots of smaller ones?
Probably because none were established.
Talking of LGAs, how does everyone feel about the practice of avoiding electorate boundaries that crossover into multiple LGAs.
Considering that election advertising rules change slightly depending on the LGA [such as road signs], it’s certainly more practical.
Aligning to LGA boundaries is a goal relatively high on most people’s minds, but the reality is that it can be difficult to do so when constrained by the numbers and other considerations.
Regarding the Upper House – I must say, having recently relocated to Queensland, the prospect of voting in a state election does not excite me much because I’m in a very safe seat, and there is no upper house. Just a thought.
@Clarinet of Communists. Pick me, pick me! 🙂 Brisbane is one of the few conurbations in the world, a city whose governance was formed from the merger of other cities – like Budapest (formed from Buda, Pest and Old Buda (O’Buda)) and New York (formed from the five boroughs of Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, Brooklyn and The Bronx).
In 1925 Brisbane was consolidated from 20 different local government areas under the City of Brisbane Act. South Brisbane, for example, was a separate LGA and the old Council building is still there, as is Sandgate Town Hall and Windsor Town Hall. If you look at land titles you’ll see the original LGA on the paperwork. Imagine a Melbourne where Yarra and Stonnington were part of the same Council.
Brisbane also has geography on it’s side. Unlike Sydney and Melbourne, Brisbane can stretch in four directions so there’s just more land to expand. It doesn’t have Sydney Harbour or Port Phillip to limit development. It also doesn’t have the Blue Mountains either, so the Greater Brisbane area tends towards sprawl, and because of the flight paths it has less capacity to get any taller, being capped at 274.3 metres.
@RB 😛 and Nicholas Historically there’s been some flexibility when it comes to LGA boundaries as a factor for redistributions. Some have been absolutely rock solid, like the north-west border of BCC and Moggill, where geography is also a major factor.
Some are locked UNLESS the numbers don’t work out and the only way to make it fit is to cross the border. A few redistributions ago Mansfield added a small chunk of Rochedale South (Logan) because it was the least worst option, but then changed it back at the very next redistribution. The Rochedale (Brisbane/Logan) border for Federal and State seats is one of the fixed points. I know, because I live right on the line. 🙂
The more regional you go, the harder it is to make LGAs fit. Collinsville, for example, is in Whitsunday Regional Council but is in Capricornia and Burdekin, instead of Dawson and Whitsunday. You have to almost drive past Dawson to get there from Capricornia. Part of that reason is due to the 2008 Council mergers which made some of the LGAs outside Brisbane absolutely massive, making it much harder to fit Federal and State electorates to the LGA borders.
Sydney is certainly a very boxed-in city (by mountains on three sides, sea on the other), but I’m not sure I’d say that Brisbane is all that free to expand either. You only have to go five kilometres west of Brisbane CBD before you run into mountains that cannot be built on.
On the size of LGAs, I think there’s always been a general push in every state for LGAs to increase in size, but that trend is more advanced in some states than in others. It is most advanced in Queensland, and probably most latent in Western Australia.
Agree Nicholas, a merger of the state and local levels to create larger ‘Regional’ sized administrations of similar size to BCC and the ACT would make more sense to reduce costs and improve efficiency of service delivery. These hybrid entities could be elected using a form of proportional representation instead of single member districts to make it fairer.
I think in Sydney Council mergers wlll be less likely to due to stronger local identities and class divides. If you merge Hills with Blacktown council there will be outrage. Just like i dont think people in Point Piper want to be in the same LGA as Redfern etc. Hunters Hill, Mosman etc will be same LGAs
Nimalan, perhaps a compromise is rather than do a straight merger between councils – they should be reorganised to group similar suburbs together. For the Blacktown example, all suburbs north of the M7 like Kellyville Ridge etc. would work well with the Hills Shire but the rest of council including Blacktown itself would better off being paired with Penrith due to their links along the main western rail line.
@Nimalan August 13, 2025 at 2:02 pm
I think the local identities there might be a stronger factor here considering that 62% of people in the Inner West (merger of Ashfield, Leichhardt and Marrickville) voted to de-merge. Considering that these three areas are within the same area and therefore have less class divides, I would’ve assumed their merger would’ve gone smoothly. Not to mention that some of the mergers (mainly Canterbury-Bankstown) doesn’t seem to make sense.
I concede Brisbane manages to have an even lower population density than Melbourne somehow, but it will be a long time if ever before Brisbane can match Melbourne’s sprawl by land area. Melbourne just keeps swallowing everything to its north, west and east. Suburbs that were at the development boundary when I was a kid are now just middle ring, upwardly mobile places.
On the subject of Brisbane LGA, would Indooroopilly eventually be split off as a separate LGA due to strong population growth within the area? I’ve heard some Brisbanites say that the population of BCC is getting too big to handle
@Yoh An August 13, 2025 at 2:48 pm
Would it be a good idea if we combined the lower portions of the Hills shire (the part above the M7, excluding suburbs in the outer North that can be given to Hornsby) with Parramatta and Cumberland to form a Mega Parramatta Council?
