ELECTORAL REDISTRIBUTIONS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE IN AUSTRALIAN JURISDICTIONS. Dr Nick Economou and Mr Zareh Ghazarian

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1 ELECTORAL REDISTRIBUTIONS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE IN AUSTRALIAN JURISDICTIONS Dr Nick Economou and Mr Zareh Ghazarian School of Political and Social Inquiry Monash University November 2006 REPORT 1

2 ELECTORAL REDISTRIBUTIONS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE IN AUSTRALIAN JURISDICTIONS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report investigates the methods and procedures used to undertake electoral redistributions in Australia. The report examines redistribution procedures for the Commonwealth, the six states and the two territories. The report also sought to place electoral redistributions in some sort of political context. In addition to outlining the methods used in each jurisdiction (as well as reviewing enabling legislation and the administrative structures utilised for the purpose of undertaking redistributions) the report gives a brief overview of the political debate that has traditionally accompanied debates about the means by which redistributions are carried out. The key findings of the report include: that every jurisdiction except South Australia has legislated to put the procedures for undertaking electoral redistributions in to the hands of independent statutory authorities such as electoral commissions and boundary drawing commissions; that the boundary drawing process involves an extensive consultation process designed to permit participation of interested parties and the general public; that redistributions seek to ensure the maintenance of similar communities within electoral districts, and that physical, communication and local government boundaries play an important part in the cartographical process of drawing boundaries; that all systems except Queensland and Western Australia have moved to a one vote, one value norm as the basis of districting, but that some scope for malapportionment for the purpose of pre-empting population shifts is allowed. Western Australia and Queensland still employ regional zone mechanism. The Commonwealth s attempt at instituting one vote one value is also hamstring by the Australian constitution; that is all jurisdictions bar the Northern Territory, a 10 percent tolerance in electorate equality is deemed acceptable for the purpose of pre-empting or accommodating demographic shifts; that all systems seek to ensure that they can deliver fair outcomes that is, that a representational outcome will be derived that gives the participants a feeling that their vote was important, and that those elected from the system can claim legitimacy form the system; 2

3 that rural malapportionment has been historically been the primary controversy associated with districting and redistricting in Australia, but since the 1970s (in a process that is still going on) this aspect of Australia s electoral systems has been whittled away. Queensland and Western Australia are the two jurisdictions that still make allowances for size of electoral districts and notions of quality of representation in large and remote districts; that the controversy over fairness has resonated particularly in South Australia and that, as a result, the concern about disproportional outcomes in plurality voting systems has resonated as a policy matter. South Australia s system now includes a mechanism designed to try to ensure fair outcomes where the party or parties that win a majority of the vote win a majority of seats. 3

4 ELECTORAL REDISTRIBUTIONS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE IN AUSTRALIAN JURISDICTIONS Dr Nick Economou and Mr Zareh Ghazarian School of Political and Social Inquiry Monash University November 2006 INTRODUCTION This report is based on research undertaken in to the way electoral re-distributions are undertaken in Australia s national, state and territory electoral systems commissioned by the Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC). This project sought to achieve the following objectives: to provide an audit of the mechanisms used by each of the national state and territory jurisdictions to undertake electoral re-distributions for both lower and upper houses (where applicable); to provide an audit of the laws and regulations by which re-distributions are undertaken; to provide a description of the process for each jurisdiction with a particular view to highlighting the correlation between regulatory requirement and the actual practice of districting; to try to place the debates about districting in each jurisdiction in its political historic context. This report is divided in to two parts. The first part provides an overview of the approach political science takes to the critically important issue of how electoral boundaries are drawn up in liberal democratic electoral systems. As a result of this literature, the report finds that the practice of drawing up electoral boundaries known in international political science as the practice of districting or, where 4

5 existing boundaries are altered, redistricting but understood in the Australian vernacular as electoral redistributions (see AEC 2004:1) is crucial to buttressing the reputation and, by extension, the legitimacy of a jurisdiction s electoral system in the eyes of that jurisdiction s voters. The literature also makes the point that a multiplicity of methods may be employed to convert votes in to representational outcomes (seats) and that districting may also be subject to a number of mechanisms. The question of how voters are spatially arranged in order that their collective decision-making might result in representational outcomes is a bedrock consideration in the formation of electoral systems, and there can exist a capacity for distortion, if not corruption, of the electoral process. At its very worst, districting may be practiced by one set of political interests against another with a view to either maximising the representational gains of the intervening interest or to marginalise opponents. The practice of corruptly drawing electoral boundaries with a view to contriving representational outcomes is popularly known as gerrymandering. The report finds that gerrymandering does not occur in Australia. However, it does find that the issue of malapportionment has been central to the politics of districting in all Australian jurisdictions, and that this has been a feature of debates about electoral reform (including the reform of districting) for some time. In the mid-1980s another matter emerged: as a result of a series of state elections in which the victorious party did not actually win an absolute majority of the two partypreferred vote, the matter of the disproportionality of representational outcomes in Alternative Vote elections took on some prominence. The report shows that this debate has left its mark on South Australian arrangements in particular. 5

