Caloundra – Queensland 2024

@leon i agree with that i think the southern somerset towns should be taken out of lockyer. I am deating whether to reunit it with the rest of smoerset or put it into what i assume will be a new ipswich seat given all the surplus there and in logan a new seat will be needed.

@real talk thats why i was contemplating puting burdekin shire into it. the nnumbers from 2 years ago were alot more promising because t could have taken in the surplus that was building in the cairns seats. my current line of thinking is to remove the raminedr or mareeba shire from Barron River into Cook and the move Traegar part way into marreba. Also it might be feasile to do a sort of shift as Hinchin brook has about 6.5% excess on the projected quota. so it might also work to shift that north and possibly share tragers defeicet across HinchinBrook, HIll, Mulgrave, Cainrs, Cook and Barron River Overall they all have about a 14-15% combined defeceit so it might work to set all 7 abour 2% under quota each.

Gregory can take in Issacs council which it currently only has a small portion of given issacs shape but you add in that whole council which according to the data is 82599.72 sqkm although the council website and wikipedia says 58,709 sqkm so based on the councils data thats an addition 1174 “electors” minus whatever territory it already holds. Plus an addition 14,000 electors (educated guess at this point) minus whatever people live in that small part already so add an addition 15174 electors giving it 51,094 Probably around 50,000 once you remove area and electors already inside the seat so that already over quota. meaning it can either shed some territory to Treger or take in less of Isaac Council.

Thoughts?

though instead of not taking in all of isaacs it could just shed parts of central higlands to top up Callide which might be a more feasible option given isaacs is more boxed in and has a narrower land corridor to between rockhampton and central highlands

@real talk after it loses part of Tablelands regional and moves further into Hinchin Brook. Im gonna suggest renaming this Johnstone after the river that dominates the district. removing another seat named after a person. if the island of hinchinbrook has to be moved in to il also rename Hinchinbrook Burdell. the most populous suburb of Townsville within the seat

renaming Hill that should say

@John I’m curious why you see the solution to Traeger as lying northward. According to the ECQ, the five Far North seats from Cook to Hill are all projected to remain within quota, now and in 2032, with an average variation of just -0.6%. That’s about as clean as it gets. I don’t think there’s another cluster of five contiguous seats in Queensland where the largest projected deviation is under 3.3%. In short: if it ain’t broke, maybe don’t fix it.

Personally, I’d prefer to see Hinchinbrook use its surplus to shore up the Townsville trio, which are collectively projected at an average of 7% below in 2025 and 12.6% below in 2032. There’s a clear need for top-up there, and an obvious donor.

On Gregory/Traeger/Isaac: your solution works numerically, but it does require shifting out the western shires — something I’ve started trying to avoid since my geographical faux pas last night. The other risk is geographic absurdity: a single seat stretching from the NT border to the Coral Sea. If we move all of Isaac into Gregory, we end up with exactly that. I’m leaning toward a split, with the old Broadsound section of Isaac staying with Mirani — it feels more aligned geographically and economically.

And on names, fair call on Johnstone and Burdell. If Hinchinbrook had to be renamed, I’d lean toward Ingham over Burdell, just on the basis of population and regional identity. But unless there’s a major redraw up north, I think the island is staying put — and the name probably should too, unless you wanted to remove it on the basis of sharing with an LGA, in which case go right ahead.

I haven’t had any experience with redistributions, and this is just a half-baked idea based on a quick look at the map, but could we abolish one of the Townsville seats? All three are going to end up well under quota, as are Traeger and Burdekin, so by abolishing a Townsville seat and moving Traeger and Burdekin into the outskirts of Townsville, could that help fix the problem?

