As outlined in a previous post, NSW is set to lose a seat at the next Federal election.
The AEC has released submissions to the redistribution that will reduce the state from 47 to 46 seats. In this post I’ll run through some of the major features of party proposals. You can find the submissions at this link.
Liberal Party Submission
The Liberal submission approaches the major tasks of the redistribution, that is dealing with a shortfall of voters north and south of the harbour, a surplus in Sydney’s south-west, and adjusting the boundary between metropolitan Sydney and the country.
These are the major changes though there are small changes that could have significant consequences.
- The Liberal Party has proposed to abolish Warringah, though a close inspection shows that the seat remains but has inherited the name of neighbouring North Sydney. (North Sydney is a Federation seat.) Splitting the old North Sydney three-ways and re-naming Warringah as North Sydney might cause some people to suggest Kylea Tink and Zali Steggall will contest the same seat. I think the name change is unlikely, but if it happens and Tink contests another seat, she will have opponents (falsely) claiming she is abandoning her seat. If the seat name kept is Warringah with North Sydney abolished, then Tink would more logically follow the majority of her voters and contest either Bennelong or Bradfield, depending on where the boundaries are drawn.
- The Liberal submission retains Windsor and Old Windsor Roads as the major dividing line between the North Shore and Western Sydney. It does this by splitting Macquarie into its two constituent parts with the Hawkesbury Council end of Macquarie combining with parts of The Hills Shire to create a new northern Sydney Liberal seat called Reiby.
- The Blue Mountains end of Macquarie is combined with Bathurst and Lithgow from Calare. Calare is abolished with the rest of the electorate shoring up Riverina and Parkes. Calare is currently held by Andrew Gee who left the National Party and became an Independent earlier this year.
- The re-arrangement of Macquarie means that Hume does not need to move into Sydney’s south-west suburbs. Instead it moves west, shoring up the margin of MP Angus Taylor.
- Mitchell extends further into Parramatta Council, pushing Parramatta south and strengthening the Labor margin, but with the benefit of pushing Bennelong east into more traditional Liberal territory. The changes to Bradfield and Bennelong create a three way split of the existing North Sydney, pointing back to my comment above on why Warringah was re-named North Sydney.
- The southern and more traditionally Labor voting end of Greenway is moved into McMahon making Greenway a future Liberal target, though not on 2022 results.
- South of the harbour, all seats shift west and Blaxland is abolished. Newtown is united in Tanya Plibersek’s seat of Sydney which will interest the Greens.
- Banks stretches east and Cook moves north taking areas from Barton. Moving Cook’s northern boundary avoids Hughes being pushed west of the Georges River to the south of Liverpool.
- Kurri Kurri is moved from Paterson to Hunter almost certainly making Paterson a notional Liberal seat.
- The new seat in Sydney’s west and south west is centred on Western Sydney Airport and proposed to be named Bird Walton.
Labor Party Submission
Labor’s submission abolishes one seat, the southern Sydney seat of Hughes. By not abolishing two seats and creating one as the Liberal Party has, Labor’s submissions involves a lot of shifting boundaries in western Sydney.
- Instead of abolishing North Sydney, Labor proposes to re-draw the seat as a Willoughby, Lane Cove and Hunters Hill based seat. Without a seat abolished on the lower north shore, everything else moves north and west. Bradfield adds Hornsby, Berowra picks up Windsor and Richmond from Macquarie, while Mitchell does not move south. Bennelong moves into the northern part of Parramatta. The Windsor and Old Windsor Road boundary involves only a small shift.
- Removing Windsor and Richmond forces Macquarie to gain voters which it does with a very inelegant split of Penrith with neighbouring Lindsay.
- Labor has kept Blaxland and produced a strong set of boundaries between the Parramatta and Georges Rivers, but only by pushing all the problems south of the Georges River. Coming up with strong boundaries for Barton, Watson and Blaxland has scrambled seats further west and south.
