ALP begins legal challenge to SA’s new electoral boundaries redraw in Supreme Court

A REDRAW of South Australia’s electoral boundaries wrongly “shuffled the pieces” around in an unfair “political sop”, a court has heard.

AEC staff count votes for the seat of Hindmarsh in Adelaide last year. Picture: Kelly Barnes

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A REDRAW of South Australia’s electoral boundaries wrongly “shuffled the pieces” around in an unfair “political sop”, a court has heard.

A rare sitting of five Supreme Court justices on Monday heard the Australian Labor Party’s appeal against the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission’s political landscape rewrite.

The boundaries shake-up, announced late last year, shifted almost 400,000 South Australians into different seats and placed the Liberal Opposition into pole position to form the next government.

The ALP has, for the first time, appealed the commission’s findings after a decision by the party’s state secretary Reggie Martin, based on complex legal arguments on the state’s constitution.

The Liberal Party is fighting legal action, in a case of “utmost importance” to the state that “strikes at the heart of what it means to be a democratic society”.

South Australia’s electoral laws reveal that any redraw should be based on the principle that the number of voters in each electoral district “must not vary from the electoral quota by more than the permissible tolerance” of 10 per cent.

The commission’s final report, headed by Supreme Court Judge Ann Vanstone, shows no electorate falls outside that level.

As senior party officials, MPs and former politicians watched from the public gallery, the court heard that in its final report, the Commission gave more influence to some voters than others.

Dick Whitington QC, for the ALP, told the court that it had wrongly “shuffled the pieces around the board” and had produced an unfair result in favour of the Liberal Party.

He said he had to “wrestle with the tensions” to remain fair while maintaining the electoral quota.

He said the commission made a “political sop” decision that breached the state’s Constitutional Act, did not achieve “equality on election day” and wrongly moved “wasted” votes.

But Tom Duggan SC, for the Liberals, argued the commission had achieved its objective to remain fair while “unlocking” votes in certain areas.

The state’s next election is due on March 17 next year and Labor would need a swing of more than 3 per cent to secure a historic fifth term.

The state’s Chief Justice, Chris Kourakis, together with colleagues Justice Anne Bampton, Justice Trish Kelly, Justice Malcolm Blue and Justice Martin Hinton, reserved their decision.