Australian conventions and resources
Political regions
The Australian Electoral Commission lists federal electorates(Opens in a new tab/window).
Websites of the state and territory governments provide lists of state and territory electorates.
Statistical regions
The Australian Bureau of Statistics provides statistics on specific geographical regions(Opens in a new tab/window) of Australia.
Environmental regions
The Bureau of Meteorology(Opens in a new tab/window) provides weather forecasts on a regional basis.
The Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia(Opens in a new tab/window) (IBRA) is a framework of bioregions used in conservation.
The Integrated Marine and Coastal Regionalisation of Australia(Opens in a new tab/window) (IMCRA) provides a regionalisation of Australia’s waters from the coast to the edge of the exclusive economic zone.
The Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research at the Australian National Herbarium lists botanical districts of Australia(Opens in a new tab/window).
General principles for Australian regions
Regions have been defined across Australia for various purposes – political, economic, statistical, agricultural and environmental. Some have been defined by national bodies; others have been established at a state or territory level. Use initial capitals and retain the official spelling; however, punctuation can be changed to comply with editorial style – for example, by replacing a hyphen between 2 words with an en dash:
Goldfields–Esperance not Goldfields-Esperance
See Dashes, slashes and ellipses for more details on when to use an en dash.
Use lower case for the terms statistical area and local government area in a general context, but use initial capitals when referring to a specific area:
The Australian Capital Territory is divided into 9 level 3 statistical areas.
Belconnen Statistical Area or Belconnen SA3
Hobart Local Government Area or Hobart LGA
State and territory regions
Within a state or territory, the same name is often used in a number of different regional systems; however, the boundaries will usually differ.
For example, the government in Western Australia established 9 regions for economic development:
Gascoyne Goldfields-Esperance Great Southern Kimberley Mid West Peel Pilbara South West Wheatbelt
[Retain 2 words in South West, and do not insert a hyphen; however, the hyphen in Goldfields-Esperance can be replaced with an en dash.]
The Western Australian Department of Water has 8 regions for reporting about water, but only 3 of these (Kimberley, Pilbara and South West) are also used for economic development:
Goldfields Kimberley Kwinana Peel Mid West Gascoyne Pilbara South Coast South West Swan‑Avon
Also in Western Australia, there are 14 Bureau of Meteorology forecast areas, 26 IBRA regions (some crossing state borders) and 21 floristic regions. The Australian Bureau of Statistics defines 9 major statistical areas (SA4) in Western Australia. For electoral purposes, Western Australia has 15 federal electorates. At a state level, there are 6 regions for election to the upper house of parliament (Agricultural, East Metropolitan, Mining and Pastoral, North Metropolitan, South Metropolitan and South West) and 59 electorates for the lower house.