Administrative Boundaries

Sub-Theme

Australian Electoral Boundaries

The geographical boundaries that divide the area of interest for the purposes of an election or referendum held under the Commonwealth Electoral Act, 1918.

Australian Electoral boundaries are a collection of legislative, political boundaries sourced from Federal, State and Territory authorities:

  • Federal electoral boundaries
  • State electoral boundaries
  • Local government wards

Dataset Uses

They are used to visualise electoral areas to support socio-economic analysis, national and regional planning, and study service distribution.

The aggregation and analysis of the data includes:

  • evidence-based development and assessment of government policy
  • providing the ability to undertake spatial accounting
  • support for emergency management

Standards and Specifications

AS/NZS ISO 19115 - ANZLIC Metadata Profile Version 1.1 (implemented using ISO/TS 19139:2007, Geographic information – Metadata – XML schema implementation)
AS/NZS ISO 19131:2008 Geographic Information – Data product specifications

Access and Licensing

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

Access and Licensing Details

State and Local Boundaries are available under a PSMA licence through commercial resellers.

Quality

Data have been gathered from a variety of sources including the Australian Electoral Commission National, State and Territory Offices. The data have been created using the AEC Electoral Boundary Mapping System, which utilises Census Collection Districts (CCD) boundary information supplied by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. In some cases boundaries follow the alignment of MapInfo Streetworks and StreetPro content.

Data for each State and Territory are created as a result of the redistribution of that State or Territory in accordance with timeframes specified by the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918.

Positional accuracy is dependent upon the accuracy of the source material at the time of compilation at the source.

Current Status

National and State electoral boundaries are maintained by Australian Electoral Commission. Currently not supplied as national products but as Divisional data; http://www.aec.gov.au/electorates/maps.htm.

PSMA aggregates Australian Electoral Boundaries into their Administrative Boundaries product;http://www.psma.com.au/products/administrative-boundaries.

Future Status

Short term objectives include:

  • fully aggregate all jurisdictional data into a national dataset which provides a complete, consistent representation of the Australian Electoral Boundaries
  • develop web services
    • Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Feature Service (WFS) Implementation Specification 1.1.0 (OGC Document No. 04-094)
    • Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) Implementation Specification 1.3.0 (OGC Document No. 06-042)

Long term objectives include:

  • continued spatial upgrades of Electoral Boundaries data
  • improve timeframes on applying updates from jurisdictions to national datasets

Key Users

Federal, State and Territory Government Departments, industry and research communities.

Version

1.00

Details