IT SEEMS the redrawing of electoral boundaries gets a lot of people fired up, if the number of submissions over federal boundaries in NSW is anything to go by.
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More than 790 submissions have been received by the Australian Electoral Commission over its current redistribution proposal, which was needed in order to remove one electorate from the state.
The current Hunter electorate disappears under the AEC’s proposal, and the renaming of several other electorates is something that’s prompted many of the submissions, including one from Inverell Senator John Williams, who argues against the renaming of Throsby in the southern highlands to Whitlam.
Of the submissions, some come from lobby groups, political parties and councils, including Gwydir Shire, which is not happy about shifting from the Parkes electorate to New England, but the majority appear to be from individual citizens who obviously take a keen interest in our electoral system and its boundaries.
This is probably in contrast to the vast majority of the population who don’t care which electorate they’re aligned with.
However, it’s a serious business for the AEC, which must remove a NSW federal electorate before the next election.
That’s never an easy task, given the population spread across our state – concentrated populations in our cities and smaller populations spread over a vast area.
The result, unfortunately, is that for regional NSW, the number of electorates – both state and federal – are shrinking and therefore becoming more expansive.
Under the current proposal from the AEC, the electorate of Parkes, for example, would take up 50 per cent of the state, stretching from the Queensland border all the way down to Hillston in the south, out to Broken Hill in the west and to Moree, Narrabri and Gunnedah in the east.
For Gunnedah, if the proposal is adopted, it would be voters’ third change of federal electorate since 2007. A bit hard to swallow, really.
And, of course, the bigger the electorates, the greater the watering- down of communities of interest and the harder it becomes for voters to be heard.
That’s not fair on voters, who are entitled to reasonable access to their MP, and it’s not fair on the MP, who is facing an uphill battle in not only getting around the electorate but also adequately representing their concerns.
The AEC must work to a formula, obviously, but it’s time for a rethink when voters’ democratic rights and expectations are being lost in the lines on a map.
