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THE 2014 UPDATE OF ASGS NON-ABS STRUCTURES

This product releases updates to the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) Non-ABS Structure regions that have changed since the 1 July 2013. Changes have occurred in the Local Government Areas (LGA) and Tourism Regions (TR).

The ASGS brings all the regions for which the ABS publishes statistics within the one framework and has been in use for the collection and dissemination of geographically classified statistics since 1 July 2011. It is the framework for understanding and interpreting the geographical context of statistics published by the ABS. The ABS also encourages the use of the ASGS by other organisations to improve the comparability and usefulness of statistics generally.

The Non-ABS Structures of the ASGS bring together those regions which are not defined by the ABS, but which are supported by the ABS. They generally represent administrative regions and are approximated by Mesh Block (MB), Statistical Area Level 1 (SA1) or Statistical Area Level 2 (SA2).

As the Non-ABS Structures represent regions that are subject to ongoing change, this update to the Non-ABS Structures contains revised digital boundaries, codes and labels for regions that have changed since the last edition. The individual structures are only updated where significant change has occurred in the past year.

Detailed information about Non-ABS Structures including the publication, 2011 digital boundaries and allocation tables are in the 2011 edition of this publication:

Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS): Volume 3 - Non ABS Structures, July 2011 (cat no. 1270.0.55.003)


LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREAS (LGA)

Local Government Areas (LGAs) are an ABS approximation of officially gazetted LGAs as defined by each State and Territory (S/T) local government departments.

ABS approximated LGAs cover incorporated areas of Australia. Incorporated areas are legally designated parts of S/T over which incorporated local governing bodies have responsibility. There are parts of Australia not administered by incorporated bodies. These regions are identified as 'Unincorporated' in the ABS LGA structure. Unincorporated areas are represented as spatial records in the 2014 LGA digital boundaries. Previous LGA editions for 2011 and 2012 do not contain spatial objects in their respective digital boundaries for Unincorporated areas.

In all States and the Northern Territory each incorporated area has an official status. In this ASGS edition, there was a new status introduced into the Northern Territory to define Regional Councils (R). The various LGA status types currently in use are:

• New South Wales: Cities (C) and Areas (A)
• Victoria: Cities (C), Rural Cities (RC), Boroughs (B) and Shires (S)
• Queensland: Cities (C), Shires (S), Towns (T) and Regional Councils (R)
• South Australia: Cities (C), Rural Cities (RC), Municipalities/Municipal Councils (M), District Councils (DC), Regional Councils (RegC), Towns (T) and Aboriginal Councils (AC)
• Western Australia: Cities (C), Towns (T) and Shires (S)
• Tasmania: Cities (C) and Municipalities (M)
• Northern Territory: Cities (C), Towns (T), Municipalities (M), Shires (S) and Regional Councils (R).