new south wales

NSW2027 – Parties Registered to Contest the 2027 Election

The next NSW election will be held on Saturday 13 March 2027. The date has been brought forward by two weeks from the fixed term date specified in the Constitution to avoid a clash with Easter.

Under NSW Electoral Law, a party must be registered 12 months in advance of an election to have party names printed on ballot papers and to use central nomination of candidates. This registration date has been passed and there are 20 parties registered to contest the election.

Rather than list them in alphabetic order, I’ll list them in descending order of me knowing them from previous elections.
Read More »NSW2027 – Parties Registered to Contest the 2027 Election

Background on the Development of the NSW Legislative Council and its Electoral System

One of my post-retirement intentions for this blog is to bring together bits and pieces I’ve published on elections, politics and history over the past three decades.

In my career at the ABC I ran an election blog for around a decade as well as writing and publishing around 25 years worth of election guides.

This is a vast amount of material, a lot of which is no longer publicly available. The internet has undergone vast technical change over the past two decades, and the difficulty of keeping old websites in line with changing web standards has seen a lot of my older material disappear.

This post is the first of what I hope are many where I re-publish useful older material, sometimes with updates. Some of this was previously available through the ABC.

This first post is brief history of the NSW Legislative Council and its changing electoral system. I’m publishing it as background to a post under development setting out some of the stranger Council elections that took place under the indirect electoral system used between 1933 and 1978.
Read More »Background on the Development of the NSW Legislative Council and its Electoral System

Why does NSW have a 12-month Delay on Registered Parties being granted the Benefits of Registration?

Before nominations for the Kiama by-election (background here) closed on Thursday, Family First issued a press release stating the party had withdrawn from the contest.

Family First’s registered officer, Lyle Shelton, stated that “Family First has been BANNED from running in the Kiama by-election – not by the voters, but by petty rules designed by the big parties to protect themselves.”

“Our candidate Kyle Napoleoni was ready to give locals a family-friendly choice, but NSW law says new parties must sit on the sidelines for 12 months after registration.”

Shelton states the position more correctly later in the press release writing “The NSW Electoral Commission this week advised the party it could not accept candidate Kyle Napoleoni’s nomination.”

“Banned” is not what happened. Rather, the NSWEC refused the nomination because it was lodged by the party’s registered officer. Family First was registered to contest NSW elections in April this year. In every other Australian jurisdiction the nomination would have been accepted and the party’s name and logo printed on the ballot paper. But not in NSW where a registered party does not have these rights until 12 months after being registered.

Kyle Napoleoni could still have nominated, but not as the candidate of a registered party. He would have needed nomination with signatures by 25 electors on the Kiama electoral roll. I presume Family First did not have time to arrange signatures after the central nomination was rejected. But even with nominators, Napoleoni would have been denied a party name and logo on the ballot paper.

So why does NSW have this strange rule? It all goes back to the 1999 NSW Legislative Council election and its infamous “tablecloth” ballot paper.

And rather than being a rule put in place to benefit only the big parties, its implementation was backed by the minor parties in parliament at the time.

Let me explain how we got here.Read More »Why does NSW have a 12-month Delay on Registered Parties being granted the Benefits of Registration?

NSW State District of Kiama set for By-election

Result Declared – Final Figures

Kiama By-election Result
Candidate Party Votes Pct Change
Katelin McInerney ALP 18,622 37.3 +2.9
Serena Copley LIB 13,226 26.5 +14.5
Kate Dezarnaulds IND 5,225 10.5 +10.5
Tonia Gray GRN 4,074 8.2 -3.0
Don Fuggle LCA 2,550 5.1 +5.1
Felix Nelson SFF 2,543 5.1 +5.1
Joshua Beer LBT 895 1.8 +1.8
Lisa Cotton IND 676 1.4 +1.4
Ellie Robertson AJP 622 1.2 +1.2
Andrew Thaler IND 544 1.1 +1.1
Roger Woodward IND 429 0.9 +0.9
Ken Davis SAP 420 0.8 -2.8
Cyrille Jeufo Keuheu IND 69 0.1 +0.1
…. (Gareth Ward) IND .. 0.0 -38.8
Formal 49,895
Informal 1,995 3.8 +0.7
Total / % Counted 51,890 83.0
Roll 62,486
Two-Candidate Preferred
Katelin McInerney ALP 23,313 60.2 +10.9
Serena Copley LIB 15,421 39.8 +39.8
…. (Gareth Ward) IND .. 0.0 -50.8
Exhausted 11,161 22.4 +9.0
Two-Party Preferred
Katelin McInerney ALP 23,313 60.2 -9.5
Serena Copley LIB 15,421 39.8 +9.5
Exhausted 11,161 22.4 -10.4

Analysing the by-election swing is complicated by Gareth Ward’s victory as an Independent in 2023. Comparing Labor’s result to the contest against Ward in 2023 there is a 10.9% swing to Labor. By the alternative two-party preferred count from 2023, there is a 9.6% swing against Labor. But in 2023 there was a massive exhaustion rate caused by 69.5% of Ward voters having no preferences which inflated Labor’s two-party preferred result. As a result the two-party preferred swing is distorted which makes the two-candidate preferred swing a more reliable measure of the by-election swing.

