The ACT Electoral Commission has begun reviewing electoral boundaries ahead of the 2020 territory election.
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ACT Electoral Commissioner Damian Cantwell said the commission was required to start redistributing electoral boundaries as soon as practicable two years after the last local election.
The Redistribution Committee - comprising of electoral commissioner, planning chief Ben Ponton, ACT Surveyor-General Jeff Brown and the Australian Bureau of Statistics director of demography Beidar Cho - met for the first time this month, although boundary suggestions and names won't be open for comment until February.
The ACT Legislative Assembly consists of 25 members elected in five electorates, with five members representing each of the current electorates of Brindabella, Ginninderra, Kurrajong, Murrumbidgee and Yerrabi.
About 7000 more people have enrolled to vote in the ACT since 2016, and nearly 3800 of those new voters are in Yerrabi, data published in June showed.
The Woden and Weston Creek seat of Murrumbidgee also increased in size by another 1500 voters, likely due to more people moving into the Molonglo Valley, while the central Canberra seat of Kurrajong grew by 1100.
“One key requirement for the redistribution will be ensuring that electoral enrolments in each electorate will be within 5 per cent of the quota at the time of the next election. The quota for each electorate is one-fifth of the ACT total enrolment,” Mr Cantwell said.
“The next step in the process is to invite ACT residents to suggest how Legislative Assembly electoral boundaries for the 2020 ACT election might look. It is very important that the public are provided a full, fair and transparent period in which to offer boundary and naming suggestions, and comments upon those suggestions. Therefore the committee has decided to conduct the initial public consultation when the majority of ACT residents will have returned from Christmas holidays. Accordingly, it is anticipated that the public suggestion period will commence on Tuesday 5 February 2019”, Mr Cantwell said.
People will have have 28 days to make suggestions to the redistribution committee. Those suggestions will then be made available for public comment, at which point the public will have a further 14 days to make comment.
