Continuing on with our demographic profiles – a handy filler until the polling season reopens – the seat for today is the NSW metro electorate of Banks. Before we get to that though, you might have noticed that the age profiles have undergone some changes over the past few days – I’ve finally settled on 10 year cohorts except for the first (0-4 years) and the last (85+).
Now, on with the show.
The AEC reckons Banks looks a bit like this:
2007 Election Result and Two Party Preferred History
| Party | LP | ALP | GRN | NP | FFP | OTH |
| 07 Primary | 33.61 | 54.62 | 5.59 | 0 | 0 | 6.18 |
Age Profile, Family Composition, Housing and Migration
The final three categories in that last chart measure the proportion of the population that had the same address in 2001 as they did in 2006, the proportion of the population that moved location between 2001 and 2006 but moved locally (that is, moved houses within their Local Statistical Area – an ABS geographical category based on local government boundaries), and the proportion of the population that moved houses between 2001 and 2006, but moved from outside of their local area. Those last three stats gives us an idea of the size of the population growth/churn going on in a seat.
Income and Employment
Please note: Centrelink data is from 2008 and comes from the Dept of Human Services website.
Map comes from the Australian Electoral Commission.
All other data derives from the 2006 Census.
4 Comments
Banks is a funny seat (I’m about to move there), in the sense that the suburbs within it are quite diverse. The difference between penshurst/oatley/mortdale and bankstown or milperra is huge. If you want an illustration of this, just look at the respective house prices. In fact I’d say the east and west of the seat are almost balancing each other out, with the east having low NESB, more professionals, etc and the west being more skewed towards manufacturing, higher OS born, and so on.
I guess what I’m saying is you might not get that info by just looking at the seat as a whole… just a thought.
Dan, several rules about the politics of Sydney in its post-war suburbs. The flatter the topography the higher the Labor vote, the hillier and leafier, and the closer to water views, the higher the Liberal vote. Plot the Labor vote against a landform map or an arial photo of where the trees are in Sydney and you’ll see what I mean. In parts of western Sydney, if you have a private housing suburb next to a public housing suburb, the private housing suburb will have a higher Liberal vote than its demography would suggest. If you put the world “Hill” or “View” after a suburb name, add 10% to the Liberal vote compared to the suburb without the suffix.
If you look at the booth results in both Barton and Banks, you see that pattern.
And as for Banks, there is another factor. Most of the overseas and especially Middle Eastern migration into Bankstown has been into the northern end of Bankstown Council which is in the electorate of Blaxland. In the south of Banks there’s lots of older more established suburbs that get a bit antsy about their suburb becoming more ethically mixed. The Tampa was a particularly boistrous issue in Banks at the 2001 election and Labor had to devote extra resources to helping Daryl Melham defend the seat.
Where do Bankstown boys who’ve done well in life move to? Across Alfords Point Bridge at the southern end of Banks and into the Menai part of Sutherland Shire. (Where does Steve Waugh live? Alfords Point.) Where do the people of Menai reckon all the local crime comes from? Hoons and Lebos driving across Alfords Point bridge from Bankstown.
Everything I’ve just said then is a gross over-generalisation, but in the peculiar forces that sometimes drive the politics of Sydney suburbs with low migrant populations, its the generalisations and exaggerations that are always the most difficult to argue against.
#3
I agree Antony, it’s amazing the difference between areas like Padstow Heights and the rest of Padstow.
It will be interesting to see how the redistribution treats Banks. If it gets pushed eastwards along the river or dragged over Alfords Pt bridge, it will become more Liberal. If it gets pulled further into bankstown it will become rock-solid Labor.