Ipswich West will more than double in size but not in voter population under the new State Government election boundaries proposed by the Queensland Redistribution Commission.
Tasked with balancing voter numbers in the state’s 93 electorates ahead of the 2028 election, the Commission’s proposals for electoral boundary changes were released last month.
And now those proposals are open for objections from the public in the lead up to the final decisions being made in June, this year.
The aim of the redistribution was to consider the voter population in each electorate to assess whether each was within the realm of the average number (40,188) plus or minus 10 percent. There was also a weighted average for the larger, more sparsely populated electorates of 40,188 plus or minus 12 percent.
The current voter population in the Ipswich West electorate is 40,416 which is almost 0.6 percent more than the average.
The Commission also assessed what the average voter population (known as the ‘quota’) would be in 2032 if the boundaries remained unchanged.
In 2032, the voter population in the electorate was calculated to be 49,817, which would be 11.5 percent over the projected average across all 93 electorates.
And so, some significant boundary changes had to be made.
Boundary changes external to Ipswich West also had an impact.
The nearby electorates of Bundamba (to be renamed Redbank) and Jordan (to be renamed Greenbank) were already over quota and like Ipswich West, the electorate of Ipswich was projected to be over quota by 2032.
To help rectify the imbalance in those and other South East Queensland electorates, the Commission has proposed a completely new electorate called Springfield.
As a result, the ripple effect has led to proposals for significant boundary changes in all the above electorates.
Ipswich West is proposed to cede Chuwar, Karalee and Barellan Point and parts of Tivoli and North Ipswich to the electorate of Moggill. And a portion of the suburb of Yamanto is proposed to become part of the Ipswich electorate.
On its southern boundary, Ipswich West is proposed to gain most of the Ipswich City Council area that was part of the Scenic Rim electorate – an area extending west from Goolman and Purga through to the boundary shared with the Lockyer Regional Council at Grandchester.
The suburb of Deebing Heights is also proposed to become part of Ipswich West.
Under the proposed new boundaries, Ipswich West’s projected voter population in 2032 is anticipated to be 46,539 – around 4.2 percent above the projected state average.
