Pushing the Boundaries

For something that the vast majority of the population is barely aware of, electoral redistributions are incredibly exciting for political nerds.

Not only to political parties get to subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) try to influence an independent process, but the visceral infighting that follows afterwards is enough to convince most observers that politics is best enjoyed as a spectator sport.

NSW is undergoing a redistribution this year, and as is their right the four main parties have put in submissions as to how they think the changes should be made.

First of all, some background. NSW has 93 Lower House Seats. The current enrolment of NSW divided by 93 is, according to Anthony Green, 51 623 people. Naturally the enrolments cannot be exactly correct - but the paramaters that the Electoral Commission has to work within are, to say the least, challenging.

This is what the NSW Constitution Act says:

It also says that such redistributions must be undertaken every 2 elections. Simple enough? Wait, there's more:

Not to mention:

In short, it is a horribly difficult job that I am glad that someone else has to do.

The submissions made to the Commission can be found here, including those from the ALP, the Liberals, the Nationals and the Greens.

Below I have include two quota maps helpfully produced by Anthony Green, as well as two maps from wikipedia that help with the names of the electorates:

Anthony Green's maps, and in particular the NSW-wide one, help illustrate the obvious problem for the commissioners - districts that are under enrolment tend to not have a convenient over-enrolment seat next door. In fact, it is quite the opposite.

The only solution, short of increasing the number of seats (which is not entirely out of the question) is to shift the boundaries of those Western NSW seats progressively eastward.

By the same token, the map Sydney shows the disproportionate growth in the North-West and South-West as well as in and around the CBD.

Ben Raue has written an excellent piece for New Mathilda that, to be honest, I'm tempted to just copy and paste and pretend it is mine. This is the most important part:

The consequence of the low numbers in the west of the state and the high numbers in the Sydney, Inner West and SW Sydney is, Ben suggests, this:

What do the submissions have to say about that?

Goulburn is presently held by Pru Goward, a Liberal who sits on the Coalition's cabinet as the Minister for Community Affairs and Women.

Shockingly, the Liberals have suggested that Goulburn not be dismantled. They say:

Burrinjuck is directly to the West of Goulburn, and is held by the Nationals member Katrina Hodgkinson. The maps provided in the Liberal submission are frustratingly opaque, but the only way such a change could be accomplished would be if most if not all of the NSW electoral seats were to converge on Burrinjuck, each either directly taking a part of moving in that direction to compensate for another division doing that very thing.

The Greens and the Nationals both agree that Goulburn should go. The Labor solution is a little more complicated, and best shown through the map provided as a part of their submission:

Exactly how it is that this proposed map benefits Labor is a little beyond the ambit of a blogpost, but suffice to say that the radical redrawing of the map it requires means it is unlikely to be a particularly influential suggestion.

The disscussion is obviously an incredibly complex one. Even if you exclude the maps, the Liberal's submission runs to 36 pages. The ALP produced over 50 pages including enough tables to make your eyes water.

The parties can now make further submissions until 20 March, and we can expect a decision later this year.

Pushing the boundary

I don't want to reinvent the wheel here, so I enthusiastically recommend Anthony Green's two pieces on the NSW redistribution, avaiable here and here.

Redistributions are always a sensitive topic.  Political careers can be all but wiped out in an instant when a seat is abolished, and the scramble for pre-selection in a new seat can be, to say the least, unedifying.

Anthony Green goes through what he believes the changes before the next election might be, and I'm not going to disagree with him.

What I did want to do was look at three implications that flow from this situation

The first is Gerrymandering. In short, Gerrymandering is the process of redistributing districts to your electoral advantage.

The NSW constitution demands the following:

However, the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Act 1912 imposes an even sharper burden of 3%:

For obvious reasons, that 3% has over the years proved challenging for the redistributors. In electorates numbering approximately 50 000 voters, 3% equates to just 1 500 voters - a slim margin, to say the least.

NSW, unlike Queensland, has been spared the spectacle of electoral boundaries being constantly redrawn to the political advantage of the ruling party.  In NSW, the electoral boundaries are redrawn by the Electoral Commissioners:

This body is non-political, which means that the redistribution is (at least in theory) done with the interests of the voters at heart.

The legislation nominates the following considerations:

This should, hopefully, spare NSW the indignity of blatantly political decisions illegitimately influencing the result of elections.

The second issue is the redistribution process.  The Commissioners invite contributions from interested parties, and unsurprisingly the parties tend to have a view about how the distribution should be undertaken. You will also be shocked to hear that, contrary to all expectations, those suggestions tend to result in a political advantage for the party making the submission.

In any event, it is difficult to imagine that the commissioners are truly influenced by the submissions. The task of creating electoral boundaries that are not only within 3% of the correct proportion as well as taking account of sensible boundaries must be challenging enough without paying any regard to partisan submissions from the parties.

The only issue that the government has real control over (and the third issue I want to touch on) is the number of seats. This is a decision that continues to be made on political grounds, although the extent to which it can actually influence the actual result of an election is a little less certain.

As Anthony Green notes, the size of the legislative assembly has been reduced twice in recent years - from 109 to 99 in 1988, and from 99 to 93 in 1991.

It may be that the O'Farrell government, rather than chosing to take seats away from members, simply choses to increase the number of seats. This would create enormous headaches for the commissioners, but no doubt that is of little concern to the Coalition.

No doubt there are squadrons of Coalition staffers busy gaming out this issue, and then trying desperately to find a legitimate reason to justify the changes. Most likely there are a great number of MLA's in marginal seats sweating the result and campaigning internally for changes that would suit them.

Nothing like a behind-the-scene internal drama to convince politicians to take their eyes off actually governing. But I suppose that MLA's (who, let's be honest, just vote the way they are told) have to have something to keep themselves busy between elections.