Australian Greens Victoria 37 Pages AUSTRALIAN GREENS VICTORIA SUBMISSION to the VICTORIAN REDISTRIBUTION
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Suggestion 97 Australian Greens Victoria 37 pages AUSTRALIAN GREENS VICTORIA SUBMISSION TO THE VICTORIAN REDISTRIBUTION Martin Shield - State Director AGV Introduction The Australian Greens Victoria submit the following proposal for the consideration of the Redistribution Committee. The submission proposes changes to boundaries across the whole of Victoria and the creation of the new electorate of Hawke. We submit that the proposed changes set out in this submission are an effective way to increase the numbers of electorates in Victoria to 39, in keeping with the requirements of the Commonwealth Electoral Act, while preserving and maintaining communities of interest within electorates. Boundary Changes: the challenge for the committee Unlike the last redistribution, a large number of seats currently meet the requirements of the Act, and many will remain within their 3.5% permissible window even by the end of the projection period. However there is still a large amount of projected elector growth in Melbourne’s outer suburban fringe, and the creation of a new electorate will inevitably have knock on effects elsewhere. There is significant overpopulation of seats in Melbourne’s north-west and outer south-east, while seats that are underpopulated are concentrated in Melbourne’s east. A simple solution makes itself clear. The combined overpopulation count in the suburbs and exurbs of Melbourne’s outer north and west, combined with those in Victoria’s three largest regional cities of Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo, collectively reaches over 100,000 electors.1 This is almost entirely sufficient to create a new electorate, with the 2025 projected average for new electorates requiring 117,107 electors. Therefore our proposal includes the new seat of Hawke (following the long held convention of honouring deceased former Prime Ministers with seats in their state of representation), which we propose would be located in Melbourne’s western suburbs. As to the three major overpopulated seats in Melbourne’s outer south-east, this problem is better resolved not by the creation of a new seat but by the process of knock on shifting of the boundaries from the six below quota seats in Melbourne’s east to the three (well) above quota seats in Melbourne’s south east. This has the additional benefit of allowing many eastern and south-eastern seats to remain unchanged when they are not needed as part of this south-east boundary movement.2 Coronavirus and local representation 1 The combined overpopulation of the 11 seats of Ballarat, Bendigo, Calwell, Corangamite, Corio, Fraser, Gellibrand, Gorton, Lalor, Maribyrnong and McEwen by the 2025 projection is 100,311. 2 In our submission, all of the eastern/south-eastern seats of Casey, Aston, Kooyong, Goldstein, Isaacs, Dunkley, Flinders and Gippsland require no change to their boundaries, though as discussed in the technical notes have had minor changes where SA1 enrollment data has been split across electorates The COVID-19 health emergency has clarified not only expectations of government policy to provide support in times of crisis, but expectations of members of parliament as local members and hubs of support for their community. In particular, the challenges of the Melbourne public housing “lockdown” and the assistance these communities needed to navigate both the legal changes and the insufficient services they were provided, demonstrates that these public housing communities share a strong community of interest and that the committee should attempt where possible to unite them within electorates. Therefore, while our submission has aimed to reduce the need to unnecessarily move electors between electorates, some small changes have been proposed for the inner north and inner south of Melbourne. The proposed changes would maximise the ability of people living in public housing to be recognised as a distinct community of interest, and to benefit from the expertise and collective political power that comes from sharing an electorate and member of parliament. In the inner north, we have recommended that the suburb of Flemington be moved back into the Division of Melbourne, including in particular the major public housing development on Racecourse Road. The division of Melbourne has the highest number of public housing residents of any electorate in Australia, and with many communities and extended families living between the Flemington development and similar developments in Kensington and North Melbourne, such a move would strongly protect communities of interest. In the inner south, we have recommended moving the bulk of South Yarra and Prahran out of Higgins and into Macnamara. With many major public housing developments already in Macnamara3, shifting the major public housing developments in Prahran and South Yarra into Macnamara will mean that nearly all high rise