@Nicholas Believe it or not, but Mount Coot-tha can be built on. The only reason it’s not is because it’s because it’s forestry reserve. I was thinking more of Sydney and Melbourne, who have limited expansion East (Sydney) or South (Melbourne). City growth moves outwards, small chunks at first and then along traffic routes as they get bigger. What Brisbane has is the eastern side from the CBD to the bay.
Which is more or less 16 km east from the edge of the CBD to Tingalpa Creek at Lota. Then up to the northern coastal border at Brighton and back to the CBD. That’s a total area of 145 km2 of which about 30 km2 is either rounding errors or limited development, such as Gumdale.
And even as you go west, while densification drops it never becomes zero except for national parks. The land is still available, it’s just that there are easier and cheaper places to build.
@Yoh An The problem with Council mergers is that it generally involves one area that doesn’t want to do it. In Queensland some Councils followed the process for deamalgamation – Noosa was successful, Redcliffe wasn’t. Post amalagamation there were a couple of unforeseen consequences. Councils got bigger, staff increased over the pre-amalagamation totals and CEO pay packets went up. Some small councils that had surplus suddenly found that larger councils had swallowed that up, and because that’s where the votes were the small councils found that they were disadvantaged when it came to spending.
And sometimes there were major structural problems. Yarrabilba was approved by the Gold Coast City Council and backed by the State Government. In the boundary changeover it was added to Logan, who all of a sudden had to provide the infrastructure for a major development that they had no say over. It wasn’t just pipes and streets, it was new water and sewerage infrastructure, connecting roads and additional services.
And after all of that the efficiency savings mostly didn’t eventuate. The further out from 2007 the more we can look at long-term results. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14719037.2023.2174586?src=recsys#abstract and https://theconversation.com/do-mergers-make-for-better-councils-the-evidence-is-against-bigger-is-better-for-local-government-56813
@ Lurkie Westie
I think demographics should be considered when merging. I still think for example being in the lower Hills District feel a prestige and they dont want to lumped in with poorer areas such as Wentworthville. I think a merger between Georges River and Cannterbury-Bankstown will also cause outrage. Sutherland Shire out of all LGA will be opposed to any mergers especially with a more ethnically diverse one such as Liverpool/Canterbury Bankstown. I think Haberfield should be put into Canada Bay due to demographics.
A@RB I did seek to utilise LGa boundaries where possible as i did with Logan, Ipswich, Moreton Bay, Sunshine Coast. Gold Coast, sometimes the numbers simply don’t work. I managed to combine Moreton Bay with the parts of Somerset from Nanango, noose with sunshine coast, the one thing I tried to avoid is having partial lgas in multiple seats. For example Mirani is compromised of parts of Macaky, Issacs, Livingstone and Rockhampton. This is my main reason for its abolition. I prefer to confine lgas to the minimum amount of seats, I managed to get Mackay into 2 and a bit seats. Rockhampton into under 2. Livingstone is united into one. Issacs is still split across tow but could fin a way to avoid this, thistle around. Main due due to having no way of uniting it at this point. I also crossed the Brisbane/Ipswich border due to the Ipswich seats having a Projected enrollment of 4.6 seats come 2032. Though this should be fixable by creating a 5th seat come the next redistribution. Likewise Somerset should be able to be removed from Moreton Bay.
@Lurking Westie Indooroopilly is practically inner-city, so no, that’s not happening. Brisbane is huge, and the population growth in other parts of Brisbane is even bigger than the western suburbs. The CBD and South Brisbane just to name two.
@John Yep, I tried to do that too. But sometimes the LGA boundaries are dumb – most of Bribie Island is in MBRC but the top of it (with no people) is in SCRC. Which makes keeping Pumicestone in just Moreton Bay impossible. I’m not really happy with my Mirani at all.
@Arky Melbourne, with 16 LGAs, is 804 km2. Brisbane, with one LGA, is 1,342.7 km2. Greater Melbourne is 9,992.5 km2 and Greater Brisbane is 15,842 km2.
Commuting distance is even more – I met a plumber who was working for a friend of mine who commuted from Ocean Shores, just north of Byron, to Rochedale every day.
Mark. I consider Brunei Island to be Moreton Bay. They need to redraw the LGA boundaries. Mira I was the obvious choice to abolish it was basically the the bridge between regional and northern Queensland. I was able to split it almost by LGAs. My two Mackay seats make it all the way to Alligator River. Keppel then gets everything between that and the Rockhampton boundary being the Fitzroy River. Rockhampton then goes to Callide. I’m hoping at the next redistribution to push it all the way to the Mackay boundary. Gregory would then get the rest of Issac’s I’m then gonna push Keppel back into Rockhampton on the Eastern side of the river. And hen Rockhampton to take back some of rocky from Callide which can then push into South Burnett.and lose Western Downs. The current numbers in qld would have made it easy to draw the federal seats. Just use 3 state seats for every federal seat. Though this would have required some tinkering int the Moreton and Sunshine Coast areas with high growth as federally they are restricted to a 3.5% projection. Somerset seems to be the odd place out which I’m hoping will one day be able to support its own seat.
I’ve figured out the lnp can keep all its current mps too. The current Mira I mp could run in the new Callide and the Callide mp in Burnett. The Burnett mp could then run agains t the sitting labor member now that the new boundaries will probably flip the seat. For labor it’s a lot easier given the abolished seat ins outs Brisbane is pretty close to the new seat in logan