The ACT Electoral Commissioner has announced that a redistribution of Legislative Assembly electorates is to take place early in the New Year in accordance with the ACT Electoral Act.
The Commissioner, Damian Cantwell (pictured) said the process would be in place well before the next ACT election in 2020.
“To commence the redistribution process, the Electoral Commission formally established the Redistribution Committee on 26 October,” Mr Cantwell said.
“The Redistribution Committee consists of the Electoral Commissioner; the Planning and Land Authority’s Ben Ponton; ACT Surveyor-General, Jeff Brown, and the Director of Demography, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Beidar Cho.”
He said the Committee had met and the next step was to invite ACT residents to suggest how Legislative Assembly electoral boundaries for the 2020 ACT election might look.
“It is very important that the public are provided with a full, fair and transparent period in which to offer boundary and naming suggestions, and comments upon those suggestions,” Mr Cantwell said.
“Therefore, the Committee has decided to conduct the initial public consultation when the majority of ACT residents will have returned from Christmas holidays.”
He said the public suggestion period would probably begin on 5 February 2019.
“Any interested persons or organisations will then have 28 days to make suggestions to the Redistribution Committee,” Mr Cantwell said.
“Those suggestions will then be made available for public comment, at which point the public will have a further 14 days to make comment upon those suggestions.”
He said one key requirement for the redistribution would be to ensure that electoral enrolments in each electorate were within plus or minus five per cent of the quota at the time of the next election.
The quota for each electorate was one fifth of the ACT total enrolment.