Pre-election comment: My view since the start of the campaign is that Labor will win easily, as they would have won easily in 2023 had Gareth Ward not been on the ballot paper. Labor may even win a majority of the first preference vote and will certainly have the highest first preference vote. Based on the published how-to-vote preference recommendations, it is difficult to see how any other candidate can close Labor’s lead. Two weeks of bad headlines for the Federal Liberal Party can only have helped Labor’s cause.

Update: the campaign will be short with the by-election announced for Saturday 13 September. The writ will be issued on 22 August which in NSW electoral law is also the date when the electoral rolls closes. Nominations will close at noon on Thursday 28 August with early voting to begin on Saturday 6 September.

Draw for Ballot Positions 29 August – 13 candidates at the close of nominations. Labor drew the last position but will still be favoured to win. Details of the ballot paper inside post.

How-to-vote preference recommendations – details have been added

The resignation of former Independent MP Gareth Ward has set the stage for a by-election in his south coast seat of Kiama.

Ward has first elected as Liberal member for Kiama in 2011 at the Coalition’s landslide defeat of the Keneally Labor government. As outlined in this post, Kiama at the time was a traditional Labor seat, having been held by the party since its creation in 1981. He was re-elected in 2015 and again in 2019 with no swing against him. He resigned from the Liberal Party in 2020 after being charged with the sexual offences for which he was eventually convicted.

Ward was re-elected as an Independent in 2023 despite the charges hanging over his head. Two weeks ago he was convicted on the charges and placed in custody last week. Earlier this week he gained an injunction against the NSW Legislative Assembly moving a motion to expel him. His case was dismissed yesterday and the Assembly was due to debate an expulsion motion this morning. Before the debate could take place, Ward sent a resignation letter to the Speaker of the Assembly.

Read on for more information on the Kiama electorate.
Read More »NSW State District of Kiama set for By-election

2024 Federal Redistributions – Final Boundaries for NSW Released

(22 November – I’ve been through and finalised the split and merged SA1s to produce my final version of the margins. They have been incorporated into the table inside the post.)

(UPDATE – the final boundaries have been released confirming the abolition of North Sydney. There are some very minor changes of at most 0.1% and these have been updated in the table.)

(UPDATE – Friday 13 September – a discrepancy where the new electorate file coded Mcmahon rather than McMahon caused an error in my calculations. The significant changes are that Blaxland drops back from 13.9% to 13.1% while the new margin for McMahon is now 10.5% as opposed to the original estimate of 13.1%. There is also a minor adjustment for Fowler.

On Thursday 12 September, the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales released the final version of the state’s new Federal electoral boundaries. Draft boundaries were released in June and opened for public comment. This final version will be formally gazetted later this month and used for the first time at next year’s Federal election.

The redistribution has taken place to decrease the number of NSW federal divisions from 47 to 46. The final boundaries have confirmed the abolition of the Independent held seat of North Sydney.

The draft boundaries were released when I was overseas so this post is my first analysis of the draft boundaries. Today’s release includes a string small number of minor adjustments to the draft boundaries, none of which alter the analysis in this post. I will make minor adjustments to this post once the AEC publishes the datafiles required for calculations, sometime next month.

Re-calculating margins is a complex task of processing AEC polling place data files on where people voted in 2022 and comparing them with Bureau of Statistics files listing the low level SA1 (Statistical Area 1) composition of new electorates. Complicating the process is a re-numbering of many SA1s between the 2016 and 2021 Censuses. The 2022 AEC files used the old SA1 identifiers and the new electorate files use the new SA1 identifier. This has required a lot of fiddling with data to resolve inconsistencies between SA1 identifiers. Not all of the SA1 inconsistencies could be resolved but I do not believe they significantly affect any calculations.

The AEC will release its own versions of new margins next year as the election approaches. The AEC has many more resources to resolve SA1 inconsistencies and splits than are available to me.