6 The report finds that there have been some important reforms to the electoral systems of all of the Australian jurisdictions that have had implications for the process by which electoral divisions are drawn. Some of these reforms have involved changes to electoral process for state upper houses in which the shift from single-member Alternative Voting to Single Transferable Vote (STV) proportional representation has been the common theme. In some cases (Victoria and Western Australia) these reforms have included the re-drawing of electoral districts. The report also finds that there has been a shift towards de-politicising important aspects of the management of sensitive areas of the electoral process including the drawing up of electoral boundaries. This has involved the reorganisation of electoral offices as statutory authorities with a certain degree of independence from ministerial directives, and the creation of authorities to undertake the specialised task of drawing proposed electoral boundaries (South Australia s arrangements are the exception). These reforms have been predicated on the notion that the integrity of the electoral process depends in no small way on the integrity of the districting process, and that in such a process a strong sense of fairness needs to permeate the system and the way it is perceived by voters and candidates alike. PART 1: ELECTIONS AND DISTRICTS: THE POLITICAL SCIENCE Elections are central to the operation of modern representative democracies in that they perform the centrifugal function of converting the electoral choices of the citizenry in to representational outcomes (Bogdanor and Butler 1983). A variety of mechanisms and processes can be utilised to perform this function the significance of 6

7 which manifests itself not only in the ratio with which votes cast results in representational outcomes, but also the integrity and, by extension, the legitimacy of those outcomes. This is because the institutionalisation of an electoral process in itself is not enough to guarantee the nexus between representational outcomes and the notion that there is governance occurring with the consent of the governed. The possibility for distorted outcomes, where the representational outcome is in some way out of balance with the voting choices made by the electorate, is very real and can be the product of intended and unintended consequences associated with the management of the electoral procedure. An election process that provides an outcome that is widely perceived as unfair will not help bestow legitimacy upon those elected to govern. Concern about the distortion of electoral process can be found in a number of major liberal democracies. In the United States concerns about the undermining of the integrity of the electoral process have tended to resonate against the backdrop of observations about the capacity for an important part of the electoral process namely, the drawing of maps outlining the electoral boundaries within which voters cast their votes and from which a single member will be elected as a representative to a local, state or federal legislature also known as districting (Morrill 1987:241; Morrill 1981:1; Taylor and Johnston 1979:336) to be open to corrupt practices. In particular, American debates about electoral processes have been particularly attentive to the practice of gerrymandering where authorities responsible for an electoral system will undertake districting with the express intention of giving one side in the political/electoral contest and advantage over another, and/or to disenfranchise particular social and/or political groups. 7

8 Gerrymandering is less of an issue in the debate about fair electoral systems in Britain. Rather, British concerns revolve partly around seemingly disproportionate representational outcomes derived from the capacity of the plurality voting system to return exaggerated majorities, and partly around the contribution electorate malapportionment makes to these seemingly disproportionate outcomes. The process begins with the dominance of a small number of large political parties in Westminster-style systems that utilise the single member, region-based electoral district within which a plurality system is employed to determine who shall be the division s single representative. Malapportionment of British electoral districts arises from a number of sources including the guarantee of minium representation for Wales and Scotland (despite their smaller populations) and from the significant length of time that can elapse between electoral redistributions (see Taylor and Johnston 1979:345). The inequality of electoral districts can make a contribution to the disproportionate outcomes in British electoral contests, although as Johnston (1979: ) points out, electoral geography makes a greater contribution to the disproportionality problem than malapportionment. Johnston s (2002:18) overview of the problem where victorious parties win a proportion of seats way beyond the proportion of the vote they receive (notwithstanding the fact that a single-member plurality voting system will always the capacity to result in exaggerated majorities) highlights what he calls the spatial relationship between the clustering of communities, their relationship to the economic system, and their likely political alignments (including the political party they would be likely to vote for). The tendency for similar 8

