The ACT Electoral Commission is set to begin the biggest redistribution of electorate boundaries in 20 years, as it works out how to split the territory into five electorates for the 2016 election.
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A redistribution committee meets on Monday, and will call for submissions soon after. It will also release population projects for October 2016, which will form the basis of the split into five electorates.
The big questions will be how to carve off suburbs in Tuggeranong and Belconnen, both of which are too big to be electorates in themselves and will need to lose suburbs to neighbouring electorates.
The territory moves from three to five electorates at the next election with the increase from 17 to 25 members. Each electorate will elect five parliamentarians.
The electorates are expected to be broadly based around the five districts: Tuggeranong, Woden and Weston, the city, Gungahlin and Belconnen, with the difficult decisions about where precisely to draw the boundaries. The detail is crucial to the major parties, since Labor and Liberal can expect to win two seats each in each electorate, with the fifth seats determining who wins government.
However, the political considerations do not feature in the Electoral Commission's redistribution, which considers population, communities of interest, physical features, suburb boundaries and the like. The populations of its proposed electorates must be within 10 per cent of each other now, and within 5 per cent of projected population in 2016.
The committee must also choose names for the electorates, and Electoral Commissioner Phil Green said there were no hard and fast rules, so the committee would be "open to all sorts of suggestions". A convention is to avoid names of geographic locations in case boundaries change. The group would also look at whether the existing names, Brindabella, Molonglo and Ginninderra, should be kept or discarded.
At the last election, the Gungahlin suburbs of Crace and Palmerston were shifted from the central electorate (Molonglo) to to the Belconnen electorate (Ginninderra). It seems likely that the residents of these suburbs will get a chance at yet another set of candidates assuming they move to Gungahlin. Gungahlin is one of the most difficult areas to predict in light of the fast population growth there. In 2012, it had about 38,000 people of voting age (more all the time with new suburbs). Assuming each electorate will have about 60,000 electors (more accurate figures should come this week), Gungahlin will need to suck in some suburbs from Belconnen or the inner north – the decision about which will not be insignificant for the vote.
Shifting Giralang and Kaleen to a Gungahlin electorate would bring an extra 8000 or so voters and could reduce Belconnen to about the right size. The two Kaleen booths voted 39 per cent Labor in 2012, and 31 per cent Liberal, although a substantial 8 per cent went to Chic Henry, then with the Australian Motorist Party, now with the Liberals. In the Giralang booth, 41 per cent of votes went to Labor, 32 per cent Liberal, 7 per cent motorists and 11 per cent Greens. The vote was broadly similar in Giralang.
In the south, Chifley, Pearce, Torrens and Farrer are clear contenders to move into a Woden-Weston electorate, But that might still leave Tuggeranong too large, leaving a question about whether to move Kambah, the largest suburb in the territory, with more than 11,000 voters. The Liberal Party did better than Labor in the three Kambah booths at the last election. Kambah would help Woden and Weston reach the required number of voters, without having to reach into Deakin and Red Hill, although the new suburbs of Wright and Coombs must also be taken into account.
Mr Green said the redistribution was "far and away the biggest exercise" since 1993, when the territory was first split into three electorates. Five electorates, while "still fairly simple", came with the challenge of trying as much as possible not to split districts, he said.
Mr Green chairs the redistribution committee. The other members are head of planning Dorte Ekelund, ACT Surveyor General Bill Hirst, and Australian Bureau of Statistics ACT office regional director Cassandra Gligora. The group is expected to release its proposed new boundaries in February or March, after which there are more opportunities for objection.
