An ALP-held seat in Melbourne may be abolished by the 2025 election. That’s according to the Australian Electoral Commission’s (AEC) draft proposal for re-drawing federal electorate boundaries.
The AEC periodically re-draws the boundaries of electorates based on population movements.
For the next election, Western Australia will gain a new seat in the House of Representatives centred on York and Northam, developing areas an hour and a half’s drive from central Perth. Victoria and New South Wales will each lose a seat.
It is not yet clear which seat that will be in New South Wales. Some have tipped one of the three, Independent MP-held seats on Sydney’s North Shore and Northern Beaches, where urban development has been slow.
In Victoria, that seat is Melbourne’s Higgins. Higgins was a forever Liberal seat until it was won by the ALP in the Scott Morrison election.
Other re-draws have the potential to shift results in 2025. In the inner-north, the seat of Wills, held by Labor, will absorb the terraces of Fitzroy and Carlton North. This increases the odds of a Victorian Green joining Adam Bandt in the House of Reps.
Bandt’s own seat is losing Carlton and shifting south of the Yarra. He is still expected to retain the seat.
In the north-west, boundary re-drawing will affect the Liberal-held seats of Deakin and Menzies, leaving them leaning slightly closer to the ALP. Menzies is now notionally Labor’s on an 0.4% margin and Deakin too close to call.
Since Aston was won by Labor in a 2023 by-election, this raises the prospect that the Liberals will not win a federal seat in metropolitan Melbourne.
But of course, the biggest story here is that we are lucky enough to have a neutral office re-drawing electoral boundaries without fuss, with no party claiming the election is rigged against them.
Thumbnail image courtesy of @iam_os via Unsplash.
Sign Up To Our Free Newsletter