…while we are now seeing widespread surprise in the media and
political commentary, this was all predictably on the cards. And there
are two important lessons to be drawn from that point. First, something
should have been done about it sooner. The electoral commission’s
redrawing of boundaries after each election have clearly not been doing
their job. After 2010, for instance, they should have redrawn boundaries
so that based on those polling booth numbers the same result (51.6 per
cent 2PP) would give the Liberals 24 or more seats. Instead they redrew
them to give the Liberals just 19. In other words, they refused to
deliver the fairness required. The Liberals should never have accepted
this. Second, having accepted those boundaries, the Liberals knew the
marginal seats problem and which seats they needed to win. So they
should have fought better and smarter in those key seats.
