The O'Farrell government has announced that it intends to change the rules on projected enrolment quotas ahead of an electoral redistribution soon to get underway.
Labor and the Greens are calling it a gerrymander, the Coalition says it is just implementing a recommendation of the last Electoral DistrictsCommisioners' Report.
Who is right? The answer is that you need to know a bit of history to understand who's doing what to whom.
Up until the 1970s New South Wales a zonal electoral system like most other states. Electorates in country areas were in one zone with a permitted lower enrolment quota, while a higher enrolment quota applied to metropolitan areas. These different quotas were justified as ensuring rural representation, but in reality were almost always in place for reasons of political advantage.
Over the decades both Labor and the Coalition fiddled with the NSW zonal boundaries to obtain political advantage. The first zonal system implemented in the 1920s had three zones, Country, Sydney and Newcastle, with the Newcastle zone set with a higher quota than the country. This was designed to cordon off Labor's lower Hunter base in high-quota electorates. Back in power in the 1940s, Labor abolished the Newcastle Zone and put the lower Hunter in the low quota Country Zone for its own advantage.
During its long period in power from 1941 to 1965, Labor had many well known country members whothe Coalition struggled to defeat. In those circumstances Labor was happy to keep country seats with a lower quota of votes. However, as those long serving country Labor MPs either died or retired, their seats were lost to the Coalition, and slowly Labor shifted its position to supporting an end to zonal electoral systems
After 1965, the newly elected Askin Coalition government had a different agenda, and set about re-drawing the zones to its own advantage.
By 1968, Sydney's outer suburbs were beginning to sprawl beyond the boundaries of the Sydney Zone. The 1968 redistribution created Campbelltown and Nepean on the edge of Sydney and abolished far distant Casino and Sturt.
The Askin government's response was to change the zones ahead of the 1971 election. Newcastle and Wollongong were included with Sydney in an expanded Central Zone which incorporated all the high growth areas close to the city. A new Country Zone was established with 33 seats, re-creating the two country seats abolished by the previous redistribution. At the 1971 election, average enrolment in Country Zone's 33 electorates was only 70% of the average enrolment in the 63 Central Zone electorates.
Labor under Neville Wran narrowly won the 1976 election, almost defeated Coalition's zonal system. After its landslide re-election in 1976, the Wran government set about dismantling the zones. In 1980 Labor entrenched one-vote one-value principles in the constitution. Separate quotas were abolished and all future redistributuons would require electorates to be within 10% of the average enrolment at the date of the redistribution.
New boundaries in place for the 1981 election effectively shifted six seats from the country to the old Central Zone. As a result, Labor won a record majority at the 1981 election despite its vote declining since 1978.
With another redistribution due after the 1984 election, number crunchers in the Labor decided to go one step further. The could not alter the 10% variation entrenched in the Constitution without a referendum. However, there was nothing to stop a tighter criteria being imposed. The solution was to introduce projected enrolment quotas with smaller permitted variation, effectively preventing the Electoral Districts Commissioners from using the full 10% variation from average enrolment permitted by the Constutution.
Since the 1986/7 redistribution, all redistributions have been undertaken using two enrolment quotas. The first is based on current enrolments at the date of the redistribution and permits a 10% variation from average as detailed in the Constitution. The second, a projected enrolment quota, is set for one month after the first election on the new boundaries and is defined in Section 17A of the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Act, a normal piece of legislation.
The first use of projected enrolment quotas was by the 1986/87 Electoral Districts Commission. At the time projected enrolments were supposed to be set so that "the number of electors enrolled in each electoral district will be equal". The Commissioners chose to interpret this as being all electorates having a projected enrolment within 1.5% of average. The Labor government of the day chose to qualify this for the future by removing the equality reference and stating that all electorates be within 3% ofthe projected enrolment.
The 1990/91, 1997/98 and 2004 redistributions have since been undertaken under the 10% current and 3% projected permitted variation rules. However, much to the shock of a Labor Party unused to independence from electoral authorities, the 2004 Electoral Districts Commissioners recommended changes to the rules.
