It only went from a 10.2% margin down to 6.5% with the redistribution, so it's not like they turned it into a marginal seat or anything. Basically every time you have a group of people redrawing electorates, you're going to have gerrymandering of some sort, but you can choose to regulate it in a number of ways. The AEC's mandate is to try and reduce the incumbent's margin where they can, rather than entrench them further, within the confines of averaging out the population with neighbouring electorates.

So, to answer your question, yes they absolutely knew what they were doing, but that wasn't exactly a secret at all. Pushing seats to be as marginal as possible rather than favouring incumbents, giving opponents a fair go at winning it, is probably the best outcome we could ask from an independent redistribution committee in my opinion.