- Everything south of the harbour shifts west, but instead of abolishing a seat, Labor pushes Banks over Alfords Point Bridge to take in the Menai area from Hughes. Hughes is abolished, the eastern part of Hughes is placed in Cook, the southern part in Cunningham, the western end lands in a radically re-drawn Fowler.
- Fowler is held by Independent Dai Lee. The existing seat is divided between McMahon, Blaxland and Werriwa, with Fowler proposed to extend into a completely different area including Holsworthy and Macquarie Fields.
- Kurri Kurri is kept in Paterson, and given the seat must lose voters, produces an inelegant adjustment to the boundary between Newcastle and Paterson.
- Eden-Monaro moves east of the ACT, gaining Batemans Bay from Gilmore, with Gilmore then gaining parts of Shellharbour council. This strengthens Labor narrow margin in Gilmore.
- Angus Taylor’s seat of Hume is pulled into western Sydney.
- In my opinion the redistribution is unlikely to abolish a seat called Hughes given it is named after a former Prime Minister. I think it is also unlikely to do so given the scrambling of boundaries in Labor’s proposal.
National Party Submission
The National Party proposes few changes for its areas of interest, country NSW. Despite having little presence in Sydney, the Nationals have served up some interesting proposals.
- The Nationals have proposed to abolish Grayndler, the seat of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. This provides space for a new seat to be created further west in Sydney.
- The Nationals propose to abolish North Sydney and move Bennelong further east than the Liberal Party’s proposal.
- The Nationals also move Kurri Kurri from Paterson to Hunter which tips Paterson into the Liberal Party fold.
- The Nationals pay more attention to shoring up their own seats which results in Angus Taylor’s seat of Hume pushing into the edge of Sydney.
Greens Submission
- In the North Shore game of pass the parcel, the Greens propose to abolish Paul Fletcher’s seat of Bradfield with North Sydney extending up the rail line.
- Newtown and Annandale are proposed to be united in Sydney, Grayndler moves west and Tony Burke’s seat of Watson would be abolished.
Independent Submissions
For obvious reasons the Independents tend to concentrate on their own seats.
- Sophie Scamps in Mackellar makes the obvious submission to move the seat’s southern boundary into Warringah.
- Zali Steggall suggests moving the western boundary of Warringah into North Sydney.
- Kylea Tink proposes to keep North Sydney but without offering strong suggestions about how the seat can be retained given the shortfalls in Mackellar and Warringah.
- As with other submissions, Allegra Spender in Wentworth suggests extending the seat west into Sydney and south into Kingsford Smith.
- Andrew Gee suggests his seat of Calare should remain unchanged.
- Independent MP for Fowler Dai Le does not appear to have lodged a submission.
Some approx maps would be most helpful.
COMMENT: Try looking at the submissions. Some of them have maps, many others do not. I don’t have any capacity to produce maps based on submissions.
Hi Antony, Did you read the “One Nation” submission from Jeff Waddell? It seems to me to be setting the stage for US style claims of Gerrymandering, Election Interference and fraud leading into the next election by claiming the AEC deliberately under estimated electoral growth which resulted in the “wrong result” in the 2019 election (pages 9-10 of the submission). Are the major party submissions really taken into account when they appear to be so biased towards that party?
COMMENT: He is complaining about the enrolment projections produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics for the last redistribution. That a party did not win a majority of seats from a majority of votes is not down to enrolments. It is almost always caused by differential concentration of support. Labor grimly managed to hang on to a string of seats with small margins in 2019. I went through a discussion of the NSW 2019 result in my NSW preview for the 2022 Federal election.
Having covered South Australian politics for three decades, I’m familiar with this argument about “wrong winners” based on two-party preferred results. The same has occurred at NSW state elections. It is an issue of differential concentration of party support and issues to do with marginal seat campaigning. It’s not caused by population projections.
tbf, Waddell does this in every single submission he does as well, it’s not a Waddell submission if there isn’t a timfoil hat style rant about the boundaries somehow being intentionally drawn to favour a party.