9 economic and/or social and/or cultural groups to cluster in communities is at the heart of this matter particularly when the maps of electoral districts are overlaid with the human geography of a city, town or district. It is at this point that Johnston notes the capacity for single member plurality systems to render the votes of electors as either efficient, surplus or wasted. Johnston (1979) defines these terms thus: efficient votes are those needed to secure the election of a candidate (in the Australian context where the Alternative Vote (AV) is employed in single member districts, the efficient vote is that vote necessary to secure the 50 % plus one needed to win the seat (see Farrell and McAllister 2006:91)); wasted votes are those votes cast for Party A in an electorate that is safe for Party B, where voters cast a vote for Party A in the full knowledge that Party B will win that contest; surplus votes are those votes cast (usually in electorates safe for Party A) in excess of the quota needed to win the seat (in the case of Australia s AV system, votes above the 50% plus one needed to win a single member district. It is interesting to note that in Australian psephology, the term wasted vote or wasted majority is sometimes used to refer to this phenomenon). The phenomena of wasted and surplus votes reflect the consequence of sociocultural geographic clustering of voters in electoral districts that return a single representative. As Johnston has noted, the tendency for economic-cultural clustering to occur in towns and cities will contribute to notions of safe electoral divisions for one or other of the major political parties, and increases the likelihood of either wasted or surplus voting occurring particularly where electoral boundaries act to keep these clusters together. This in turn can contribute to the notion that unfair election outcomes occur even in those electoral contests where districts are of equal voter population where a party receives a very low percentage of the seats despite winning a significant share of the vote (the performance of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in Victorian Legislative Council elections in 1992 and 1996 would be an Australian example of this problem (see Costar and Economou 2000). By the same 9

10 token, it is possible for a party to win a share of seats with a small national vote if its local vote is concentrated. Taylor and Johnston (1979:347) saw this occurring with respect to the success of nationalist parties in Wales and Scotland. The success of the Nationals in Australian elections would be the Australian equivalent (see Jeansch 1995: ; Hughes 1985; ). The matter of concentrated electoral support poses real challenges for electoral geographers. The drawing of electoral boundaries that maintain the concentrated support in contiguous communities reinforces the notion of maintaining similar communities as a whole, but might, in plurality voting systems, result in successful candidates accumulating large surplus votes. On the other hand, the splitting of contiguous communities into a number of districts can look suspiciously like gerrymandering, particularly if the candidate or political party that might expect to represent such communities fails to win any representation at all (see Morill 1987:257). This problem is referred to by Taylor and Johnston (1979:336) as the districting problem, and may be outlined thus: The problem that emerges from this simple procedure in that different locations of constituency boundaries may produce different numbers of wins for the various parties even if the underlying pattern of votes remains constant. Hence, for a single pattern of votes there will be several alternative election results in terms of seats, depending upon how constituency boundaries are drawn. American and British literature is in concert about the difficulties that arise from the existence of malapportionment within an electoral system. At its most basic, the occurrence of malapportionment undermines the normative assumption that, in a true democracy, one voter s vote is equal in value to another voter s vote (summarised in the popular catch-cry one vote, one value (see Balinski and Young 1982)). Despite 10

11 the almost universal acceptance of this axiom as a guiding democratic principle, malapportionment practices are widespread. Malapportionment usually manifests itself in the following circumstances (see Morrill 1981): constitutionally, where a constitution will determine the apportionment of representation usually on the basis of protecting minimum representation for particular regions such as the way the Australian constitution guarantees a minimum number of seats for the state of Tasmania in the House of Representatives notwithstanding its electoral population, or where it provides for equal state representation in the Senate again without regard to the variation in voter populations; sectional interest malapportionment, where a section of society is identified as having special circumstances that would justify variations voting equality. This occurs in Australia, for example, where the rural community was once identified as having made a disproportionally large contribution to the nation s economic well being and was thus worthy of special electoral treatment; quality of representation considerations, where the issue of electoral size comes in to consideration and the argument is made that inequality in representational strength for remote communities is justified to compensate for the size of electoral districts that, in turn, make it difficult for constituents and representatives to easily engage each other; structural malapportionment where districting authorities permit a certain degree of electoral inequality in order to pre-empt shifts in population or changes in the demographics of electoral districts. Constitutional malapportionment is arguably the most entrenched form of this practice and, as a result, difficult to resolve. Where systems that allow malapportionment for the purpose of accommodating or pre-empting population shifts exist debates may arise as to the extent to which the population of electoral districts will be allowed to vary from the jurisdiction-wide average or quota. The literature seems to be in agreement that variations of between 3 to 10 percent are acceptable. Anything beyond this (including the Australian federal practice before 1974 of allowing 20 percent variations) is seen as unfair. 11

