[talk-au] Suburbs & admin boundaries stopping streets being found?

[cleary]

I looked at the Wiki. It is quite a while since I looked at the section on administrative boundaries. My recollection is that it used to have LGA as admin_level=6 and suburb as level 9 or 10.  I do not recall any discussion of inclusion of regions, districts and townsites nor any previous discussion in regard to changing the level of LGA.   The wiki includes a link to a downloadable example which is headed "Australian Boundary Tagging _ OSM" but with copyright attributed to Government of Western Australia.  I am not sure how the current content of wiki was arrived at.  My memory is not perfect so perhaps someone can remind me how the wiki content on administrative boundaries and the WA Government copyright document was reached.

In NSW there are land districts defined in legislation with administrative boards etc so they could be included if we could get permission to use the source data (not included in current approval as far as I am aware) and there are probably equivalents in other jurisdictions. I think administrative boundaries must be sourced from government.   In NSW,  land districts are larger in area than local government areas (LGAs) but their influence and importance is (in my view) much less than LGAs - the Greater Sydney Local Land Services board has the majority of its membership appointed by the Minister for Agriculture and few Sydney residents would even know of its existence or role.  I'd want to put them at level 11, certainly not a higher level than the LGAs.  I do not think that a larger area automatically warrants a higher administrative level.

I am open to changing and developing our guidelines. However some boundaries are not necessarily administrative  e.g. Eyre Peninsula (natural region),  Barossa Valley District (protected area), Illawarra Region, New England Region.  Some boundaries might be tourist labels or have local currency but would need to be mapped as something other than administrative.