Local Government Area (LGA)
LGA stands for Local Government Area: the area a local council looks after. In ABS data, LGAs are the ABS's version of council boundaries, built from small mesh blocks so Census figures can be published for every council in Australia.
What an LGA is
Every part of Australia that has a local council belongs to a Local Government Area. Councils go by different names (city, shire, municipality, region, town), but in ABS data they're all LGAs. The ABS rebuilds each council's official boundary from mesh blocks, the smallest areas it uses, so the edges can differ slightly from the legal boundary.
There are 567 LGAs in the current ABS boundaries, covering the whole country. Places without a council are still included, as Unincorporated areas: the ACT, the northern part of South Australia and some other territories. The ABS reviews council boundaries every year, and each Census is published on the boundaries in place at the time.
Reading LGA names
ABS names for councils are shortened and end with a letter code for the type of council, such as Brisbane (C) for a city or Noosa (S) for a shire. The code also keeps names unique.
Councils, suburbs and postcodes
A council usually covers many suburbs, but the boundaries don't fit together neatly. Suburbs can straddle council boundaries, postcodes cut across both, and the ABS's statistical areas don't always line up with councils either. Figures for a suburb and a council with the same name describe different groups of people, as with the City of Sydney and the suburb of Sydney.
Using LGAs for location decisions
LGAs are the right level when the decision runs through a council: planning approvals, rates, local trading rules or council-run services. They also match the areas councils plan for and report on, so LGA figures sit naturally alongside council documents.
For understanding a site's customers, they're usually too big. LGAs range from about 1.2 million people in Brisbane to a few hundred in some remote shires, and a large council can hold very different neighbourhoods. Suburbs, SA2s or a catchment drawn around the site will tell you more.
Council boundaries also change. When councils merge or split, as many did in NSW in 2016, figures from different Census years won't line up unless the change is allowed for.
LGAs in Censible
Censible lists LGAs as councils, labelled by name and state, so you don't need ABS codes to find them. Search a council, see its figures against Australia, and compare it side by side with any suburb, postcode or other council.
Source: ABS, Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) Edition 4, Local Government Areas.
Suburbs and Localities (SAL)
The ABS's approximation of officially recognised suburbs and localities, built from mesh blocks. It replaced State Suburbs (SSC) from the 2021 Census.
Statistical Area Level 2 (SA2)
A medium-sized area defined by the ABS to represent a community that interacts socially and economically. Most have between 3,000 and 25,000 residents.
Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA)
SEIFA is a set of four ABS indexes that rank areas of Australia by relative socio-economic advantage and disadvantage, using Census data. Each area gets a score, a rank and a decile, where decile 1 is the lowest-scoring 10% of areas and decile 10 the highest.
Catchment (trade area)
The area a store, clinic, school or other site draws its customers, patients or users from. A catchment can be drawn as a ring around the site, a drive or walk time, a hand-drawn boundary, or from where existing customers live.
Questions people ask
Local Government Area. It means the area a local council is responsible for, whether that council calls itself a city, shire, municipality or region.
There are 567 in the current ABS boundaries, including unincorporated areas that have no council. The number shifts slightly over time as councils merge, split or change their boundaries.
No. A council usually covers many suburbs, and some suburbs are split between two councils. In ABS data, suburbs (SALs) and councils (LGAs) are separate sets of boundaries that don't nest inside each other.
No. The ACT has no local councils, so the ABS treats the whole territory as one area called Unincorporated ACT.
Your council rates notice will name it. Each state government also has a council lookup on its local government website where you can search by address or suburb.