12 The other forms of malapportionment, however, tend to be more closely linked with notions of partisan political advantage. This, in turn, becomes the basis upon which debates about electoral equality become linked particularly with notions of partisan advantage for the major political parties. It is at this point that the general literature notes that the intersection of politics with geography is one of the enduring realities of electoral districting, even where jurisdictions seek to de-politicise the process by handing the task of drawing electoral boundaries over to independent authorities (such as, in the Australian public administration vernacular, statutory authorities). Invariably the process by which electoral systems are designed will be subject to some form of political overview. It is at this juncture that the literature raises the issue of how an electoral system, for all its shortcomings, is considered to be legitimate and, arguably most important of all, fair. While Blau (2004:167-8) could identify five subcategories of fairness in relation to electoral systems covering sometimes mutually exclusive notions such as equality of outcomes, populist notions of outcomes, a winner takes all approach, a majoritarian approach or a plurality approach (often influenced by whether or not plurality or proportional systems are in use), it is perhaps Morill (1987:243) who provides a more useful guide with his four-fold criteria for what constitutes a good (and thus, by extension, fair ) electoral system, including: electoral districts with equal voter populations (notwithstanding small variations to accommodate population shifts); equal proportional treatment of the political parties (and especially the main or major political parties) where there are proportional outcomes of safe and marginal seats. This in turn allows a system to provide parties with a base of safe districts but also enough competitive districts within which the overall choice of the electorate can be discerned. This means that the system can be responsive to shifts in the electorate s alignment that can result in changes in who wins and who loses a national election 12

13 whilst still accommodating the notion of parties having a base of safe seats; respect for partisan loyalty of voters and their aggregation in to partisan or safe districts but avoiding over concentration of voters and/or partisan districts; respect for the notion of communities of interest when drawing up electoral boundaries, and ensuring that districts comprise contiguous and relatively compact districts. As Morrill (1987: ) argues, voters need to feel enfranchised by their electoral systems by feeling that they are part of a contiguous community that has actively and effectively participated in a system in which their interests are represented, but can also feel that a more general shift in voter alignments will also have an affect (or, to put it as Morrill puts it, that each voter feels that her or his vote counts). On this Morrill has an interesting observation on the structuring of electoral districts utilising plurality voting and where there is a strong two-party culture. In his prescription for a good system, Morrill argues the case for what he terms the saving third in the designing of electoral districts. As he puts it (1987:244), the structure of districts should seek to achieve: a balance which approximates a saving third or so of relatively safe seats for each major party and a third or so of more competitive seats which can respond to major shifts in voter sentiment. In addition to Morrill s helpful suggestion may be added other essential criteria by which an electoral system including the process of electoral districting may be assessed as good or bad. These include: 13

14 that a system needs to resonate within notions of reasonable proportionality in outcomes, even where the electoral system used is not proportional representation. That is, parties that get a reasonable share of the vote should get a reasonable share of the seats, lest the failure of votes to result in seats leave large sections of the electorate feeling disenfranchised; that electoral districting should be in the hands of an independent authority rather than being subject to party partisanship; that there be, as near as practicable, one vote, one value ; that inequalities in voter numbers per district be minimised only to allow for demographic shifts, and that the range be somewhere between 3 to 10 percent of the quota; that districting seek to result in electorates that recognise common communities, are contiguous and reasonably compact (and, as a result, recognise the importance of physical features and communications including roads and railways); that the system be capable of providing the major parties with a base level of representation, but there be sufficient number of balanced, marginal, or swinging seats to allow shifts in overall voter alignments to be reflected in aggregate electoral outcomes (and thus allow for such shifts to be able to result in shifts in which party or parties win government). The politics of districting in Australia Districting has been at the centre of debates about electoral systems and their possible reform in all Australian jurisdictions since colonial times. While gerrymandering has not figured in these debates (notwithstanding the popular usage of the term from time to time to describe systems popularly perceived as unfair such as that used in South Australia during the premiership of Thomas Playford, or in Queensland under Joh Bjelke-Petersen) malapportionment has. Australia s electoral history at the state and federal level is intimately linked with institutionalised malapportionment a debate that had lasted from colonial times and continues on today in various forms (see Goot 14