Except for 2018 in Western Australia. As I wrote in my comment on suggestion at the time, I can only presume he believed the right party won the majority of the votes there when the Liberal Party won 68% of the available seats to their 56% of the 2PP vote.
Hey Antony – you didn’t comment on the rather “inelegant” drawing of Riverina in the Liberal submission. Riverina would wrap around Young and Cowra to contain both Wagga Wagga and Orange.
I would say that Macquarie is abolished in the Liberal submission and Calare pushes slightly east and is renamed – but 6 of one, etc. Andrew Gee loses Orange from his most natural seat regardless.
The Labor submission does note that another seat should be called Hughes. Its been a problem for a long time, ever since Sutherland Shore became two small for 2 seats.
What has happened in the past AEC history with regards to major seat boundary changes? Do they attempt to minimise movement so as to not disenfranchise voters moving into different seats with different MPs?
I note the Liberal party’s submission has suggested boundary changes resulting in numerous seats with only 20-30% of their original constituents, with no cultural / community connections (presumably in an attempt for some partisan advantage).
Keeping residents in their original seats is an almost impossible task given uneven growth, particularly in urban areas. You also have to bear in mind that people move quite regularly too, so locking voters to MPs is a pretty futile task. And it’s not as if people are being disenfranchised by not having the MP of their choice to represent them. In the most rock solid seat there are still going to be at least 25 percent of people who don’t like the person elected.
Good post Antony! Having a look at the 2022 results from Paterson, when removing Kurri Kurri booths it looks like it would still result in a Labor win, although narrowed. The state electorate of Port Stephens also has a pretty solid Labor margin. Difficult to account for postal and absentee ballots in my quick spreadsheet, but presumably that wouldn’t change the outcome.
Just out of interest, how narrow Jarrod?
It’s amazing how different all these proposals are, largely on self interest, and yet the AEC still have to come up with something that just works mathematically. Best of luck to them.
The AEC does an exceptionally good job (far better than the state bodies such as the ECQ) given that they have to account for not only present figures but also future growth. In some cases that’s almost impossible due to the very uneven growth in some areas (i.e. the Northern Gold Coast region).
If Macquarie is split, removing the Hawkesbury, surely that does two things:
1) Dramatically shores up Macquarie for Labor (sounds like the boundaries Bob Debus won on in 2007)
2) Destroys Sarah Richards/McMahon’s federal political ambitions, unless she decides to take on Alex Hawke.
I really don’t think there is any point prognosticating on how various versions of seats would play out for one party or the other on a public forum like this. There’s 46 seats and multiple scenarios for most of them. Let’s have all the crystal ball gazing when the draft determinations come out.
COMMENT: I disagree. This is exactly the time you can crystal ball gaze. The submissions are published for public comment. Once the draft determination is released, then you have hard numbers to work on.
Antony, my point was it turns the public analysis into a puerile assessment of who will benefit, who will lose – when there’s a zillion different combinations and permutations that could be analysed – it’s like the worlds’s largest network of rabbit warrens. We all know that the major party submissions are dressed up to be in the public interest, but have hidden agenda’s that benefit them. We should be assessing the submissions at this stage on if they are good proposals for dividing the state into 46 seats – surely that’s what the AEC would like to hear about in the Comments on Submissions Stage, which is now open and closes in a couple of weeks.
By all means, crystal ball gaze about results, but don’t bother the rest of us with it.
I”ll kick things off by noting that the Liberal and Labor submissions do something quite similar in far north western Sydney by having a seat run east west to the south of the Hawkesbury River and picking up growth areas in over quota seats to the south of it. However, if you are going to do that, make mores sense to me to do it with the existing Berrowa seat, rather than create a new one like the Liberal submission does.
COMMENT: This post has been one of the most popular posts I have published in ages so clearly there is an audience for it. You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to.
