Comments on: Tasmania redistributed

By: Scotty

Scotty — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 07:09:19 +0000

Well as a local of the eastern shore in Franklin i can say i don’t know many who have strong concerns about the shape of franklins borders. Maybe the odd jealous swipe at Kingston for a perceived unfair treatment. Though i will concede that we may have more in common with the area around Sorell than The Huon valley. This divide may become problematic in future if these areas continue to grow as quickly as they have.

On the same note i would worry if the status quo was changed then it might give CFMEU Labor even more influence within Tasmania which i personally think is strong enough already.

By: Kevin Bonham

Kevin Bonham — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:06:11 +0000

Franklin is pretty bizarre; there is really no community of interest between the Huon/Channel area and the eastern shore; perhaps the South Arm area has characters intermediate between them to make some kind of continuum out of it but that’s about it.

However, it’s really hard to find a better solution. If you put the Huon/Channel in Lyons you end up with the Huon/Channel area as an effectively disjunct arm of Lyons – even if it isn’t spatially disjunct, it may as well be since it is only connected to the rest of the electorate by obscure dirt roads.

If you put the Huon/Channel in Denison then you end up having to give some of the Greater Hobart area to Lyons for population balance reasons which makes Lyons a semi-urban semi-rural mess.

At least given the small size of Denison the disconnection between the bits of Franklin isn’t very large in spatial and travel time terms.

By: Antony Green

Antony Green — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:24:08 +0000

Pseph, the arrangement with Franklin has been in existence since 1903. I suspect that if the locals had a concern about Franklin’s fragmented state, we would have heard about it by now.

By: David Walsh

David Walsh — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:58:48 +0000

J-D – Give it a rest. This is beyond tedious.

Pseph – Franklin is contiguous through the D’Entrecasteaux Channel.

By: Pseph

Pseph — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 06:48:18 +0000

Err, Franklin.. without the g

By: Pseph

Pseph — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 06:39:50 +0000

I’m quite surprised that Frankling still remains a fragmented seat… no requirement for contiguity, which is interesting. Not sure what the community of interest is between the Huon Valley and Eastern suburbs of Hobart either… anyway, that’s my two cents.

By: J-D

J-D — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 02:51:03 +0000

Adam, are you asking what the point of the guidelines is in theory, or what the point of them is in practice? If you mean ‘in theory’, then I don’t know the answer. The practical answer, though, is empirically clear. The guidelines are used to provide justification for dismissing public suggestions which the commissioners don’t want to accept and which also conflict with the guidelines. When the commissioners themselves want to do something which conflicts with the guidelines, they simply don’t refer to them.

By: Adam

Adam — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 02:14:51 +0000

What’s the point in guidelines if they’re to be ignored? I agree the Commissioners are not *required* to preserve federation seat names, or they wouldn’t have been able to abolish Gwydir. But the point of guidlelines is to guide people. The Commissioners are supposed to be guided not to abolish federation seat names.

By: Kevin Bonham

Kevin Bonham — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 08:25:00 +0000

typo – “Labor” for “Lanor” in last para

By: Kevin Bonham

Kevin Bonham — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 08:23:33 +0000

I’ve noticed some amount of jumping the gun in the media about what are at this stage still only draft changes. It is worth bearing in mind, for example, that the Tasmanian boundary changes to Legislative Council divisions ended up being quite significantly different in some cases following the public comment period on the proposal. I don’t know how often changes in response to public comment on the draft occur at federal level however.

Thanks to Antony for the nice work on the state swings (saved me some effort!). Kim Booth’s current margin over Labor in Bass is 0.224% of the valid vote so one would have to go to a second decimal place to see whether the proposed redistribution (which transfers 0.1% from Green to Labor on Antony’s figures, ie a loss of 0.2%) might make his seat notionally Labor or not. Either way there is virtually nothing in it.

Lanor currently holds three in Franklin by 1.6%. The proposed redistribution removes 0.9% from that buffer although it also adds 0.4% to the Greens, some of which returns to Labor. So the third seat would remain notionally Labor’s – however with the loss of Paul Lennon and the uncertain future of Paula Wriedt (who only just held her seat last time) Labor is facing a profile crisis in this seat and I will be extremely surprised if it holds three in Franklin at the next election.