15 1985; Bennett 1996:73-74). The type of malapportionment present in Australia s various systems have been quite varied (Jaensch 1995:63-71), and have included: constitutional malapportionment in national elections where constitutionally prescribed minimum House of Representatives representation for the states, and equal Senate representation, prevents the application of a one vote one value principle in Australian national elections; sectional community malapportionment benefiting rural Australia; malapportionment justified on the grounds that the notion of voting equality be modified to take the size of electoral divisions in to account on the grounds that a large electoral division is much more difficult to service than a smaller district; malapportionment caused by the failure to conduct regular redistributions and thus fail to accommodate population changes. The two main ways of instituting malapportionment in Australian electoral systems have included regulations outlining the extent to which districts could vary in voter population from the jurisdiction-wide average or quota, and/or utilisation of a zonal system in which seats within particular zones would have a lower quota than seats in other zones. Typically this has meant that seats in rural and/or regional zones would be entitled to a lower enrolment than seats in urban and metropolitan zones. While the history of electoral system development and reform, including changes to districting arrangements, have a long history it is possible to delineate three broad phases in this development. These include: the colonial period through to WWI where deliberate rural malapportionment was instituted as a means of putting a conservative brake on the capacity of the popular vote to institute reform. This was reflected particularly in the state upper houses where reforms to the franchise and the method of upper house election lagged well behind similar reforms to the lower houses; the period between WWI and the 1970s. This is the period in which the Australian party system emerges, consolidates and dominates the political debate. Rural malapportionment is maintained in this period although the 15

16 rationale for its existence changes from the previous era. In this period rural malapportionment was justified on the grounds that, i) the rural community made a disproportionate contribution to the Australian economy and thus deserved special electoral treatment, and ii) the size of rural electorates could be so large as to diminish the quality of representation provided by a single representative, and unequal districting could compensate for this problem. These arguments were used by the non-labor parties generally and the Country (later National) party in particular for quite obvious partisan advantage (see Farrell and McAllister 2006); the period from the mid-1970s onwards when the ALP began to win federal and state elections and commenced the process of dismantling the rural malapportionment. This was also the period in which the administrative reorganisation of election administration commences with federal and state electoral bodies being converted from auxiliaries of ministerial departments to become statutory authorities (see Goot 1985). The third phase of electoral reform is the most relevant to this report, for the current state of redistribution practices at the federal, state and territory levels derive from the reforms started by the Whitlam national government (ALP) in 1974, the changes to South Australian practice by Steele Hall (Liberal Country Movement) and Don Dunston in the 1970s, and the changes to the New South Wales Legislative Council by the Wran government (ALP) in 1977 (see Goot 1985). This commenced the process by which the rural malapportionment component of the nation s electoral systems was broken down for both lower and state upper houses. This process continued during the 1980s when there was a raft of state Labor governments and a federal Labor government, and continues on to this day with reform to the Western Australian and Victorian electoral systems (and especially for the Legislative Council). One of the main consequences of these reforms was to do away with rural malapportionment (AEC 2004:16), although, as we shall show, a form of rural malapportionment still exists in Queensland and Western Australia. It has also been during this period that important administrative reorganisations occurred where departments responsible for administering the electoral process were given statutory 16

17 authority status and thus given greater independence from governments. These developments also included the creation of authorities for the purpose of undertaking the cartographical tasks associated with determining electoral boundaries. The move away from instituting rural malapportionment reflects partly a sense of partisan advantage (these changes have, by and large, been instituted by Labor governments and have clearly been at the expense of the National party in particular) and partly by shifting demographic realities where Australia s rural population is steadily declining as a proportion of the overall community. The demographic shift may account for the acquiescence of the Liberal party in this shifting emphasis indeed, as has been pointed put previously, Liberal politicians in South Australia and Victoria also made a contribution to the dismantling of rural malapportionment. As a result of this, discussions about the imbalance between rural and urban representation has diminished, although, as this report will show, in Western Australia and Queensland vestiges of the zonal malapportionment that have been a feature of the electoral system of those states remains in place. In place of debates about malapportionment has emerged a growing interest in and concern about disproportionate electoral outcomes in AV electoral systems. This has had particular resonance in South Australia where one side of the party system felt itself to have been very badly disadvantaged by an election outcome and put in place regulations designed to overcome this problem when they were returned to government some years later. A not dissimilar debate was also present in Victoria, although this was mainly confined to the Legislative Council electoral process in which one side felt itself to be disadvantaged by the AV system and responded by 17