I like your post Antony. I was commenting on other some readers obsession with analysing every possible boundary change for political winner and losers.
Your post focuses on the suitable or “elegance” (or otherwise) of the proposals. The post gives very little or nil attention to who wins or loses out of a set of boundaries, which I agree is the best way to present and discuss them.
Suggestions making Riverina really stretch the connection to the name. South West Slopes is what it is but that would never become an electorate name. Any PMs from Orange/Young/Cowra/Wagga?
COMMENT: I think it is time the electorate of Riverina adopted a new name. It includes only part of the Riverina and is an example of why few seats have geographic names. I think they should revive the name Lawson.
Although Lawson is also a location name, being a suburb of the Blue Mountains so it may cause some confusion if it is applied as a district name far away in rural Western NSW.
COMMENT: Cowper, Parkes, Richmond and Paterson are just some of the electorate’s that are both places and electorates. Lawson used to exist as a rural NSW electorate 1949-69.
I was going to suggest Lawson as well (he was born in Grenfell).
Firstly, it’s highly likely that North Sydney and Bradfield will be merged into one seat with the southern boundary being the Sydney Harbour and extends north along the T9 railway line until areas around Turramarra. Whether the seat is called North Sydney or Bradfield is up to the redistribution committee, although I personally think the name Bradfield is more likely to be retained, since the merged division no longer contains most of the North Sydney Council, rendering the name North Sydney no longer appropriate.
The Liberal Party submission of effectively merging North Sydney with Warringah is weird, because in terms of transport, North Sydney is serviced by the T9 railway line while Warringah is serviced by buses only. Merging the two electorates will likely fail the community of interest test. It makes much more sense to merge North Sydney with Bradfield, both of which are serviced by the T9 railway line, because communities along the T9 will have much more common interests. Abolishing North Sydney and merge it with Bradfield will put most of North Sydney voters into Bradfield, prompting Kylea Tink to contest Bradfield at the next election.
The Labor Party submission of abolishing Hughes is bizzare, not only that the name itself probably will not be abolished because it is named after a former PM, but also it creates some very strange boundaries. Extending Banks into the Sutherland Shire doesn’t pass the pub test or the community of interest test. The boundary for the proposed new Fowler is also very weird. The new Fowler is essentially a new bits and pieces electorate combining territories from the old Fowler, Werriwa, Macarthur and Hughes, while the old Fowler is abolished with most of its territory going to McMahon, Blaxland and Werriwa. I understand that Labor wants to avoid messy preselection fights caused by the abolition of a safe Labor seat between Parramatta and Georges Rivers, which are all held by senior cabinet ministers, however a new seat created in the outer south west of Sydney will also be a Labor seat which a senior Labor minister can easily transfer to.
COMMENT: The Liberal Party submission doesn’t merge North Sydney and Warringah. It dismembers North Sydney, splitting it three ways with around a third each to each to Warringah, Bennelong and Bradfield, with Warringah receiving the smallest portion. It then re-names Warringah as North Sydney. It sensibly could be left as Warringah given it includes only part of North Sydney Council, but there are certain rhetorical advantages in applying the name North Sydney to Warringah.
If you want to be cynical, you could argue Labor’s entire proposal for Greater Sydney is based around dismembering Fowler and making it as difficult as possible for Dai Le.
A very interesting post, Joseph. A merger of Bradfield and North Sydney does look likely in some form. It would probably suit the current MPs too as Kylea Tink would be squeezed out in a race in Bennelong as both major parties will through huge resources there. She wouldn’t want to take on Zali Steggal for obvious reasons. The gossip in Canberra is that the current MP for Bradfield is bored and looking for an escape plan. Having to fight to retain his seat on very different boundaries may be just the excuse he needs to go. Tink would have a real chance of winning in Bradfield too given that the independent who ran there at the last election picked up 20% with a very short campaign and little money. From memory Fletcher had the largest swing against him of any Liberal in the country.
