Electorate profiles – definitions and explanatory notes

Dec 07, 2022
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The Electorate Profiles web page provides data on arts and culture in each of Australia’s 151 federal electorates. The electoral boundaries represented are those in place at the 2022 federal election from the Australian Electoral Commission.  

Visit the Electorate Profiles page or scroll down/use links below for full definitions and explanatory notes for each of the data items presented. 

Engagement

Arts and cultural attendance and participation

This section presents ABS cultural attendance and participation data for each federal electorate. These topics were part of the ABS 2017-18 Multipurpose Household Survey and for the first time, the survey included both children (aged 5-14 years) and adults (aged 15 years and over). The types of cultural venues/events and activities included for adults and children are shown below. 

  • Adult attendance at cultural venues/events: Libraries or archives, art galleries, museums, cinemas or drive-ins, live music concerts or performances, operas or musicals, theatre, dance, other performing arts. 
  • Adult participation in creative activities: Performed in drama, comedy, musical or variety act, singing or playing a musical instrument, dancing, live music concerts or performances, operas or musicals, theatre, dance, other performing arts. 
  • Children attendance at cultural venue/events: Libraries or archives, art galleries, museums, cinemas or drive-ins, live music concerts or performances, operas or musicals, theatre, dance, other performing arts. 
  • Children participation in creative activities: Drama activities, singing or playing a musical instrument, dancing, art and craft activities, creative writing, creating digital content, screen-based activities, reading for pleasure. 

ABS data technical notes: 

  • Values marked with an asterisk (*) indicates that data should be interpreted with caution due to the variability of estimates.  
  • For children’s attendance and participation, values of 100% should be interpreted as representing a very high participation rate. It does not necessarily reflect that all children with this characteristic participated in the selected activity. 
  • Children’s attendance values above 100% indicate that the number of children attending and participating in arts and creative activities in a particular electorate is higher than the total number of children in that electorate (the total number of children represents a value that is randomly adjusted to avoid the release of confidential data).
  • Statistics in this release may have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. During the enumeration of the Cultural participation and attendance survey 2022-23, respondents were asked if they had attended or participated in cultural activities in the previous 12 months. As a result, this collection spans July 2020 – June 2022. 

Detailed information about the results of the cultural attendance and participation surveys can be found on the ABS website here. Further details on the methodology for the survey can be found here. 

Source: This publication presents data from the Cultural participation and attendance survey 2021-2022. Outputs from previous survey collections were presented in two publications: Attendance at Selected Cultural Venues and Events, 2017-18 (cat no. 4114.0); Participation in selected Cultural Activities, 2017-18 (cat no. 4921.0) 

Analysis of ticket buying data

TEG Ovation provided anonymous ticket buying data for the financial year 2023–24 for each federal electorate with six measures presented across arts and sport events. These are defined below. Electorate data was assigned based on address of residence from the TEG Ovation customer database and measures are shown in comparison to the national average.  

TEG Ovation is a provider of world class, data-led marketing and technology solutions for the live entertainment and sports industries.  

While the data presented in this section is limited to TEG Ovation venues and events and does not include free, unticketed events, it provides valuable insights into the buying behaviour of arts and sports audiences in Australia and provides further evidence that these groups are not mutually exclusive. 

Event categories 

  • Arts: those who bought tickets to arts events. Arts includes all live performance events including festivals, theatre, exhibitions, concerts, comedy, school performances. 
  • Sport: those who bought tickets to sport events. Sport includes all competition events and would excludes events such as charity or exhibition matches. 
  • Any event, arts, or sport: those who bought tickets to arts and/or sport events. 
  • Both arts and sport: this includes a subset of people from the first two categories above, those who bought tickets to both an arts and sport events. 

Measures 

  • Average no. of tickets per buyer: The average number of TEG tickets purchased by ticket-buyers in financial year 2023–24 (electorate average compared to a national average) 
  • Average no. of events per ticket buyer: The average number of separate TEG events for which ticket-buyers purchased tickets to in financial year 2023–24 (electorate average compared to a national average) 
  • Average total spend per ticket buyer: The average amount spent on TEG tickets by ticket buyers in 2023–24 (electorate average compared to a national average). 
  • % buying tickets to events in their own electorate: The proportion of TEG ticket buyers who purchased tickets to events held in their own electorate in 2023–24 (% in electorate, compared to % of all Australian ticket buyers who bought tickets in their respective electorates).  
  • % buying tickets to events elsewhere in the state: The proportion of TEG ticket buyers who purchased tickets to events held in other electorates in their own state/territory in financial year 2023–24 (% in electorate, compared to % of all Australian ticket buyers who bought tickets in other electorates in their respective state/territories).  
  • % buying tickets to events interstate: The proportion of TEG ticket buyers who purchased tickets to events held interstate in  2023–24 (% in electorate, compared to % of all Australians who bought tickets interstate). 

Source: TEG Ovation 

Electorate demographics

This shows the total population of the federal electorate and age group breakdowns based on September 2022 release of Estimated Resident Population ABS data. And the median weekly household income based on the 2021 Census of Population and Housing.  

Source: September 2022 release of ABS data of Estimated Resident Population (EPR) based on 2021 Census of Population; 2021 General Community Profile for Commonwealth Electoral Divisions (CED) 

Cinema data

The section presents the number of cinemas, screens and seats mapped to each federal electorate based on cinema address.  This includes major cinema chains and independent cinemas open as of October 2024. It does not contain data from sessional screening venues or Drive-In Cinemas. Cinema data provided by Numero  on behalf of the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia (MPDAA) are complete and accurate to the best of their knowledge as of October 2024.

Source: Numero, Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia (MPDAA) 2024.

Further information on the arts by location

Online location-based resources from industry bodies and established sector organisations that allow users to search for further local arts information. 

Industry

Cultural and creative employment

The number of people employed across cultural and creative occupations within each federal electorate was provided by the ABS. Data is shown for cultural and creative employment at the end of each financial year: 2010-11, 2015-16 and 2020-21.  This section focuses on occupations considered by the ABS to be within three separate categories of cultural, creative and both cultural and creative as classified in the ABS Cultural and Creative Satellite Accounts. Occupations have been included within the coverage of the satellite accounts based on their skills according to the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO). 

According to the ABS, ‘cultural’ is generally used to describe activities which communicate symbolic meaning (eg beliefs, values, traditions), require human creativity as an input, and potentially contain intellectual property. ‘Creative’ generally refers to activities for which human creativity is a particularly significant input. An activity can be both ‘cultural’ and ‘creative’, and this category considers the overlaps between ‘cultural’ and ‘creative’ so that they are not duplicated.  

The full list of cultural and creative occupations included can be viewed on the ABS website here. 

Source: Based on ABS data. Census of Population and Housing Customised Data Report. 

Cultural and creative businesses

The number of businesses within the cultural and creative industries for each federal electorate was provided by the ABS. Data is shown for businesses operating at the end of each financial year: 2010-11, 2015-16 and 2020-21. 

 

Business counts are presented by employment size and turnover size to show the range of cultural and creative businesses within the electorate. Non-employing businesses includes individual artists and sole traders, with further breakdowns for small businesses of 1–19 employees and larger businesses of 20+ employees. Further details on employment and turnover definitions can be found on the ABS website here. 

Businesses in the cultural and creative industries have been included within the coverage of the satellite accounts based on their predominant industrial activities according to the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC). The full list of cultural and creative industries included can be viewed on the ABS website here. 

Source: Based on ABS data. Counts of Australian Businesses including Entries and Exits, June 2011, June 2016 and June 2021. (cat. no. 8165.0)