Change in Seat Numbers

Change in Seats Held by Party
ALP LIB NAT GRN IND Total
Old boundaries 26 9 7 .. 5 47
New boundaries 25 10 7 .. 4 46

Based on traditional two-party preferred results, including for the underlying Labor-Coalition nature of Independent held seats, the changes in two-party preferred holdings are –

  • Old Boundaries 2PP: Labor 27, Coalition 20 (Liberal 13, National 7)
  • New Boundaries 2PP: Labor 26, Coalition 20 (Liberal 13, National 7)

The changes are brought about by the abolition of Independent-held North Sydney, a flow on impact of which is to flip neighbouring Bennelong from being a marginal Labor seat to as very marginal Liberal seat.

The three-way carve up of North Sydney along council boundaries is shown in the map below.

The main political implications of the changes are –

  • A relative decline in enrolment on Sydney’s lower north shore and northern beaches suburbs required a seat to be abolished north of the harbour, and as predicted before the process began, North Sydney has been abolished and divided between the re-drawn seats of Bennelong, Bradfield and Warringah.
  • There was also a shortfall south of the harbour but this has been fixed by a shift west and south-west of all boundaries to absorb a significant surplus of enrolments in south-west Sydney.
  • The Liberal electorate of Hume has also become an urban seat, shedding almost of all of its rural areas along the Hume Highway north of the ACT. It is now based on Camden in Sydney’s outer south-west fringe, along with western Parts of Liverpool Council and semi-rural Wollondilly Shire to the south. Geographically the changes are massive but the Liberal margin declines only slightly, from 7.7% to 6.9%.
  • The abolition of North Sydney is bad new for Independent Kylea Tink, but neighbouring Independents Sophie Scamps in Mackellar and Zali Staggall in Warringah retain their margins. There are few changes to the boundaries the western Sydney seat of Fowler won by Independent Dai Le in 2022.
  • In Wentworth, Independent Allegra Spender is significantly strengthened. Wentworth is a traditional Liberal seat but surrounding by Labor voting territory. By expanding into neighbouring Sydney and Kingsford Smith, Wentworth’s underlying Liberal 2-party preferred margin declines from 5.9% to 1.2%. Estimating a new Independent margin for the areas added to the seat is difficult, but a best estimate is that the addition of areas with weaker Liberal support boosts the Independent margin from 4.2% to 6.6%.
  • In Bradfield, Liberal MP Paul Fletcher faced a significant Independent challenge in 2022 that reduced his margin to just 4.2% versus an Independent. By shifting south and picking up parts of North Sydney, his margin is reduced to 2.5%. His Independent challenger from 2022, Nicolette Boele, has already announced she will contest the next election. It is unclear whether Kylea Tink will also contest Bradfield if the final boundaries confirm the abolition of her seat.
  • As already mentions, the abolition of North Sydney turns Bennelong from a marginal Labor seat to a very marginal Liberal sea.
  • By losing its Labor-voting southern end and extending north of Windsor Road, Michelle Rowland’s Labor seat of Greenway has its margin cut from 11.5% to an estimated 8.1%. As has been shown in the past, if the Liberal Party can select a good candidate, Greenway is a more marginal seat than it often appears on paper.
  • The Liberal margin for Hughes is cut from 7.0% to 3.6% as it loses Liberal voting areas near Sutherland and is pushed west beyond the Georges River to gain Labor voting territory from Weriwa and Macarthur. (There may changes to the construction of Hughes in the final boundaries.) There were no changes with the final boundaries.
  • In the Hunter valley, the transfer for Kurri Kurri strengthens Labor in Hunter but weakens its position in Paterson.
  • The National margin in Riverina declines from 14.8% to a still safe 9.7% after picking up parts of Eden-Monaro and Hume.

The new margin estimates in this post have not taken into account the adjustments included in the final boundaries. However, the list of adjustments released seem unlikely to change the estimated margins below.

Seat tables can be found inside the post.Read More »2024 Federal Redistributions – Final Boundaries for NSW Released

2024 Northern Tablelands By-election

7 June – updated with the list of five nominated candidates.

In NSW the Minns government will face its first electoral test on June 22 at the Northern Tablelands by-election.

Or to be more correct, could have faced its first by-election test because Labor looks unlikely to nominate a candidate. (Confirmed – Labor has not nominated.) Based in the state’s rural north, Northern Tablelands is the Coalition’s safest seat, the Nationals polling a huge 83.8% of the two-party preferred at last year’s state election. At the 2011 election, the Labor vote was so low its candidate lost their deposit!

The only interest will be if an Independent candidate nominates, trying to tap into local Independent support that saw Richard Torbay win Northern Tablelands at four elections from 1999 to 2011 and helped Tony Windsor win the Federal seat of New England in the same period.