COMMENT: I’ve left the “gossip” line in as your opinion, not mine.
The swing against Fletcher in Bradfield was the biggest outside of WA, on 2PP terms. But that’s against Labor
Based on the submissions, it seem fairly clear to everyone that one seat out of Bradfield, Berowra or North Sydney must be abolished (the Liberal proposal is essentially abolishing North Sydney and transferring the name to Warringah).
The tricky question is what to do in south Sydney. Does Hughes remain split between Sutherland Shire and Liverpool, or does it become fully based in SW Sydney, forcing Banks to cross the Georges River? I would be interested in what locals think. Does Menai/Woronora have more in common with Liverpool/Casula or Padstow/Revesby?
I would say the latter, which is why ive suggested the second option in my submission.
I don’t know why you would say it’s highly likely that North Sydney and Bradfield will be merged into one seat, as far from all submissions propose this. Certainly there will be some overlap, but it may be quite minor. Further, I’d say a seat from the harbour (presumably you mean Greenwhich) to Turrumarra is quite unlikely.
This focus on the mode of transport people travel out of the electorate is what i find weird. Many people don’t leave their electorate or local area on a day to day basis. A seat with transport link within it, is more important, but I still don’t think it counts for much.
As to Hughes, it has long been an ugly seat. The parts of the Shire that are left over after Cook is drawn will always be a bit problematic, as they don’t really connect to anywhere but to Cook (but Cook can only be so big). Have you ever driven over the Alfords Point bridge? It’s quite big, you know.
Thanks Antony. Always on the ball. As an independent incorporated statutory authority the AEC receives suggestions from any source about redistribution of boundaries and it undoubtedly would examine conflict of interests proposals when making decisions through its committee structure. The Liberal Party proposal suggests both desperation and significant conflict of interest to serve own goals.
“A Redistribution Committee is appointed for the state or territory in which a redistribution of federal electoral divisions has commenced. The Redistribution Committee is responsible for considering inputs from interested individuals and organisations and developing a proposed redistribution of the state or territory.”
“An augmented Electoral Commission is also established to consider any objections to the Redistribution Committee’s proposals and make the final determination of the names and boundaries of electoral divisions in the state or territory.”
https://www.aec.gov.au/FAQs/Redistributions.html
COMMENT: The Commission draws its own boundaries. It doesn’t need to look at conflict of interest on submissions. The Commission pays a lot of attention to local government boundaries. The submissions sometimes come in useful for suggesting an approach to drawing boundaries, giving hints where the Commissioners might run into problems as drawing boundaries moves inland from the coast.
Thanks for the comment. I am disappointed that conflict of interest issues are not central to the AEC’s considerations. By implication it suggests that local governments to do not necessarily consider these either. As an ordinary concerned voter who believes that it is important to take a proactive interest in providing feedback to all three layers of government and to representatives of the Executive Government and bureaucracies, may I just say that the principles of integrity, accountability and transparency matter. At national level we have the National Anti-Corruption Commission, operative from July 2023. An example of a jurisdictional equivalent is NSW ICAC, which also does address conflict of interest issues as a matter of potential corruption. We need more not less scrutiny, which may mean a closer look at political motivation and other drivers that lead to distortions.
COMMENT: The Redistribution Commission calls for public submissions on the drawing of new electoral boundaries. The Commission is an Independent body operating under rules set by the Electoral Act. There are no corruption or conflict of issues raised with the lodging of a submission. If there were an attempt to interfere with the operation of the Commission there would be, but not for lodging a submission suggesting boundaries be drawn in a particular way.
Thanks Antony. My concern was not so much whether a submission may be made to the AEC regarding boundary redistribution, which is open to anyone, but rather whether the conflict may be assessed in a submission that reflects partisan party self-interest in proposing specific action such as amalgamation of seats and renaming thereof. Please see the article in SMH (Wright and Thompson 30 October 197 comments).
