Introduction

Table 1Electoral division by postcode

Table 2Postcodes by electoral divisions

Introduction

This paper provides a concordance of postcodes to Commonwealth electoral divisions, based on the results of the 2001 Census. It is an update of Research Paper No. 12, 2000‑01, and reflects changes to electoral boundaries brought about by recent electoral redistributions. The concordance will enable senators and members to convert information published by postcode by organisations such as Centrelink or the Australian Taxation Office into electoral division totals. For example, the electoral division of Gorton consists of postcodes 3022, 3023, 3036, 3037 and 3038 plus parts of postcodes 3020, 3021 and 3335.

The information is shown in two parts, electoral divisions by postcode and postcodes by electoral division. Where a postcode boundary was found to cross electoral division boundaries, a percentage was calculated to show the proportion of the total postcode population that is located in each electoral division.

This information was generated by processing the Census 2001 total population figures in each Census Collection District (CCD) and allocating it to the relevant postcode and the relevant electoral division. It should be noted the boundaries for the electoral divisions and the postcodes are what the Australian Bureau of Statistics refers to as Census derived boundaries, that is boundaries made up by fitting CCDs as closely as possible to the true electoral division and postcode boundaries. This derivation system means that some small postcodes which make up only a part of a CCD are not listed in the Census. To compensate for this, a list of these missing postcodes has been generated and the postcodes allocated to electoral divisions using a map overlay method. Nevertheless, some non-residential postcodes (for example Post Office Box type) are still missing from this concordance.

The information in this paper refers to the electoral divisions as they will be at the next election, that is following the 2002 redistribution in Victoria and the 2003 redistributions in Queensland and South Australia.

Table 1Electoral division by postcode

Table 2Postcodes by electoral divisions