9:00 – The draft redistribution of Tasmania’s five federal electorates is due to be published later today. I expect it to come out before midday.
Tasmania is guaranteed five federal electorates even though its population currently only justifies the entitlement to three electorates. For this reason, Tasmania will be unaffected by any parliamentary expansion.
Tasmania’s state parliament also uses federal boundaries to elect their 35-member House of Assembly, with each electorate choosing seven state MPs. The Tasmanian state parliament will separately adopt these new boundaries after the federal redistribution concludes, but there is no doubt that they will do so.
My plan today is to first describe the general changes proposed by the Redistribution Committee, publish a map showing the changes, estimate the 2025 federal results on these new boundaries, and then estimate the 2025 state results on these new boundaries.
It’s worth noting that these boundaries are simply drafts. A four-member redistribution committee, consisting of the Electoral Commissioner, the chief AEC officer for Tasmania and the state auditor-general and surveyor-general have prepared this draft. They will be joined by the two other members of the Commission to form the Augmented Electoral Commission, and that body will put out a final set of boundaries after further public consultation.
I looked at the population numbers for Tasmania in this post. The big question is how they deal with the inner-Hobart electorate of Clark, which is significantly below quota. Will it expand south into Franklin (which would then require Franklin to expand elsewhere) or will it expand north into Lyons (potentially into areas with little connection to the rest of the seat). There have also been suggestions that Franklin and Clark should be completely reorganised, with southern Clark merged with western Franklin while northern Clark is merged with eastern Franklin and some of Lyons.
