STATE SUBURBS
State Suburbs (SSCs) are an ABS approximation of localities gazetted by the Geographical Place Name authority in each State and Territory (S/T). Since 1996 these boundaries have been formalised for most areas of Australia through a program coordinated by the Committee for Geographical Names in Australasia (CGNA) under the umbrella of the Intergovernmental Committee On Surveying and Mapping (ISCM). SSCs are built from Statistical Area Level 1 (SA1) that, singly or in combination, form an approximation of Gazetted Localities.
In the context of SSCs, 'Suburb' covers suburbs in urban areas and localities in rural areas.
SSCs cover most of Australia. Presently there remain areas of rural South Australia and rural Australian Capital Territory that are undefined. Various islands offshore from New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania and some inshore water areas and islands are also undefined.
Methodology
The boundaries and statistics produced for SSCs are constructed from SA1s based on the methodology described in Chapter 1.
Each SA1 was allocated the name of the Gazetted Locality that was estimated to contribute the most population to that SA1. As a result there are Gazetted Localities which won’t appear in the SSC classification. This occurs in cases:
- where an SA1 covers two or more Gazetted Localities, the SA1 can only be allocated to one; or
- where more than one SA1 partially covers a Gazetted Locality but all the SA1s are allocated to other Gazetted Localities with which they also share area.
For the 2011 Census 8529 SSCs have been defined.
The ABS is aware that the allocation of SA1s to SSCs are not always an accurate representation of the Gazetted Locality. As a result, a series of confidence values have been derived based on the percentage of common population to indicate how accurate a representation the SSCs are.
The values that are applied to each SSC are:
Above 94% - very good
88 - 94% - good
75 - 88% - acceptable
50 - 75% - poor
less than 50% - very poor.
Unclassified, No Usual Address and Migratory-Offshore-Shipping are represented as non spatial objects in the digital boundaries.
SSC NAMES
2011 SSCs are based on the latest Gazetted Localities data available from the PSMA (February 2011).
Where the same name appears in different S/T the S/T abbreviation appears in parenthesis after the name. Where the name is duplicated within a S/T an identifying name based on the Local Government Area (LGA) name, plus the S/T abbreviation is used. SSC names are therefore unique. There is no connection between SSCs and LGAs - the name is used only to differentiate between duplicate names within a S/T.
SSC CODING STRUCTURE
SSCs are sorted alphabetically by name then allocated a four digit code starting from 0001 within each S/T. This is prefixed by a single digit S/T code to enable unique identification of SSCs across the country.
Special purpose codes are included as balancing items. SA1s allocated to these codes are not part of any official SSC.
- SSC Code 9191 is reserved for cases where people are coded to Unclassified SA1s.
- SSC code 9494 is reserved for cases where people are coded to No Usual Address SA1s.
- SSC code 9797 is reserved for cases where people are coded to Migratory, Off-Shore and Shipping SA1s.
Example:
| S/T Name | S/T Code | SSC Code | SSC Name |
|
| New South Wales | 1 | 10001 | Abbotsbury |
| New South Wales | 1 | 10002 | Abbotsford (NSW) |
| New South Wales | 1 | 10003 | Abercrombie |
| New South Wales | 1 | 10004 | Aberdare |
| New South Wales | 1 | 10005 | Aberdeen (NSW) |
| New South Wales | 1 | 10006 | Aberfoyle |
| New South Wales | 1 | 19191 | Unclassified (NSW) |
| New South Wales | 1 | 19494 | No usual address (NSW) |
| New South Wales | 1 | 19797 | Migratory - Offshore - Shipping (NSW) |
|
SSCs are renumbered after each census so the codes used for the 2011 Census are not intended to relate to those used for the 2006 Census.
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