public housing across the inner south will be within the one electorate. This can be done whilst keeping all divisions within their elector quota when accompanied by moving all of the City of Glen Eira currently within Macnamara into the division of Higgins. Technical notes All figures provided in this document are based on the projected enrolments for January 2025, rather than current enrolments. In some cases, particularly in regional areas, strong boundaries subdivide SA1s, and indeed sometimes these have been used for existing electorate boundaries. For our proposal we have avoided splitting SA1s in order to be able to calculate the projected enrollment of the proposed electorates exactly. However, in some cases a better community of interest would be kept by using these boundaries, rather than keeping SA1s together. We do not believe doing this would take any of our proposed electorates outside the enrollment tolerances. The new elector count as of the 2025 projection can be found in 3 In Port Melbourne, South Melbourne, Albert Park, St Kilda and Windsor. Appendix A, while the full list of changes at an SA2 level can be found in Appendix B. An attached folder includes individual maps of all 39 proposed new electorates. Detailed analysis Regional Victoria Any realignment of regional Victoria must begin with the problem of Corangamite, which is well over elector tolerances in the projection, and needs to lose at least 15,000 electors to stay within margins. This can be achieved by shifting all of the remaining parts of Colac-Otway Shire and Golden Plains Shire into the Division of Wannon, which has the added benefit of leaving Corio unchanged given it’s already within-quota projection. The impact of this on Wannon is to bring it out of it’s tolerances and will require Wannon to lose electors at it’s northern end to Mallee and Ballarat. This is particularly useful for Mallee as it is projected to fall below quota, and by taking all of the SA2 of Stawell can be brought back within quota. However further reductions to Wannon will be required, and we propose that electors in the SA2’s of Beaufort, Golden Plains - North and Smythes Creek be moved into Ballarat. Ballarat, already 10,000 over quota, is now in need of a substantial reduction in projected electors. By removing all 23,152 electors in both the Bacchus Marsh and Bacchus Marsh Region SA2’s, Ballarat stands just below quota on 114,048 electors, well within the 3.5% tolerance. A much smaller tweak is required for Bendigo, where the removal of the 6,140 electors in Woodend achieves the same impact. In both cases, Bendigo and Ballarat retain their name cities and surrounds, while losing areas that are rapidly changing character and retain more connection with the exurbs of Melbourne. Gippsland, Nicholls and Indi require no change to stay within their elector quotas and therefore we make no recommendation for change. We will discuss Monash within the context of South and East Melbourne below. North and West Melbourne With more than 23,000 electors in Bacchus Marsh now needing to move into a new seat and the continued rapid growth of both Melton and Sunbury forcing dramatic reductions in Gorton and McEwen, the opportunity is to alter Gorton from being a western suburbs and Melton based seat into a Sunbury-Melton-Bacchus Marsh exurb seat. By removing all of the areas of both Brimbank and the eastern fringe of the City of Melton that retains direct suburb connectivity with Melbourne, Gorton is able to both absorb the electors shed by Ballarat while taking in all of the over 30,000 electors from the two Sunbury SA2’s. Before going to the creation of the new division, the two bay-adjacent seats of Gellibrand and Lalor in Melbourne’s west will also need to contract to stay within their elector tolerances by 2025. The simplest place to remove electors from both these electorates without disrupting major natural boundaries is the area around Truganina and Laverton, moving these electors into Fraser and bringing them both back within their projection margins. The combined effect of Gorton moving west and Fraser moving south creates the space required for the proposed new electorate of Hawke. Two options exist for Hawke’s orientation; the first being an inverted L that takes in all of the former Melbourne contiguous suburbs of Gorton and the northern tip of Fraser in Sydenham and Taylors Lakes, the second a more thorough-going realignment that shifts all of northern Brimbank out of Fraser and into Hawke while compensating Fraser with Deer Park, Caroline Springs, Burnside and surrounds. In the interests of compactness we have favoured the second option, though both options remain open to the committee. In either scenario, Hawke remains approximately 15,000 electors below quota with either of these options. Calwell is approximately 15,000 electors above quota. This dual problem is easily resolved by moving electors around Tullamarine Airport, in the suburbs of Tullamarine, Keilor, Gladstone Park and Westmeadows into the new seat of Hawke.