Australian Politics

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.

That's correct, you can read about the process here. The AEC takes submissions from the public into account when making these changes, and it's worth noting that The Greens did appear to support some of the changes that were made (moving parts of Brunswick and Fitzroy from Melbourne to Wills) although their suggestion to move Kensington and Flemington into Melbourne wasn't acted on. Perhaps The Greens saw the boundary changes as potential to gain another seat, which is why they supported shifting some of their voters out of Melbourne and into Wills. I don't think anyone went into this election thinking Bandt was under threat, the general vibe was that The Greens would continue to make gains based on the decline of the major parties.