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/liberals-seek-to-pit-teals-against-each-other-in-electoral-boundary-shift-20231030-p5eg3v.html
Regards, Madeleine Kingston
COMMENT: Why do you come to a post I have written about the redistribution, where I outline the major changes proposed by each party, discuss specifically the issue of name changes for Warringah/North Sydney, and then you suggest I go off an read an SMH article on the subject as though I haven’t looked at the issue already or spoken to some of the participants.
A seat must be abolished on the north shore. Most of the submissions include suggestions on which seat to abolish. The Liberal Party effectively abolishes North Sydney, the sitting member for North Sdyney suggests it be kept. The Liberal proposed boundaries for Warringah (though re-named North Sydney) is almost the same as one of the proposals put forward by the sitting MP for Warringah.
The Liberal Party’s submission and the submissions by both members are examples of what you disparage as “partisan party self-interest”, though none of them say their proposals are self-interest. All of them clothe their interests in words using the legislative criteria for drawing boundaries, which are mainly about community of interest but also include geography, history and existing boundaries. There are multiple things that can be defined as community of interest, and each of the submissions uses different community of interest and historic arguments to back their proposal. In the end community of interest can always trumped by the absolute requirement of meeting the enrolment equality criteria.
The Commissioners who draw boundaries are well aware of this.
You have submitted a whole series of comments invoking conflicts of interest and referring to corruption commissions and inquiries into various rorts. Some of them I have not published because they are wildly irrelevant. This is a submission process to an Independent Commission to draw electoral boundaries. Of course the submissions are going to reflect the self interest of those making the submissions, but the process has clear procedures about how and why the boundaries will be drawn. The submissions are written in the language of how and why based on the criteria. Everyone in the process is fully aware of what these submissions are really about.
Thankfully we have independent commissioners to draw the boundaries which didn’t used to be the case and is still not the case in large parts of the United States.
I’m old enough to remember the 1970s when a Minister in the Fraser government was forced to resign from Cabinet over making a personal approach to a redistribution commissioner to influence the name of a re-drawn electorate. It’s why the submission, proposal and public hearing process is so open to observation. Rather than outrage that a “partisan self-interest” submission is made, you should be thankful that the intent of submissions can be discussed so openly.
Agree with Antony on this one – the SMH article is a waste of space. Better not to read it
I’m just going to quote from Dr Damon Muller’s recent paper on redistributions because he sums it up much better than I can.
“Many suggestions come from sitting members or political parties, but they have no special role in the process above any other interested person. In cases where the proposed changes are particularly contentious, the augmented Electoral Commission may hold public hearings before making its determination. Most recent redistributions have featured an inquiry into objections.
“Interested parties’ interpretation of the secondary criteria listed in section 66 (community of interests, means of communication and travel, and physical features) is often largely subjective. The community of interest criterion is particularly open to interpretation and has been discussed in terms of rural versus urban, dominant industries, socioeconomic class and ethnic backgrounds, however because redistributions are for entire states or territories, Redistribution Committees tend to take a state-wide view of these issues.
“Political considerations? As noted above, there is no provision in the CEA to consider political outcomes or electoral fairness in federal redistributions. Dr Newton-Farrelly has noted that shortly after the AEC was created in 1984 a federal redistribution for WA was subject to an appeal due to perceived ‘political effects’. The Electoral Commissioner at the time sought legal advice as to whether the augmented Electoral Commission had the power to decline to hear arguments on the ‘political effects’ of a redistribution in an objection to a redistribution.
“The Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department advised that the augmented Electoral Commission had discretion to either include or exclude objections due to political effects, with the Commission deciding on the latter. This precedent of excluding political effects considerations has continued for all federal redistributions since, and has also been adopted by most state and territory redistribution processes (as noted previously, South Australia was an exception to this).
If Calare is abolished the name Riverina should be retired and the name Yuranigh adopted for the seat if it is based on CW NSW. Yuranigh was a guide for the explorer Mitchell and was respected by aboriginal and european settlers alike.
