tasmania

Last Friday the Australian Electoral Commission issued draft electoral boundaries for Tasmania. It was the first of this year’s round of federal redistributions.

Draft boundaries for the ACT will be released in a fortnight, South Australia some time after the state election to avoid confusion, and a Queensland federal redistribution will get underway in July.

If the Albanese government goes ahead with rumoured plans to increase the size of the parliament, then all five mainland states will require redistributions before the next election. Tasmania and the two territories would be untouched by an expansion of parliamkent.

But first Tasmania.

Full details of the proposed boundaries can be found at the Australian Electoral Commission’s website. This includes details on how to make comment on or object to the new boundaries.

As I will explain in this post, the Redistribution Committee has abandoned its recent habit of engaging in incremental redistributions, boundaries adjusted at the edges to minimise the number of voters transferred between electorates.

In Tasmania, the proposed boundaries re-arrange the electoral geography of southern Tasmania. Just over a quarter of the state’s electors are moved between seats. The southern seats of Clark and Franklin split in two and re-assembled with a series of rotational swaps through the central seat of Lyons.

The Committee has decided to tackle the state’s most peculiar electoral boundary, the division of the southern seat of Franklin in two by neighbouring Clark. All means of transport between the two ends of Franklin pass through Clark, the seat covering all of central Hobart west of the Derwent River. Franklin covers the eastern shore of Hobart, plus Kingston and all populated parts of the state south of Hobart.

That Franklin has evolved this peculiar geography has roots that go back to Federation. When boundaries were first drawn in 1903, Clark (then known as Denison) covered Hobart on the western shore of the Derwent River at a time when few lived to the east. In 1903 Franklin was the state’s largest electorate in area, extending deep into central Tasmania and completely surrounded Denison. The state’s other three electorates were clustered in northern Tasmania.

Over many decades, as the population of southern Tasmania grew faster than the rest of the state, Franklin contracted south. As Hobart grew in the post-war era, new bridges across the Derwent allowed suburbia to spread to the eastern shore. Areas south of Hobart also grew. Incremental boundary changes turned a Franklin that surrounded Denison into an electorate with two distinct ends.

Federal electorates are so large it is difficult to get a single community of interest that covers an electorate. But no electorate in the country is as geographically divided as Franklin. With Clark (formerly Denison) well under quota, expansion was required with the possibility it would make the boundaries for Franklin even more illogical.

So the Committee has gone for a big bang change more likely to cope with future population shifts. Both Clark and Franklin have been split in two and re-arranged with a rotation of voters through the southern part of the central seat of Lyons.

In terms of two-party politics the new boundaries have little impact. But Clark is held by Independent Andrew Wilkie, and Franklin in 2025 saw a strong challenge from Independent Peter George. He has since gone on to win one of Franklin’s seven seats in state parliament. The proposed boundaries for Clark and Franklin drastically re-arrange Independent support.

It’s best for me to explain the change seat by seat. Note: maps have been taken from the redistribution report and are published by the Australian Electoral Commission.Read More »FED26 Redistribution – Tasmania Draft Boundaries