18 replacing it with proportional representation. These developments are explored in the report, and serve to remind that controversies associated with districting are never completely absent from the debate about electoral systems in Australia. PART 2: AUSTRALIA S REDISTRIBUTION PROCESSES In this section of the report the process of districting, or, in the Australian vernacular, undertaking electoral redistributions, is reviewed for each of the states, the two territories and the Commonwealth. Each section is organised thus: an overview of the electoral process for each of the parliamentary chambers (where applicable) is provided; reference to the administrative arrangement that pertains to the existence of electoral authorities and/or districting authorities is made; reference is made to the appropriate legislation that covers electoral redistributions; a description of the procedure is provided (papers relating to the last redistribution undertaken by each authority are provided as an appendix); a brief commentary on the overarching politics of the districting debate is provided for each of the jurisdictions reviewed. THE COMMONWEALTH The Australian national parliament is bicameral. The House of Representatives sits for three years, but early elections are possible under Section 57 of the Constitution. The Senate sits for six years, with senatorial terms staggered to provide for a half-senate 18

19 election every three years. Again, early elections for the Senate are possible under Section 57 of the Constitution although in such cases this involves full-senate elections. The Australian Constitution establishes the basis of the representational configuration of both the House of Representatives, but the Electoral Act (1918) and its many amendments outline the electoral systems used for the House of Representatives (Alternative Vote) and the Senate (Single Transferable Vote proportional representation). The constitution establishes the minimum representational basis for original states (this guarantees Tasmania five lower house seats), outlines the apportioning of House of Representatives seats per state, and guarantees equal state representation in the Senate. Changes to the constitution can only be made via the mechanism outlined in Section 128. The electoral act outlines the electoral mechanisms used to elect representatives, and is subject to change via the parliamentary legislative process. The act also established the Australian Electoral Office. Until 1963, when it was separated from the ministerial departmental structure, the office was under the administrative direction of the Department of Home Affairs. In 1984 the Hawke Labor government undertook a major administrative reform that, amongst other things, made the Australian Electoral Commission a statutory body removed from direct ministerial overview (a statutory authority (see AEC 2006)). Redistributions for the House of Representatives are undertaken by the AEC. The AEC carries out a redistribution should any of the following triggers arise: The number of parliamentarians to which a State or Territory is entitled changes due to population change; 19

20 The number of electors in more than one-third of the divisions in a State or Territory deviates from the average divisional enrolment by over 10% for more than two consecutive months; or Seven years has elapsed since the last redistribution. In the event of a redistribution a Redistribution Committee is established under the auspices of the AEC but based within each state where a redistribution is to be undertaken. These committees shall comprise of: The Electoral Commissioner The Australian Electoral Officer for the particular jurisdiction (the Senior Divisional Returning Officer in ACT) The State Surveyor-General The Auditor-General for the State or if unavailable a senior Australian public servant These committees follow the following rules and steps in the redistribution process. The process must consider the following: proposed boundaries are recommended in which the enrolment for each division does not deviate from the enrolment quota by more or less than 10%. Three and a half year rule: Proposed boundaries must also ensure that at 3 years and six months after the redistribution is completed, the enrolment of each division does not deviate from the projected enrolment quota by more or less than 3.5%. However this projection time of 3.5 years can be reduced if there is a change in entitlements of a jurisdiction. Then following steps are taken in the process: The Electoral Commissioner determines the enrolment quota for the jurisdiction being redistributed. The Quota is calculated by dividing the number of electors in the state by the number of members of the HOR to be elected at a general election The Redistribution Committee is appointed by the Electoral Commission. 20

21 Stakeholders can lodge suggestions with the Redistribution Committee within 30 days, which are then made available for public inspection. Stakeholders can lodge written comments on the suggestions within a further 14 days. Public has 28 days to lodge written objections to the proposals and an additional 14 days during which interested persons and organisations may lodge written comments on the objections. An augmented Electoral Commission is then established to consider objections to the proposed redistribution and to make a final determination of the names and boundaries of the electoral divisions for the jurisdiction. This Commission comprises of the members of the Redistribution Committee for that jurisdiction, plus the Chairperson and the non-judicial member of the Electoral Commission. This augmented Commission has 60 days to consider all objections and hold a public inquiry into any objection unless it of the opinion that the objection has been dealt with in a previous submission or comment or is frivolous. If the augmented Electoral Commission s proposed redistribution is significantly different from that proposed by the Redistribution Committee, it will invite interested persons and organisations to lodge further objections. The matter of maintaining contiguity in districting and redistricting is also addressed in the regulations. Redistributions must occur with the following as guiding criteria: Community interests within the division, including economic, social and regional interests, Means of communication and travel within a division Physical features and area Existing boundaries of divisions Enrolment (both current enrolment and projected enrolment three and a half years after the redistribution) Potential or real political implications are not considered in any way by the Committee. 21