@real talk but if you want to fix traeger without creating a larger monstrosity you simply share its defeceit with other seats thats my reasoning hill can move further into cassowary coast of hinchinbrook and that surplus can help solve the defeceit of traegar. the townsville trio would be better fixed by having mundingburra take in the townsville part of burdekin. which can then consist of burdekin and whitsunday. Then mackay can be divided into 2 seats. the second i intend to name Pioneer River. The problem with naming it Ingham is Hinchinbrook will probably be the ideal choice for a 4th townsville seat and Hinchinbrook shire would be the next to go, though I did originally consider Ingham and would have it as an alternative name. currently townsville is split across 3 (townsville, mundingburra(whch i intend to rename Ross) and Thuringowa) and the part in Hinchinbrook and part in Burdekin when you can put it into 4. as for where Gregory streches so what? Traegar almost does that except for a small patch of land near Rollingstone. given gregory would then be over quota it can leave the western shires put and as you said leave the coastal areas of isaac in Mirani which ive effectively abolished and renamed Pioneer River as the second Mackay seat. Burdekin instead could take in the northern parts of Mackay because the combined Burdekin and Whitsunday LGAs would likely be short of the quota.

@clarinet burdekin already takes in parts of townsville to the southern area. and the norther parts in Hinchinbrook. youve also got community of interest problems. as just stated to real talk townsville currently splits into 3 and a bit quota so theres no need to abolish a seat that meets nearly a quota and doesnt cross the lga of a small city. really townsville shouldnt be in both burdekin and hinchinbrook as well which is why i intend to propse remving the townsville parts from Burdekin.

John the Townsville parts of Burdekin seem to be only scraps of semi-rural area, so I doubt that would be enough. And so your plan would be to abolish Whitsunday and replace it with a second Mackay seat? That basically decimates Mirani then, taking the area around Mackay into two seats, so what happens to the area down to Rockhampton and Gladstone?

i have to wait until i have time to go through the numbers and do a formal proposal but thats just a basic plan. It has been my plan for months to abolish Mirani as real talk state one regional seat has got to be abolished due to the fact the 30 seats north of the sunshine coast only have enough quota for 29 and the sunshine coast is in need of an additional seat due to its surplus.

the coastal areas of Isaac would be in either Pioneer River (Mirani), Gregory, or Keppel which i intend to as previously staed take in the entire Lvingstone Shire. and after Rockhampton is brought to quota that excess moved into Callide

tbh there may only be enough population in townsville for 3 seats meaning it may even be possiblt o abolish Hinchinbrook. and then remove charters towers from Traeger. again have to look at the numbers when i can get around to it

Yeah nah Hinchinbrook isn’t getting abolished.

Well considering the 3 townsville seats are currently 1/3 of a quota under that isn’t gonna come from burden on. Unless mundingburra moves into at least all of burdening shire.

I can’t offer much feedback on everyone’s proposed changes as I’m not very familiar with Northern Queensland. Has been interesting reading nonetheless.

However, if anyone’s interested, I’d be happy to share a tool that I’ve been working on that can be used to test out different changes without having to rely on maps and spreadsheets. It’s pretty bare-bones at this stage, but I think it works more smoothly than any of the other options I know of.

I just need to find a way to get it all bundled up and uploaded, hopefully over the next few days.

Sounds intriging

@Angus – thank you, I would appreciate that a lot

@Darth – For your pleasure, I have taken on the burden (pun totally intended) of calculating the number of voters in Burdekin located north of the Burdekin River (so, basically Ayr plus the outskirts of Townsville). There are 13291 present and 16426 future voters in this area. When you add these numbers to the seats of Townsville, Mundingburra and Thuringowa, that results in 126227 and 133519 voters respectively.

To describe it in terms of quotas: 3.13 and 2.99, or in other terms, slightly above (5% per seat) and then almost perfect. That’s not even including the whole Burdekin Shire, which would go towards Whitsunday in Leon’s division of Bowen-but-not-Chris-Bowen-because-that-wouldn’t-sit-well-with-John 😉

This shows that any shortfall from Townsville can easily be made up from Burdekin alone, without even touching Hinchinbrook.

Your forgetting that Leona strategy relies on the entire burdening shire being in his Bowen

@Real Talk splitting Ayr and Home Hill also probably isn’t great. And yeah I’ll be very interested to see your tool.

