The Australian Electoral Commission yesterday announced the final decision for the federal redistributions in Victoria and Western Australia.
Unfortunately the AEC hasn’t yet published the maps, digital boundary files or data matching each SA1 to each electorate. While it may be possible to estimate these, I don’t have capacity with all of the elections going on now.
Ben is joined by the Sydney Morning Herald urban affairs reporter Anthony Segaert to preview the upcoming New South Wales local government elections. We discuss some of the most interesting elections, the impact of the NSW Liberal absence and local party systems.
Sorry for the poor quality audio on my end – it seems like the recording connected to the wrong mic. Should still be clear enough.
When the NSW Minister for Local Government, Ron Hoenig, announced an inquiry into the City of Liverpool in July, it seemed clear that the council was headed down the path seen by councils like Shellharbour, Warringah, Wingecarribee, Wollongong and Central Coast in the past. In the dying days of a council term, the state government intervenes and sacks the council, appoints administrators and delays the election.
NSW local government elections are conducted using single transferable vote proportional representation, but the actual shape of the ballot paper differs depending on who runs, and whether they run as a group.
After the Country Liberal Party clinched victory over the Greens in the seat of Fannie Bay, the Greens have surprisingly won the neighbouring seat of Nightcliff over former Labor chief minister Natasha Fyles.
The NTEC has only now conducted a preferential count between Labor and the Greens, seemingly with all primary votes now added to the count. With all of those distributed, the Greens beat Labor by 42 votes.
Voters in ten NSW local councils won’t just be electing councillors this month, but will also be voting on questions put on the ballot by their council. In eight councils, they’ll be considering binding referendums that would change the council’s constitution. In two other councils there will be non-binding polls (or plebiscites) on policy issues. There are 14 distinct questions across those ten councils.
When I was compiling my candidate lists I was keeping track of what was happening with incumbent councillors.
This has allowed me (at least for the councils I am closely following) to calculate the proportion of seats where the councillor is running for re-election. I have previously tracked this statistic in 2021, so I can compare the two data points.
The South Australian state redistribution was released two weeks ago, but with all of the other elections I have only now had time to complete my analysis. This wasn’t helped by the SA Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission (EDBC) not publishing a shapefile. I had hoped to move away from drawing my own boundary files and simply using the official shapefiles, but in this case it was necessary.
A by-election will be coming up soon for the NSW state seat of Pittwater, at the northern end of the Northern Beaches, after sitting Liberal MP Rory Amon was charged with ten sexual assault offences earlier today. Amon also resigned from the Liberal Party.
Ben is joined by the ABC’s Thomas Morgan to discuss the results of the NT election. We talk about the CLP’s big victory, how northern Darwin has flipped back after being solidly Labor for 23 years, and the rise of the Greens and independents on Labor’s left flank.