Recommendation 1 - Quota restrictions
[concerning the quota margin of 3% on predicted figures] the Commissioners are of the opinion that this quota is too restrictive to take into account strong growth electorates, especially given the demographic trends, consideration of communities of interest, existing infrastructure, geographic and other spatial information. Given the continued population shift from regional NSW to the coast and centres of major population, there will be increasing pressures in future redistributions to meet the criteria of Section 17A (1) (b) of the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Act 1912.
By way of comparison the Commissioners note the quota margins of allowance in other states are less restrictive eg Victoria and Tasmania use only one quota in their distributuion process ie tolerance of plus or minus 10% from the average divisional enrolment. Similarly Western Australia has a 15% tolerance and Northern Territory 20%. South Australia has a current and projected quota of 10%, Australian Capital territory, a 10% current and 5% projected tolerance.
Whilst the Commissioners note that the Commonwealth Electoral Act (1918) stipulates a range of 3.5% above or below the average enrolment at the projection time and current enrolment within 10% above or below the quota, there are fifty [now 48] Commonwealth divisions in NSW, as compared to ninety three NSW Districts. Thus although the Commonwealth model appears similar to NSW, with the larger population base per electorate, the Commonwealth projected quota tolerance is less restrictive.
The Commissioners recommend that the NSW projected quota tolerance be changed to a 10% margin of allowance above or below electoral District enrolment at the projected time.
What does this mean? The answer is the O'Farrell government has been given a key to unlock the projected enrolment handcuffs imposed on it by previous Labor governments.
The coming redistribution has a projected enrolment quota date set for April 2015, two and a half years away. While a 10% variation is permitted on current enrolments, the 3% projected enrolment rule in fact prevented all 10% variation on current enrolment from being used. Effectively only about 5% variation on current enrolment could be allowed, as wider variation would not have fitted within the projected enrolment paramaters.
The 3% projected enrolment quota effectively required all slow growth country electorates to be created with current enrolments above average, while rapidly growing suburban electorates had to be set below average enrolment. In theory the variation on current enrolment would cancel out by the time of the next election.
As I set out in a previous post on prospects for the NSW redistribution, (see here and here), the current rules were likely to result in a seat being abolished west of the Great Dividing Range. This would most probably set the Liberal and National Parties against each other in a seat running along the Hume Highway.
The new 10% variation on projected enrolments proposed by the O'Farrell government will permit the Electoral Districts Commissioners to allow greater variation in enrolment between electorates, and allow them to give greater weight to community of interest arguments in drawing boundaries. The upshot is that changes to boundaries, espeically in rural areas, will be minimised.
Is it a gerrymander or some form of malapportionment? It certainly will permit slow growth country electorates to have a lower average enrolment than the old Labor rules, so you can understand why the Coalition is glad to adopt the Commissioners eight year old recommendations.
It will also limit the scope of what had been set to be a massive redistribution given that population growth in Sydney has been heavily concentrated in a small number of hotspots in central Sydney and in the north-west and south-west growthy corridors. Having elected 69 MPs at the last state election, the Coalition will be happy to have the boundaries of its sitting members left as intact as possible for the next election.
Labor will cry foul, but it has spent the last three decades fiddling the rules to its own advantage. Labor could argue the old rules did strive to achieve electoral equality, but it was a committment to mathematical equality that Labor only adopted because it saw political advantage.
There is one side-effect of the new rule that may have an impact on the timing of redistributions. Amongst other provisions, Section 27 of the NSW Constitution states that redistributions will take place after every second election. However, Section 28A has a malapportionment test that can trigger a redistribution after one term. If more than one quarter of electorates vary more than 5% from the average enrolment for more than two months, than a redistribution can be triggered.
The tight projected enrolment quota meant that Section 28A has never been triggered. However, if the projected enrolment is expanded to 10%, more variation in current enrolment is permitted, in which case the 5% variation provision of Section 28A may be more likelty be triggered.
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