I’m publishing a profile of the by-election on my personal blog as I will be overseas for the by-election and not have access to the ABC website. I will try and update this page while overseas. I will not be providing result commentary on 22 June as I will be otherwise engaged in Budapest.

2024 Northern Tablelands By-election

Party Status: Very Very Safe National 33.8%

Date – Saturday 22 June 2024

The by-election has been caused by the retirement of National Party MLA Adam Marshall.

The by-election writ will be issued and rolls close on Friday 31 May. Nominations close Thursday 6 June with announcement of candidates and draw for ballot position on Friday 7 June. Postal vote application open Monday 20 May, Pre-Poll voting starts Saturday 15 June. Further information on the by-election can be found at the NSW Electoral Commission’s website.

Read More »2024 Northern Tablelands By-election

Prospects for the Federal Redistribution in NSW

Caveat 27 July – This post was one I was unable to complete before I left for overseas at the end of June. I am publishing it here in partly completed form as I believe the changes to state representation in the House of Representatives could be released as early as today. I hope to update this post next week after I return from overseas.

In brief – The determination of House seats to be released by the Electoral Commissioner in the next week will see NSW lose a seat at the next Federal election, reduced from 47 to 46 seats. High growth rates on Sydney’s south-west fringe makes it likely a seat will be abolished in Sydney’s middle distance suburbs, possibly on the North Shore where all seats are well under quota. Abolishing a Sydney seat would draw the seat of Hume into south-west Sydney.

Another possibility is that two seats will be abolished, one in Sydney, one in the country with Hume pulled out of the metropolitan area and a new seat created on Sydney’s south-west fringe.

The redistribution will have major political consequences for both sides of politics as well as the independents.

For the Liberal Party, Bradfield (Paul Fetcher), Berowra (Julian Leeser) and Mitchell (Alex Hawke) will undergo major boundary changes, and one of these seats may even be abolished. Hughes (Jenny Ware) in Sydney’s south may be moved significantly into Sydney’s south-west suburbs. The rural seats of Farrer (Sussan Ley) may undergo major changes, and there is a chance that Hume (Angus Taylor) could be pulled into outer Sydney suburbs around Campbelltown. In between these two seats, the National seat of Riverina (Michael McCormack) may be forced to adopt new boundaries.

For Labor, any seat abolished on Sydney’s north shore would have major implications for Bennelong (Jerome Laxale), Parramatta (Andrew Charlton) and Greenway (Michelle Rowland).

North Sydney (Kylea Tink) is certain to have major changes flowing on from adjustments required to increase enrolments for the coastal seats of Mackellar (Sophie Scamps) and Warringah (Zali Steggall). Distance from the coast mean that the boundaries for Fowler (Dai Le) are likely to undergo major change.
Read More »Prospects for the Federal Redistribution in NSW

ABS Population Statistics confirm WA to gain a new House seat, Victoria and NSW to lose seats

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released state population figures this morning that confirm a change in seat numbers for three states at the next Federal election.

New South Wales representation will be reduced from 47 to 46 seats, Victoria reduced from 39 to 38 seats, while Western Australia will gain a seat, increasing from 15 to 16 seats.

Other jurisdictions remain unchanged, Queensland with 30 seats, South Australia 10, Tasmania five, Australian Capital Territory three and Northern Territory two.

The next election will be for a 150 member House of Representatives, down one from the current 151 seats.

The current elected members per state remain unchanged until the next election, due between August 2024 and May 2025. Redistributions will take place in the three affected states to bring the number of electoral divisions in line with the change in allocated members.

The change in numbers will become official in the last week of July, one year after the first sitting of the current House of Representatives, when the Australian Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers issues a formal determination of House representation by state and territory.

Commissioner Rogers has no personal choice in making the determination as the method is strictly defined in law. For states the Commissioner will apply the formula set out in Section 24 of the Constitution. For the Territories the Commissioner will use the formula set out in the Electoral Act. The Constitution also states that the Commissioner will use the “latest statistics of the Commonwealth”, a phrase the High Court and Parliament has determined will be the quarterly population statistics, that is today’s ABS release.

The precise calculations around how seats are allocated is explained inside this post.

Once the new numbers are officially announced at the end of July, redistributions to implement the changed seat numbers will get underway in NSW, Victoria and Western Australia. Based on past redistribution timelines, the process of drawing new boundaries should be completed by early July 2024, in time for use at the next election.

The changes in Victoria and Western Australia reverse changed numbers that first applied at the 2022 election.

For NSW, the reduction to 46 continues a long term trend. When the parliament was increased in size in 1984, 51 of the 148 seats were in NSW. The state lost seats at the 1993, 2007, 2010 and 2016 elections.

