I don't usually get involved in redistribution speculation and lobbying (I don't even have the time and skill to draw nice maps) but this one is particularly interesting to me and local. A federal redistribution for Tasmania has commenced, with the initial suggestions stage closing on 7 November.
Tasmania currently uses the federal electorate boundaries for its Hare-Clark system state elections, and if this continues (and no one has convinced me that it shouldn't) then the changes will flow on to the next Tasmanian state election, which could well be held before the next federal poll. The purpose of this article isn't to support any particular option, or to dive into the finer details of which lines to put exactly where (rather beyond my computing skills for the level of time I have right now); it's to raise awareness of what some of the broad options are and some advantages and disadvantages of them.
Unlike in the other states that may be affected by planned redistributions (SA and Queensland), entitlement changes or possibly expansion, Tasmania's number of divisions clearly won't be changing in this term. So this Tasmanian redistribution is for keeps.
The issue is that as populations outside the inner cities of Tasmania have increased while the inner cities have stagnated, Clark has drifted to a lower population than the other four electorates. Clark is projected to be 10.5% below quota by 2030, Lyons 9.98% above, Bass 4.42% below, Franklin 3.20% above and Braddon 1.73% above. At the least the first three need to be brought inside the 3.5% variation from quota (or at least "as far as practicable") and this means that Clark should gain at least 7%, Lyons should lose at least about 6.5%, Bass should gain 1%, and changes could occur in the others.