Some of the partisan submissions look so blatantly self serving. Abolishing North Sydney and Fowler are rough with North Sydney being more defensible given Mackellar and Waringah.
The ALP lines just look desperate. Leaving aside the scramble in South West Sydney, their division of Sydney/Granger is just off. Newtown has a lot more in common with the university suburbs of Camperdown, Glebe and Ultimo than Earlwood and just looks like an attempt to keep Plibersek around.
Interesting to think where Kylea Tink would go on the Liberal plan. With the Voice result, I’d guess Bradfield, particularly if Fletcher looks like retiring, since there’s the chance the ALP runs dead rather than trying against a sophomore surge in a three cornered marginal (although she’s already won a three corner race). So maybe there’s risk there for the Liberals if they get their wish.
The ALP would run dead in Bradfield if North Sydney gets abolished, because they’re already a bit too far away on the 2PP in both Bradfield and North Sydney. It’s far more valuable for them to have the teals blocking a Coalition majority then to go all in with a high risk of losing, especially because it lets them spend more on the other seats, while consuming Liberal funds to fight an established ‘teal’ in a seat that was very close last time and is gaining parts of the old ‘teal’ North Sydney. I personally think that even if Warringah got renamed (unlikely) Tink would move north, not east.
The ALP will not run dead in any seat – you confuse “running dead” with a local campaign having to fund itself mostly from its own members and events..
The 2PP margin in North Sydney in 2022 was 1% – how is that “too far away on the 2PP? In Bradfield it was 6%, still not that much.
The 2PP candidate vote in North Sydney when you exclude Tink shows the Liberals winning it with a 2.5% margin. https://results.aec.gov.au/27966/Website/HouseDivisionPage-27966-137.htm
The Libs had an 8% swing against them in North Sydney.
The 2PP vote in Bradfield excluding the Independent Boele was the Libs winning with a 13% margin and a 10% swing against them. https://results.aec.gov.au/27966/Website/HouseDivisionPage-27966-108.htm
If North Sydney was abolished, the smart move for Tink would be to go to Bradfield.
Ford, 2PP means Two Party Preferred – by definition it is between Liberal/National and Labor in Australia.
Also, in Austalia, the 2PP margin in North Sydney is referred to as 1.26%, not double that – that’s the US way.
Yes, but that could not be true for two reasons:
1. Because, there is a bigger donator (Climate 200) willing to put enough money to out-perform
the Liberals, Labor trying to chase them would mean attempting to fight, not just a well
funded Liberals, attempting to retake, but well funded Teals, with a Labor voter base willing
to vote Teals, if it guaranteed no Liberal.
2. Because the funding that the Liberals will have to put into these seats, will leave others less
attended, it would be better to push in the seats the Coalition would leave behind, then
trying to dislodge a potentially friendly party.
Also, I think it is clear that I did not mean, just not funding a campaign when I said ‘run dead’, and that I meant that some level of local work would go into it.
The prospect of this redistribution puts the major parties in a bind. The NSW Liberal Party was rightly criticised for its dysfunction and appointing candidates far too late prior to the 2022 election (blame Alex Hawke, who would be significantly worried by the LIberal’s submission).
However their efforts to get underway with preselections now for the next election is countered with the realisation that boundary changes will reallocate party branches into adjacent seats. Candidates may find themselves in seats where their factional support base has retreated over a line into the next seat.
Branches will find themselves foisted with candidates they did not choose and do not support.
On another note, do you think it’s time for a review to codify the naming process?
I’m of the opinion that former (deceased) PMs get a seat named after them and those can’t be removed. I’m a little more agnostic on the Federation seats as the AEC has proved willing to consider renaming them and, quite frankly, some of them could be rehashed without anyone noticing.
But do we look at irrelevant names and places and put them on the critical list?
COMMENT: The AEC provide this guidance on electorate names.