When the new electoral map was published in 1984, it kicked off a game of musical chairs, but with a difference – this time there were more seats than players. Some of these seats were more attractive than others, but it wasn’t simply a matter of every sitting MP moving to the safest possible seat.
If there is a substantial expansion of the size of the federal Parliament, it will be a rare event. It has only happened twice before since federation, and hasn’t happened at all in my lifetime. About two thirds of Australian voters hadn’t cast their first vote before the last expansion in 1984.
As part of my efforts to prepare election guides for all of the upcoming elections, I have now published a guide to the 2027 NSW state election. While that election is still almost a year and a half away, the lack of redistributions in NSW (and Victoria) has allowed me to prepare guides for those elections a long way out.
The Australian Electoral Commission yesterday published the official statistics that will be used for federal redistributions in South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT. This gives us a bit more insight into what is likely to happen in those redistributions.
New Zealand will go to the polls next year at their next general election, and the electoral map of New Zealand has been redrawn in advance of that election.
New Zealand’s parliament is elected via mixed member proportional, with a majority of MPs elected to represent single-member electorates using first-past-the-post, and the remainder elected from party lists as top-ups to ensure overall proportionality.
A state by-election will be held in the north Queensland seat of Hinchinbrook at some point near the end of this year or early in 2026, following local MP Nick Dametto’s announcement that he will contest the mayoralty of the City of Townsville at a by-election next month.
Today’s blog post is inspired by a strange opinion piece in the Nine papers yesterday by former federal Liberal Attorney-General George Brandis.
We rely on independent mapmakers to draw electoral boundaries at each redistribution. There is an extensive process of public consultation, and there are rules about how seats can be drawn, but ultimately the mapmakers have quite a lot of discretion about how they apply guidelines, and where they draw the lines.
The Tasmanian government has announced plans to “reform” Tasmanian local government by slashing the number of councillors across the state. The government has put up a discussion paper on the topic, but in short it would reduce the number of elected officials on councils to five, seven or nine members.
6:00 – Polls have just closed in the Kiama by-election. This state seat is on the south coast of New South Wales, and was vacated by Gareth Ward shortly before he was expected to be expelled from the Legislative Assembly after his conviction and expected sentencing.
Results should start to come in before 7pm tonight. I’ll be live-blogging here. In the meantime, you can read my guide to the by-election here.