The Electoral Commission has announced the final boundaries for next year's ACT election, carving the territory into five new electorates in the biggest shake-up since self-government.
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The assembly's decision to go from 17 to 25 members across five electorates sparked the need for a total rethink of boundaries. Instead of three electorates, the territory now has five. And each electorate will elect the same number of politicians - five members each, a change whose impact on the make-up of the ACT parliament has yet to be tested but is likely to cement the hold of the major parties.
To date, there has been one seven-member electorate, the central electorate of Molonglo, and it has been the most fertile ground for minor parties and independents, always delivering at least one member not from Labor or Liberal to the Assembly. This is not only because of the kinds of voters living in the centre, but because a lower percentage of the vote is needed to win a seat when there are seven members than five, with the outcome more closely resembling the pattern of votes.
With seven-member electorates now gone, Labor and Liberal will be confident of securing 80 per cent of the seats between them - 10 seats each, or two in each of the five electorates. The final seat in each will be fought over between the major parties and Greens - although it is still possible for an Independent to be elected, as Paul Osborne and Dave Rugendyke demonstrated when they won spots in five-member electorates in previous parliaments.
It is also quite conceivable that the 2016 election will return 12 Labor, 12 Liberal, with one Green holding the balance of power - effectively the same result as now, with eight Labor, eight Liberal and a Green determining government.
The ACT Electoral Commission had the task of drawing the boundaries for the five new electorates, and commissioner Phillip Green announced the final decision on Monday. The commission has confirmed its draft boundaries, which closely follow districts, with the exception of moving five Belconnen suburbs into a new Gungahlin electorate, and moving Kambah in the south into a new Woden-Weston Creek electorate.
The boundaries mean Liberals Vicki Dunne and Alistair Coe, who live in two of the Belconnen suburbs to be shifted, are now part of the Gungahlin electorate.
Mr Green said it had been a fairly straightforward process.
"It became clear that you could draw quite neat boundaries using district boundaries and only splitting Belconnen and Tuggeranong as we knew that we would have to," he said.
The final electorates are:
- Brindabella, covering Tuggeranong, but excluding Kambah, and including Booth, Cotter River, Paddys River, Rendezvous Creek, Tennent and Mount Clear.
- Ginninderra, covering Belconnen, but excluding Evatt, Giralang, Kaleen, Lawson and McKellar.
- Kurrajong, covering the inner south and inner north, Jerrabomberra, Hume, Kowen and Majura.
- Murrumbidgee, covering the Molonglo Valley, Weston Creek, Woden, Uriarra and Stromlo, and including Kambah.
- Yerrabi, covering the districts of Gungahlin and Hall, and including Evatt, Giralang, Kaleen, Lawson and McKellar.
The commission's redistribution committee published its proposed boundaries on March 31, and received nine objections. None had raised substantive new matters, it said, confirming its original proposal.
The new electoral boundaries are displayed below.