22 Political context Rural malapportionment has been the primary issue in the political debates about redistricting for Australian federal elections. Redistribution regulations from the era prior to the election of the Whitlam Labor government in 1972 allowed for a 20% variation in the electorate population quota for electoral districts, and the extension of concessions to rural electorates on the grounds of compensation for electoral size and the assumed consequential diminution of the quality of representation were justifications for this approach. These criteria had been around the Australian electoral system since the 1920s a reflection of the emergence and significance of the Country Party, so the system did reflect a strong sense of partisan advantage. The Whitlam government came to power advocating the application of a one vote, one value approach, although the constraints of the federal system prevented the government from pursuing this agenda item. Instead, the Whitlam government did succeed in reducing the rural weightage from 20% to 10%. The election of the Hawke Labor government in 1983 and the subsequent major reforms to Australia s electoral system and its administration resulted in the abandonment of the rural weightage and the removal of electorate size and representational remoteness as rationales for a 10% variation on electorate voting populations within states. The variation is now tolerated simply for the purpose of accommodating predicted demographic changes. Attempts to resolve malapportionment between the states have failed in the High Court (during Whitlam s time) and at referendum (the Hawke government s attempt in 1988). 22

23 Commentary on these matters may be found in AEC 2006; Goot 1985, Jaensch 1995, and Farrell and McAlliser NEW SOUTH WALES New South Wales has a bicameral parliament with fixed four year terms for the Legislative Assembly, and fixed eight year terms of the Legislative Council (with half the Council to be elected with every turn of the lower house electoral cycle). The Legislative Assembly utilises 93 single member electoral districts using the Alternative Vote (with optional preferential voting) and the Council utilises STVproportional representation for a state-wide contest. This means that there are no districting issues for the Legislative Council. The Constitution Act 1902 (as amended and current to May 2006) contains the provisions for redistributions, with further regulatory framework provided by the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Act 1912 (as amended). NSW elections are administered by the New South Wales Electoral Commission (NSWEC), created by amendments to the Elections Act in October Previously the administrative authority had been the State Electoral Office. When redistributions are required three Electoral District Commissioners are appointed: One of the Commissioners must be the Electoral Commissioner for NSW One of the Commissioners must be a former judge of the Supreme Court, or a member of the Industrial Commission of NSW or a judge of the District Court One Commissioner must be a registered surveyor. 23

24 Redistributions are required under the following circumstances: When the number of members of the Legislative Assembly changes (after a change in the law); or After every second NSW general election; or When more than a quarter of the electoral districts do not have an equal number of voters (within a margin of 5% more or less for a period of more than 2 months), unless the distribution would commence within one year before the expiry of the Legislative Assembly, or unless a distribution has already been made since the last general election, or unless a distribution is required anyway; or At other times as provided by the law. The procedures and evaluative criteria for redistributions (see SEO 2006) commence with the calculation of the lower house electorate division quota (simply the number of persons entitled to vote divided by the number of districts to be made up to return the requisite number of Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs)). A second calculation is then made dividing the number of projected voters (based on forecast of population trends in districts) by the number of MLAs. The redistribution process then considers boundaries to allow for divisions that can have as much as a 10% variation on the quota as of the current population, but should have only a 3% variation based on the forecasted number of voters in that division in four years time. After this, boundary drawing is considered. This involves the following process: inviting suggestions for changes to the electoral district boundaries and names; a period for comment on the suggestions; the release of the Electoral District Commissioners' proposed changes; a period during which further suggestions and objections may be made; 24

25 further consideration by the Electoral Districts Commissioners of the suggestions and objection; and finalisation of the name and boundaries. In particular the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Act 1912 sets out the following steps and timetable: The commissioners shall, by advertisement publish in the Gazette and in some newspaper published or circulating in the district notice of any proposed alteration of an electoral district. Suggestions or objections in writing may be lodged with the commissioners in relation to a proposed alteration of an electoral district within: a) a period of 30 days, or b) an other prescribed period, after the publication of the advertisement. The commissioners consider suggestions or objections lodged with them before determining the names and boundaries of electoral districts. The commissioners must complete: a) their consideration of any suggestions or objections lodged with them, and b) any inquiries into those suggestions or objections, as soon as practicable and in any event before a period of 60 days after the period of Step 2 above. Alternatively an extension of up to 10 days can be allowed if required by the commissioners. This 60 day and further 10 day period does not cover the process of formulating and making the commissioner s determination or draft determination. The commissioners must hold an inquiry into any suggestion or objection unless the matters have been previously raised or they are frivolous or vexatious. The proceeding before the commissioners at an inquiry into any suggestion or objection must be held in public. As soon as practicable after the commissioners have concluded their consideration of any suggestion or objection (including any inquiries into any suggestion or objection), they must consider the form of a draft determination of the names and boundaries of electoral districts. a) If the draft determination would not significantly differ from the proposal notified in the gazetted advertisement, the commission determines the names and boundaries of electoral districts in accordance with the draft determination. 25

