Sydney state boundaries broken down

The seat of Sydney will be reduced at the next state elections and may lose a sizeable slice of the progressive vote.

That was the consensus after the NSW Electoral Districts Commission released its draft electoral boundaries, which proposes splitting the seat of Marrickville in two and reducing the area of the Sydney seat.

The draft boundaries are now open for public comment and will be gazetted later this year prior to the 2015 state elections. If the proposed changes are adopted, the seat of Marrickville will be abolished and replaced by two new seats: Summer Hill and Newtown.

Antony Green, the ABC psephologist and election commentator, said that party performance at the 2015 election would differ highly across the seats of Summer Hill, Newtown and Sydney.

“Summer Hill is likely to be a safe Labor seat based on past results. This is whereas the new seat of Newtown is more likely to be a contest between the Greens and Labor,” he said.

“The seat of Newtown is very higgledy-piggledy – the seat encompasses some very different suburbs in Surry Hills and Newtown and stretches all the way to Lewisham.”

The seat of Sydney will lose Ultimo to the seat of Balmain, Centennial Park to Heffron, and Chippendale and Surry Hills to Newtown.

Independent MP for Sydney, Alex Greenwich, said he is still in a strong position, regardless of the electoral boundaries.

“The redistribution does not significantly affect my margin. Looking at the remaining areas left in the proposed redistribution, my margin would be about 10 per cent,” he said.

“In addition, I hope a strong progressive independent contests the seat of Newtown, if indeed it is created.”

Labor MP for Marrickville, Carmel Tebbutt, said the introduction of two new electorates of Summer Hill and Newtown could foreshadow further changes.

“The seat of Marrickville has been renamed Summer Hill in the draft electoral boundaries released by the NSW Electoral Districts Commission. According to Antony Green’s analysis, the seat of Summer Hill has a Labor margin of 12 per cent,” she said.

“I hold my current seat of Marrickville by less than 1 per cent. These are draft boundaries and still subject to a further consultation process. Once the final boundaries are known, I will be engaging with new voters in my electorate including through letterbox drops, door-knocking and community events.”

A spokesperson for the NSW Electoral Districts Commission said demographic factors influenced the redistribution of the seats. The spokesperson said that the new district of Newtown would be centred on the growth area of Newtown and located south of Parramatta Rd, while the new district of Summer Hill would be west and north of Parramatta Rd.

“Over time, voters move and new voters are enrolled. Enrolment numbers grow in some areas and decrease in others, and electoral districts therefore become unbalanced,” said the spokesperson.

“The law requires that the number of voters in each electoral district are periodically assessed and boundaries modified to ensure numbers of voters in each area are approximately equal and only vary – more or less – by 10 per cent from the average.”

The spokesperson for the Electoral Commission said it was not only politicians who had an influence over the redistribution of Sydney and Marrickville.

“The commissioners received a total of 37 suggestions and 70 comments on these suggestions from registered political parties, individuals and interested groups,” said the spokesperson.

“The suggestions and comments – including the quite substantial submissions from the major parties – also included valuable input from individuals where the submissions focused particularly on local, economic, social and regional interests.”

The public can lodge suggestions and objections to the proposed boundaries. To view the proposed electoral districts, make suggestions or objections, visit redistribution.nsw.gov.au