More than a million Victorian voters will change seats under a shake-up of the state’s electoral boundaries, with senior minister Mary Wooldridge one of the biggest losers.
The electoral boundaries commission on Thursday released new seat boundaries for next year’s election.
The biggest losers appear to Nationals MP Paul Weller, whose Echuca-based seat of Rodney has been abolished and Community Services Minister Mary Wooldridge whose Doncaster seat has been dumped and absorbed by the surrounding seats of Bulleen and Warrandyte.
Two entire new seats have been carved out in Melbourne’s northern and western growth suburbs at Sunbury and Werribee, which are likely to favour the Labor Party.
There have also been significant boundary shifts, with some name changes, throughout Melbourne’s outer suburbs.
CLICK HERE for the state seat changes
Mitcham has been abolished and replaced with a new Ringwood seat to the east, taking in parts of Warrandyte and Bayswater. Kilsyth has also been erased with Croydon created taking in the old seat and parts of Warrandyte.
In the south-east, Lyndhurst has been replaced by Keysborough, which has taken parts of Mordialloc.
Scoresby, held by Police Minister Kim Wells, has also been removed and replaced with Rowville, taking in parts of the old seat and Ferntree Gully, which has shifted north.
There has been lots of discussion about the future of former Premier Ted Baillieu and whether he will recontest his blue-ribbon seat of Hawthorn.
Recent attempts to clarify Mr Baillieu’s intentions by Fairfax Media have not been responded too.
Redistributions are held to reflect population shifts – electorates must contain roughly equal numbers of electors and cannot varying by more than 10 per cent from the state average.
Before the redistribution, 34 of the 88 seats were more than 10 per cent outside the average — which was 41,473 for the districts.
Yan Yean was 48.5 per cent above average while Swan Hill was 20.4 per cent below average.
Seven rural seats have been reduced to six in central and northern Victoria Potential friction between the Coalition partners looms for control of the new Eildon and Euroa seats which takes in part of the Liberal-held Seymour and Nationals-held Benalla and Rodney.
Elsewhere in regional Victoria, Lowan and Ripon have become geographically larger, while the two Ballarat seats have changed names and boundaries to become Wendouree and Buninyong.
Redistributions often trigger MP retirements ahead of the next election.
The boundaries were released just before 10am and MPs from all sides were eager to get hold of the maps to assess their futures.
Party officials are now conducting extensive analysis of the new boundaries.
Abolished seats:
Ballarat East
Ballarat West
Benalla
Clayton
Derrimut
Doncaster
Keilor
Kilsyth
Lyndhurst
Mitcham
Murray Valley
Rodney
Scoresby
Seymour
Swan Hill
New/renamed seats:
Buninyong
Clarinda
Croydon
Eildon
Euroa
Keysborough
Murray Plains
Ovens Valley
Ringwood
Rowville
St Albans
Sunbury
Sydenham
Wendouree
Werribee