26 If the commissioners are of the opinion that the draft determination is significantly different from the gazetted proposals the commissioners must publish in the Gazette and in newspapers a notice summarising the draft determination so that: a) a person or organisation may within the prescribed period (or the period determined by the commissioners if there is no prescribed period) lodge with the commissioners a written objection, and b) the commissioners will hold an inquiry into any such objection. The commissioners must complete their consideration of any objections lodged with them and any inquiries into those objections as soon as practicable and before the end of the prescribed period (if any). That prescribed period does not cover the process of formulating and making the commissioner s determination. As soon as practicable after the commissioners have concluded their inquires into any objection lodged, they must determine the names of boundaries of electoral districts. The commissioners are not required to invite further submissions, suggestions or objectives or to hold any inquiries into any such further submissions, suggestions or objections that are received. The Electoral Commissioner must ensure that maps indicating the proposed boundaries of electoral districts are available for inspection at the office of the Commission, the offices of local government areas within current or proposed boundaries and on the Commission s website. The commissioners shall report to the Governor the names and boundaries of the electoral districts determined. The Governor will cause a proclamation setting out the names of the electoral districts to be published in the Gazette in addition to a printed version of the area of each district. Upon publication of a proclamation, the electoral districts specified in the proclamation shall, until altered by a further distribution under the Constitution Act 1902, be the electoral districts of NSW. The Electoral District Commissioners must also give due consideration to: the community of interest within the electoral district, including economic, social and regional interests; the means of communication and travel within the electoral district; the physical features and area of the electoral district; mountain and other natural boundaries; the boundaries of the existing electoral districts. 26

27 Political context The issue of rural malapportionment dominated debates about elections for much of NSW s post World War One electoral history. As a state in which the Country party had a significant electoral and representational presence, NSW had a zonal system of electorate weightage designed to enhance the voting power of rural voters. Between 1928 and 1949 the state was divided in to three zones Sydney metropolitan, Newcastle-Hunter and Country, with each zone being guaranteed a number of divisions (43, 5 and 42 respectively). The consequence of this was to be a lower number of voters per Country zone seats than in the other two zones. In 1949 the zones were reduced to two Sydney (48 seats) and Country (46 seats). In 1969 this was modified again to a Sydney-Wollongong-Newcastle Zone (63 seats) and Country (33 seats). After its election in 1976, the Wran Labor government abolished the zonal system and legislated instead for a one vote, one value process. This also included the provision of an independent boundary drawing body (see above). References: Moon and Sharman (2003) VICTORIA The Victorian parliament is bicameral, and the core features of the electoral process (including guarantee of the independence of the Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC)) are contained within the Constitution Act (1975, as amended in 2003). This act provides for 88 single member electoral districts for the Legislative Assembly and 27

28 40 seats elected from 8 districts each returning 5 representatives utilising STVproportional representation for the Legislative Council. Districting is thus required for both houses, although the rules for districting maintain a principle from the previous period in which the Legislative Council was made up of single member AV provinces that were made up by aggregating contiguous Assembly districts. Whereas the old provinces were made up of four contiguous Assembly districts, the new Regions are comprised of 11 contiguous Assembly districts. The state s electoral processes, along with laws for the operation of the VEC and for the Electoral Boundaries Commission (EBC) are to be found in the constitution, the Electoral Act (2002 and amendments) and the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act (1982 as amended in 2005). The amended Victorian constitution provides for fixed four-year parliamentary terms for both houses. The VEC is responsible for the administration of the state s elections, whereas the EBC is responsible for the actual process of drawing up electoral boundaries that are then passed on as recommendations. Redistributions are required under the following circumstances: when enrolments for more than 30% of the districts or regions have been more than 10% outside the average for 2 months; when enrolments for more than 25% of the districts or regions have been outside the 10% tolerance and more than 5% of the districts or regions have been more than 20% outside the average for 2 months; if there have been 2 State elections since the previous redistribution; if the number of districts or regions has changed. In the event of a redistribution the EBC is convened, comprising of: 28