The latest changes have come about because of changes in relative state populations. The populations of NSW and Victoria have been growing more slowly than other state, meaning both states declined relative to other states. In large part this has come about because of the two year halt to immigration, ending the usual large migrant inflow to the nation’s two largest states. Despite closing its state border in the same period, over three full years Western Australia has been a beneficiary of internal migration from other states.
Read More »ABS Population Statistics confirm WA to gain a new House seat, Victoria and NSW to lose seats

Why NSW Labor’s Election Night Majority Disappeared

On the night of the 2023 NSW election, I along with most other observers had expected that Labor would achieve majority government.

After midnight I turned off the ABC’s predictive tools and assessed every seat solely on the votes counted. The tally I came to had Labor on a certain 45 seats, ahead in another four seats, and based on past trends had a reasonable chance of winning three seats where the Coalition was ahead on votes.

The next morning I rang the Sydney news room suggesting that news reports refer to Labor winning but step back from stating Labor had achieved a majority. On the seats remaining in doubt, you would have expected Labor would win at least two of the doubtful seats to achieve majority government. That was the position I reported on ABC news on the Sunday night.

This did not happen. Labor won only the 45 seats I had marked down as definite Labor wins on my Sunday morning check. In the four seats where Labor was ahead, and every other seat that was close, Labor went backwards with each day’s counting.

On Monday 27 March, the uncounted pre-poll centres were added to the count. A trend against Labor emerged and on the Monday evening I tweeted that Labor would probably miss out on a majority and win 45 or 46 seats. In seat after seat the addition of pre-poll votes on Monday had revealed a consistent decline in Labor’s position.

That trend went even further on the Saturday after polling day when the largest batches of postal votes were added in key seats. For the first time the Liberal Party pulled ahead in Ryde and moved even further ahead in Terrigal. Both seats had looked like Labor gains on election night.

As an election analyst, such post election night shifts set you up for criticism. You are accused of not taking into account that pre-polls and postals would favour the Coalition.

Actually, the model I use builds in a correction for postal and pre-poll voting trends. The model factors in the postal and pre-poll vote trends from the last election.

What happened in 2023 is that the 2023 pre-poll and postal vote results turned out to be very different to the election day results. The trend to the Coalition in post-election counting was much larger than in 2019.

There were also many more pre-poll and postal votes in 2023. The early vote broke more strongly for the Coalition than previously, and the impact of these votes was amplified in the final result by their greater weight of numbers.
Read More »Why NSW Labor’s Election Night Majority Disappeared

Increase in Voters Completing Preferences at the 2023 NSW Legislative Council Election

In 2000 New South Wales became the first state to abolish Group Voting Tickets (GVTs), the system then generally used to elect state Legislative Councils and the Commonwealth Senate.

The NSW decision followed the 1999 Legislative Council election and its infamous “tablecloth” ballot paper. Confusion combined with labyrinthine preference deals made a mockery of any claim that the filling of the final vacancies reflected the will of the electorate.

The system adopted abolished GVTs and introduced a new form of voting above-the-line (ATL) where voters could direct preferences to other parties on the ballot paper by numbering ATL boxes. A single ‘1’ ATL vote was still formal, but a voter could direct preferences to others groups with an ATL voting square by indicating ‘2’, ‘3’ etc to other groups.

With Senate elections continuing to use GVTs where only a single ATL preference counted, few voters made use of the new ATL voting option at Legislative Council elections. At four elections from 2003 to 2015, more than 80% of Legislative Council ballot papers continued to be completed with a 1-only ATL vote and only around 15% of voters indicated further ATL preferences.

When the Commonwealth followed NSW in abolishing GVTs ahead of the 2016 election, it adopted different instructions on how to complete an ATL vote. Senate ballot paper instructions, and advice from ballot paper issuing officers, suggested a minimum of 6-ATL preferences be completed.

The Senate reforms included generous savings provisions permitting ballot papers with fewer than six ATL preferences to remain formal. At three Senate elections since 2016, more than 95% of ballot papers have had six or more preferences, around 80% having exactly six.

Experience with the new Senate ballot paper has clearly encouraged more voters to indicate preferences on NSW Legislative Council ballot papers.

As the chart below shows, only around 15% of voters completed ATL preferences before the Senate changes. At two NSW elections post the Senate changes, 27.6% of NSW voters completed ATL preferences at the 2019 Legislative Council election, and after experience at two further Senate elections in 2019 and 2022, the percentage of ballot papers at the 2023 Legislative Council election completed with ATL preferences rose to 39.2% .Read More »Increase in Voters Completing Preferences at the 2023 NSW Legislative Council Election