The Australian Electoral Commission has recieved more objections to its latest proposal to change the boundary of Bass for federal elections.
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The current plan being assessed would see Prospect Vale, Blackstone Heights and Hadspen moved into Lyons, the same division which is home for voters from Brighton, St Helens and Sheffield.
In a submission to the commission the Meander Valley Council said its urban areas were an integral part of greater Launceston.
“It should be noted that Meander Valley Council also has ongoing concerns about the size of the Lyons electoral division, as currently configured and as proposed,” the council’s objection said.
“These concerns extend to the scale of the electoral division, the difficulty of identifying a cohesive community of interest and the ability of elected members to provide adequate representation.”
The council also used examples including the Greater Launceston Plan, public transport connections, schools, and service infrastructure, to show why the urban areas should not be moved to Lyons.
The Australian Labor Party also objected to the proposal, saying it failed to “recognise sufficiently, if at all, the deep connections at all levels between the urban parts of Meander Valley Council and the remainder of Launceston city”.
“The urban component is universally considered as indistinguishable from Greater Launceston,” state secretary Stuart Benson said.
Bass Liberal MP Michael Ferguson said less interest should be given to municipal boundaries as the basis for “arbitrarily moving communities into and out of electoral divisions”.
Instead, he said the commission needed to focus on ensuing that communities of interest are held together.
“It seems very remarkable to move this community into the Lyons electorate, apparently to satisfy a population balancing need which only exists as a consequence of the recent proposal to move the entirety of the West Tamar municipal area into Bass,” he said.
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West Tamar councillor Peter Kearney said that despite the council’s original request to move completely into Bass there was a logic in leaving both West Tamar and Meander municipalities as they have been in the past.
“It seems to me that the logic of the two urban areas of Meander and West Tamar staying in Bass and the balance remaining in Lyons is now a better one than putting all of Meander into Lyons,” he said.
“If it were possible to put that position to the West Tamar Council now, in light of what has transpired in this process, I believe there would now be some support for that outcome.”
The augmented electoral commission is now considering the further objections received and will decide soon whether or not to hold another inquiry.
The decision to hold an inquiry or not is dependent on the nature of submissions including the number raise and new issues raised.
The timing for the confirmation of final boundaries is dependent on this process.