ffs …
ffs …
Seems he took that a little too literally.
November 2024: Labor waters down local government election promises, cites threat from empty chair
Wollongong Labor has promised to:
deliver a customer-focused council that is financially responsible when facing climate change and cost-of-living pressures.
There’s literally nothing in that sentence that can get watered down any further…
I complained about my rates notice, then drove down a road that had a couple of really bad potholes after a big storm and they had been filled in within 2 days.
Keep it up council, good work.
The idea that you are a customer of your government and transact your rates or taxes for your services is one of the biggest wins for neoliberal philosophy in this country. It’s why our electricity bills keep going up, because it wasn’t “economically responsible” to keep building and operating power plants for the public good, we should be selling them to someone who’ll price gouge us.
“Customer-focused”. That really makes me feel like I’m valued!
At the council election next Saturday we are also having a referendum on whether we want a popularly elected Mayor. Our Mayor is currently elected by Council every 2 years.
The problem I have is with the wording of the question. They’ve essentially asked 3 questions in one and set the question up for failure.
Do you favour the election of the Mayor by electors for a four-year term with the number of wards reduced from three to two, each ward comprising of four councillors, plus a popularly elected Mayor?
I want a popularly elected Mayor but I don’t agree with reducing the number of wards so I will be voting No.
I feel that each question should be asked separately (my answers in brackets).
Given the shitshow this current council turned into (the current Mayor has hightailed it out of town after sacking the long term GM then having her Captain’s pick up and leave after a month in the job) changes need to occur. It’s just frustrating that we’ve been given such a poor solution.
Which is exactly why the question is worded like that.
That is a spectacularly manipulative question and is a very clear attempt to horse trade something people want for something they dont. My bet its that its an attempt to gerrymander one party over another by splitting their opponents vote.
I’d be calling the AEC to hold them to account.
Wouldn’t the NSW Electoral Commission (they’re running the election) need to approve the question before it is put to a vote?
The coast council has a similar rejig going on after 4 years of administration. The proposal is a reduction from 5 wards to 3 - resulting in 9 counselors instead of 15.
Not sure I know enough about this level of government to really decide in an informed way. The way it is described I’m leaning to no - “oh fewer counselors mean simpler decision making and easier consensus” - that just sounds like “we want to make it easier to push stuff through where a sizable minority will get screwed”.
Lots of their documentation and spiel have that angle that government should run like a business. That instantly puts me on edge.
Each ward has to contain the same number of Councillors. Dropping from 5 wards to 3 means they could still have 15 Councillors or drop to 12 or 9 etc. 15, to me, appears to be ridiculously overloaded though. Any change would require a referendum.
We’re pretty lucky here, the majority of the candidates are Independents so we’re spared a lot of the political speak.
Yeah it’s a referendum question.
5 to 3 wards
15 to 9 reps - 3 per ward
It’s 350,000 population. Most places seem to have more than 10 reps for smaller populations.
It doesn’t really reflect well on the NSWEC if they approved such a ridiculous question to be put to a vote
This will reduce the quota for election from 25% of the vote (plus one vote) to 20% of the vote (plus one vote) in each ward.
Elections for even numbers of candidates are also more likely to split evenly up the middle than elections for odd numbers, where you’ll get two of one strain and one of another. Majorities can be harder to form in this case - sometimes that’s a good thing (e.g. houses of review in bicameral parliaments like the Senate in the Australian Parliament) but often in councils it leads to stalemates. Where mayoral elections are done by the councillors, they wind up being drawn from a hat reasonably often where that’s hugely unlikely where there are an odd number of councillors.
It’s fucking shit, and the justification seems to be along the lines of “the last time we had councillors they fucked it up, so better that there are fewer of them and they stay out of the way”.
What really gets my goat is that council officers seem to have escaped any consequence for the financial state of the council (wherein they spent ‘restricted’ funds on purposes that weren’t permitted, and I understand did so without council officers providing sufficient advice or guidance to ensure that they would stay out of bother). Councillors are part timers - they get an allowance that equates to a day or two per week of work, and so they naturally are less across the business of council than the officers. Where they’re going to make a big mistake (like spending restricted funds) it’s surely on the officers to at least ensure that they know that they’re making a mistake and advising them on a proper course of action. In the event that officers fail to do that, if the councillors are to be suspended or sacked (as was the case with the central coast councillors), the officers should face the same consequences as the councillors.
Having 40% fewer councillors will ensure that the officers face 40% less scrutiny - it doesn’t serve the people, it serves the staff.
I’ve started reading through the administrator reports. Some of it didn’t make a lot of sense to me and that was one of them. The idea that so much money could be incorrectly spent and somehow no-one knew? Not fucking likely. Like you say part of the role of those officers would be to prevent that right? All the full time finance types are in those roles. Didn’t make sense to me.
Also the reports seemed to rule out the council merger from being the cause but then immediately turning around and saying that it caused problems and been mismanaged. Then it was a cause - just not in and of itself the only cause.
Also spending up-to 60 million on an ERP system changeover (even if that is the cumulative cost across both previous councils and the merged one) is obscene.
I definitely agree with that, but how many councilors would go into the job ready to be told by someone junior to them, they shouldn’t be doing something? You’d assume there’s going to be a huge amount of arrogance. At the very least, there needs to be a minimum amount of training given to anyone that decides to run for ANY political body.
Under the current system each ward is evenly broken up by population. 2 wards, A & B, split the population of Kyogle as well as a couple of small villages but only accounts for around 25% of the actual Shire’s area.
Ward C takes up 75% of the Shire, takes in all of the small villages and many of the residents live an hour or more from Kyogle. The residents of Kyogle have no need to go out there but those that live out there need to come into town for all basic services.
By eliminating Ward C I believe that the council will become more Kyogle centric and the outlying villages will be left behind. Splitting 50/50 would result in candidates from Kyogle potentially taking all 8 positions. More likely they would get 5 or 6 but that’s still majority based in town and would represent, on a small scale, the way we feel we are treated by the State Government - too far away from Sydney to matter.