Summary:

The periodic redrawing of federal electoral boundaries is required by law to maintain electoral divisions of roughly equal enrolment size within a state or territory. Redrawing of boundaries is known as a redistribution.

During the expected life of the 46th Parliament there could be redistributions of Victoria, Western Australia and the Northern Territory brought about by the representation entitlement trigger, which determines the number of members of the House of Representatives a state or territory is entitled to in relation to its population. If this happens, Victoria will gain an electoral division while Western Australia and the Northern Territory will each lose one.

If all of those redistributions eventuate, there will be a return to 150 divisions at the next election.

No other redistributions are anticipated during the life of this Parliament.

Note: This paper uses projections based on the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Estimated Resident Population. If the actual population growth revealed by the December 2019 figures (to be released in June 2020) differs significantly from these projections, the results may change.