@Darth I was referring to the name only. I can think of a couple of other burdens that would be easily resolved by proof-reading, but alas. 🙂

@Clarinet I agree, but it’s the Least Worst Option I can see so far, which doesn’t result in Traeger becoming a bloated mess. There’s probably better solutions but I haven’t seen them yet. 🙂

Having done a bit of mucking around, I’ve got three balanced Townsville-area divisions. Thuringowa gains the part of Mundingburra west of Nathan Street. Townsville gains the part of Mundingburra north of Ross River Road (note: not the river itself). Mundingburra keeps Aitkenvale and Mundingburra, and now extends to the Burdekin River. Hinchinbrook stays as is, for the time being.

Anyhow, time for a digital detox I think. Good luck to all prospective boundary drawers.

Does anyone have a rough idea of the population of the Townsville parts of burdekin and hitchinbrook?

@Clarinet
– City of Townsville in Burdekin = 4,408 current electors / 6,529 projected electors (but will be slightly less as one SA1 is split with Burdekin Shire)
– City of Townsville in Hinchinbrook = 27,790 current electors / 35,793 projected electors

Overall, City of Townsville has enough electors for roughly 3.5 divisions.

Good to see that there’s some interest in my app. I’ll try to get it uploaded by the end of today.

Can anyone clarify if the 10% enrolment threshold for the 2032 projected enrolments is mandatory, or if it is just something the commission would like to target where possible?

Oh right Angas it’s your tool, not Real Talk. My bad, my brain was pretty frazzled last night. And thanks for those numbers. I’m now thinking maybe shift hitchinbrook shire and the parts of cassowary coast in hitchinbrook into Traeger, turning hitchinbrook (which would probably need renaming) into an urban Townsville seat, abolish Burdekin and give Burdekin shire to Townsville, using the rest to move things around to bring seats up to quota. It might not go down well though, given it’d be taking one of the KAP seats. (Although they might like it to help them break into Townsville, who knows).

@Angas – The 10% is part of the objectives, but how that 10% is calculated is not defined. Given the pre-Olympics growth in SEQ before the next 2032 redistribution I think it might be blissfully ignored, especially given how out of range the previous QRC calculations were. That’s one of the reasons why the QRC is emphasising large blocks for mapping over SA1s. The current data for growth is available here – https://redistribution.ecq.qld.gov.au/current-enrolment-and-boundaries/enrolment-statistics

On another note there’s an option to do start with a rough alignment with the Federal electorates (a less formal version of the way Tasmania does it) and jam 3 State seats into each Federal seat. The Large Area seats might balance it out if we did two State seats into those. There’s 93 State electorates and 30 Federal electorates so there’s an opportunity to do a rough alignment. However the Qld Federal redistribution starts next year and some of those seats are also out of kilter (not as much as the State seats though).

@Angas One other problem is that it may not be possible to meet the 10% over or under with current growth forecasts. A seat that is 10% under after the redistribution may be projected to be over 10% within 7 years – Caloundra and South Brisbane come to mind because of government-mandated planning policies. There’s also a few new developments west of Logan and Moreton Bay that will require those areas to deliberately understate the growth.

Alright, have gotten this app to a reasonable state and am happy to share it with the community.

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.

Should add, my current to do list for the app, some easier than others:
– Add LGA and suburb data
– Better division colours
– Renaming divisions
– Change division order and groupings
– Handle split SA1s
– Save and reload
– Exporting proposed changes
– Division screenshots

Thanks Angas. I’ll give it a spin!

@Mark Yore
Yeah it seems like they are going to treat the 10% projected target as a ‘nice to have’ where they’ll do their best at starting high-growth districts at the lower end (and vice versa), but as you suggest it’s going to be impossible to keep some districts within range.

I was thinking similarly about the federal redistribution, however it’s possible that we also get that one starting within the next month as it’s looking unlikely the 31st can happen before next year’s determination. Either way, could definitely repurpose my redistribution tool to handle the federal quotas.

Fingers crossed it all works!

I was gonna say about 5k as a guess. I’m pretty sure it’s mandatory it’s not and optional quota seats must be under 10% surplus or defeceit on projected enrollment

Please move this conversation over to the new post.

“The Electoral Act requires that, as far as is possible, the number of electors across Queensland should be evenly distributed in each electoral district (also known as an electorate). To achieve this, the enrolment in each electorate should not vary from the average State enrolment by more than 10 per cent (the quota) at the time of the redistribution. The Commission must adhere to this requirement in making its final”