God I hate it when people remove my edit without a valid reason....

Um, the reason was valid. Ipswich is neither a Statistical Division nor a Statistical District (per the table you're trying to add it to). This map indicates that it is wholly located within Brisbane SD. We have these sort of issues with outer metropolitan areas all the time - for example in Perth, Rockingham (to the south) is part of Perth, even though it's bigger than Mandurah which is 25 km away and yet has its own SD. Wikipedia requires us to work with verifiable information from reliable sources, and not attempt to figure it out ourselves. Orderinchaos 09:49, 27 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

How is Ipswich part of Brisbane's SD but The Gold Coast isn't ? Both Gold Coast and Ipswich are about the same distance apart....Both have their our Council boundaries.

There seems to be three points here. We're at serious risk of getting into WP:OR territory, as we must use reliable external sources and can't make our own judgements on these things. But you raise fair questions so they deserve fair replies.
  1. Ipswich is part of Brisbane's SD because it is part of Brisbane's metropolitan area. This area is presently made up of five council areas - Brisbane, Moreton Bay, Ipswich, Logan and Redland - as can be seen on the ABS map I linked before. Historically, it was made up of Brisbane, Pine Rivers, Caboolture, Redcliffe, Ipswich, Logan, Redland and bits of Beaudesert (Jimboomba) and Gold Coast (Beenleigh). The latter part (the two non-Brisbane councils managing bits of Brisbane) was causing serious headaches for all concerned and was interfering with state-level planning decisions, so it was fixed at the amalgamation by putting all the Brisbane metro bits in those council areas into Logan.
  2. The distances are not equal - using Google Maps's direction calculator as a rough guide, and Queen St, Brisbane as the source, it says 25km for Goodna, 40km for Ipswich and 52km for Amberley; however, it reports 55km for Coomera, 64km for Helensvale, 79km for Surfers Paradise and 102km for Coolangatta. So the shortest distance is longer for the Gold Coast than the longest distance for Ipswich.
  3. Council boundaries are actually irrelevant - as we saw in 2008, they can change pretty dramatically with the stroke of a pen, but it doesn't change the urban settlement patterns - people aren't forced to move to another area when there is a change. It may help to look at other cities here - Sydney has 39 LGAs within its metro area, Melbourne has 29 plus parts of two, Perth has 30, Adelaide has 19, Hobart has 3 and Darwin has 2. Auckland, which is more similar to Brisbane in its structure although smaller, has five plus parts of two others. Orderinchaos 02:46, 28 May 2010 (UTC)Reply


Thanks for that Orderinchaos At least now I understand where and why it was undone....Even if I don't agree personally.

I can admit when I've made a mistake and take it as a learning experience etc. Cheers :) -- BN420au (talk) 04:07, 29 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

No worries - it's very confusing to start with. I'd personally like to see Australia move towards the European model where metro areas have a separate form of government with its own relationship with the federal or national government (something like a state, but lower in status) and uniform high-level planning. I think what has prevented this is political concerns that the remainder of the state would be ungovernable without the population of the capital city to pay taxes - an issue which doesn't exist in Europe+. Orderinchaos 05:03, 29 May 2010 (UTC)Reply