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Legislative Council Electoral Boundaries Amendment Bill 2009
FACT SHEET
The Legislative Council Electoral Boundaries Amendment Bill 2009 contains amendments to the
Legislative Council Electoral Boundaries Act 1995 in line with recommendations by the
Redistribution Tribunal following the 2007-08 Legislative Council Redistribution.
Firstly the Bill removes the hiatus between the determination of the new divisions and the
allocation of members to those divisions.
The Redistribution Tribunal determined the boundaries and names of the 15 new divisions on
10 May 2008 but, under the Act, was only able to make its transition determination on 14
June 2008. Had there been any submissions to the initial transition proposal, the hiatus
between the two determinations would likely have been longer than five weeks. This raised
two issues.
First it is unclear which Member of the Legislative Council represented what, if any, division
during the hiatus. This could have created a significant problem had a member died or
resigned. This anomaly has been resolved by providing that a redistribution does not take
effect until the date the Tribunal makes its transition determination.
The second issue is whether there is any need at all for the Tribunal to inquire into transition
arrangements in certain circumstances such as at the 2008 redistribution. Section 29A sets
out the principle that a member will "generally be allocated to a new Council division where
the electors from the member's current division comprise the greater number of electors in
the division". In 2008, the most altered division was Hobart (formerly Wellington) but that
new division still comprised 84.3% electors from the previous division. In other words, the
transition arrangements were obvious, and required no exercise of judgment or discretion by
the Tribunal.
Accordingly, the Bill amends the Legislative Council Electoral Boundaries Act to provide that the
Tribunal may make an immediate transition determination if there is only minor change, and
every new division contains at least 75% of the electors from the member's current division.
This is in line with the principle contained in section 29A of the Act.
Finally, amendments to the Boundaries Act will reduce the amount of statutory advertising
required under the Act. The detailed advertisements will be replaced with smaller
advertisements containing the essence of the notice and pointing to the availability of detailed
information either on the Web or on request.