One of the most interesting elements of a constitutional referendum in Australia is that there are two requirements for the referendum to be carried: it needs a majority of votes nationally, but it also needs a majority in a majority of states.
Over the next two weeks I’ll be writing a few blog posts based on the referendum results data in my data repository – looking at the history of referendums throughout the 20th century.
The Voice referendum will be the first constitutional referendum held since 1999 – that’s 24 years without a referendum.
Federal redistributions have recently commenced in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia.
The AEC yesterday published the enrolment data to be used to draw New South Wales federal electorates.
There are two sets of data – enrolment data as of August 2023, and projected enrolments as of April 2028. This data has been published at the level of SA1, but for this post I’m just looking at it at the electorate and regional level.
Victorian premier Daniel Andrews will be stepping down today as premier and as Member for Mulgrave, a seat he has held since 2002.
This means a by-election will be held for that seat soon, likely before the end of the year.
My guide to Mulgrave is now live.
Check it out!
Tomorrow I’ll be back with more historical referendum analysis.
Ben is joined by historian Alison Holland, who is researching the history of ATSIC, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. We discuss the history and current existence of Indigenous elected institutions around Australia, including ATSIC and its predecessors at a federal level, regional land councils and state Voices that have started to pop up.
I have been fascinated recently with voting systems for local government, and how they change – in NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.
New Zealand also has an element of choice in their local government electoral system. Each council gets to choose from one of two methods of electing the council, and there is also an option for the voters to make the choice in a local referendum.
Ben is joined by Paul Kildea and Andre Brett to discuss the history of Australian referendums. We discuss the historical origins of referendums at both the state and federal level, the dynamics of referendum campaigns, how different states tend to vote, the voters’ bias towards the status quo, and discuss some of our favourite referendums.
The process of redrawing local council wards for next year’s New South Wales council elections is now quite advanced, with the councils due for a change having mostly decided on draft boundaries and put them out for public commentary, ahead of an early October deadline.
Unfortunately there’s no centralised process of recording these proposals, so I have spent some time going through council websites pulling together information on what is happening.
The Western Australian Labor government has been recently going through a process of changing the structures of local government elections in the state.
6:00 – Polls just closed in the by-election for the Victorian state seat of Warrandyte. I don’t expect it to be a particularly interesting outcome, and I haven’t prepared any kind of matched swings, but I plan to post here tonight.