Electoral Boundary Review out tomorrow

Yes MtM, the various ‘principles’ that require things such as odd number in each electorate, odd number overall, etc, makes for very difficult combinations. Your point about 5 per electorate is right – anything that results in more minority and independent MLAs is essential. When you don’t have the check-and-balance of an upper house the next best thing is minority government.
But if any community is educated enough to see that having more politicians isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it would be ACT’s…

Trouble with having more electorates is that you’ll have less members in each of them, which would skew the results – for example, if there were 3 members in each electorate and one party got 50% of the vote, chances are they would end up with 67% of the MLAs.

The current system is slightly fairer – a better one would involve say 5 electorates of 5 MLAs each, but then of course everyone would jump up and down and cry “too many politicians” so you can’t win either way.

Indeed GnT, Jemmy and Gungahlinite.
Read the Gungahlin submission and proposals here:
http://www.elections.act.gov.au/Redis07.html#Sug

Because that’s way too many electorates to split 17 members between. However I agree that wholesale changes are called for – perhaps combine Woden and Weston Creek into South Canberra in your proposal which brings us down to a more-manageable 5 electorates.

Yeah, why aren’t the electorates: Belconnen, Gunghalin, North Canberra, South Canberra, Woden, Weston Creek and Tuggeranong, with the number of members proportional to population?

It’s mandated for two electorates of 5 members and one of 7 members. Strange electoral requirements, wonder why it was set up that way? Maybe it’s time the Electoral Act was changed.

In fact, more I think about it, the odder it is. In a city that’s divided into regions, it makes even less sense to consolidate disparate regions. Molongolo for example has both Downer and Weston Ck. Not much in common there, unless I’m missing something.

http://www.elections.act.gov.au/FactRedis.html

So Gungahlin gets bigger so let’s take some of their voice away by sticking some more of itin another electorate.We will get nothing out here until we are our own electorate.

The proposed electorates are as follows:

BRINDABELLA, a five member electorate comprising the district of Tuggeranong (excluding the suburb of Hume), the Woden Valley suburbs of Chifley, Farrer, Pearce and Torrens and the southern remainder of the ACT;

GINNINDERRA, a five member electorate comprising the districts of Belconnen and Hall (including the entire village of Hall) and the Gungahlin suburbs of Nicholls and Palmerston; and

MOLONGLO, a seven member electorate comprising the districts of Gungahlin (excluding the suburbs of Nicholls and Palmerston), Canberra Central, Weston Creek, Woden Valley (excluding the suburbs of Chifley, Farrer, Pearce and Torrens), Jerrabomberra (including the entire suburb of Hume), Kowen, Majura, and Stromlo.

The proposed changes to the new electoral boundaries can be seen here: http://www.elections.act.gov.au/Redis07.html

On a somewhat related issue …

When are we going to get a third federal electorate? We are the most under-represented population in the country.