Non ABS Structures

Non ABS Structures are administrative regions which are not defined or maintained by the ABS. The ABS is committed to providing a range of statistics for the following Non ABS Structures:

• Local Government Areas are an ABS Mesh Block approximation of gazetted local government boundaries as defined by each state and territory
• State Electoral Divisions are an ABS Mesh Block approximation of state electoral districts
• Commonwealth Electoral Divisions are an ABS Mesh Block approximation of the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) federal electoral divisions
• Postal Areas are an ABS Mesh Block approximation of a general definition of postcodes
• Tourism Regions are an ABS SA2 approximation of tourism regions as provided by Tourism Research Australia
• Australian Drainage Divisions are an ABS Mesh Block approximation of drainage divisions as provided through the Bureau of Meteorology’s Australian Hydrological Geospatial Fabric
• Suburbs and Localities (formerly State Suburbs) are an ABS Mesh Block approximation of gazetted localities
• Destination Zones are co-designed with state and territory transport authorities for the analysis of Place of Work Census of Population and Housing data, commuting patterns and the development of transport policy.

Local Government Areas are updated annually. Commonwealth Electoral Divisions and State Electoral Divisions are also updated annually, but only where electoral redistributions have occurred. The remaining Non ABS Structures are updated every 5 years.

For ASGS Edition 3, Mesh Blocks, SA1s and SA2s have been updated to reflect population growth and changes to infrastructure. These changes enable users to access meaningful statistics on communities of interest. Detailed information on Main Structure changes is recorded in the changes from the previous edition of the ASGS section of this publication. The boundaries that Non ABS Structures are based on, and the Mesh Blocks and SA2s which they are built from, change with each new update. Due to these regular updates, the ABS does not recommend using Non ABS Structures in time series analysis. Geographic correspondence files enabling the translation of data from ASGS Edition 2 (2016) to ASGS Edition 3 are available in the access and downloads section in this publication.

Annual changes to Local Government Areas, State Electoral Divisions and Commonwealth Electoral Divisions are listed in their respective sections of this publication.

Other significant changes to the ASGS Non ABS Structures since ASGS Edition 2 (2016) are:

• Destination Zones are now officially included in Non ABS Structures.
• Natural Resource Management Regions are no longer included in Non ABS Structures as they were found to be rarely used. It will still be possible to access data on these boundaries through statistical consultancies.
• Commonwealth Electoral Divisions and State Electoral Divisions are now built from Mesh Blocks rather than Statistical Area Level 1 (SA1).
• Local Government Area names no longer include region type status suffixes.

Further information regarding these changes is provided in each Non ABS Structures section.