Local government Archive

More redistribution news

By
Ben Raue
 – September 30, 2011

Following on from my post earlier in the week after I posted new electoral maps for Victoria and South Australia, there was more news yesterday on redistributions.

The final boundaries for next year’s ACT Legislative Assembly election have been announced. The committee reverted to the first draft, which was a minor change bringing Ginninderra and Molonglo into quota. The second draft had proposed radical changes to the boundaries, reducing Molonglo to a 5-member district and making Ginninderra a 7-member district, but these were rejected after vocal opposition. I have now posted the final version on the maps page.

In other news, the latest report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on population for each state and territory makes it clear that there will be no changes in the number of seats for each state and territory at the next federal election. In the next month the AEC will make a determination about seat numbers, and this data makes it clear they will remain the same. This will mean that no more federal redistributions will be held in time for the next federal election once the current South Australian redistribution is completed.

An ACT redistribution is due in 2013, but won’t be finished before the election. Antony Green has also blogged about the new update.

So with the NT and ACT territorial boundaries now completed, the only redistribution map I need to work on now is the draft boundaries for next year’s WA state election. Later this year we will be getting final boundaries for the WA state election and for SA federal boundaries. I’ll keep you posted.

Apart from those, I am also looking to update my ward maps for New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, as all three big states have council elections next year. Sorry Western Australia and South Australia, I just haven’t had time to cover those states.

Anyway, Victoria and Queensland’s state electoral commissions are doing a good job of covering the redistributions being held for council wards on their websites, but not in New South Wales, where it seems to be a job for the individual council.

So I’m calling on my readers to help me out by posting here any news about New South Wales council ward boundaries:

  • A decision by a council to get rid of or implement ward boundaries.
  • A clear decision to redistribute the boundaries, preferably with a link to the maps
  • A clear indication that ward boundaries are not changing.

This will make it a lot easier to produce a state ward map well before the September council elections.

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Alice Springs Council: bad electoral systems at work

By
Ben Raue
 – July 4, 2011

A friend recently referred me to an academic paper (PDF) produced by Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University. The paper discusses the electoral system used by the Alice Springs Town Council (and all local government in the Northern Territory) to elect council members.

Alice Springs has an elected mayor and a further eight aldermen elected to represent the entire council area. Darwin elects twelve aldermen through four three-member wards, as well as an elected mayor.

Rather than using a system of proportional representation, NT councils use a system of exhaustive preferential voting to fill seats in multi-member districts. This page shows the counting process and results of the 2008 council election.

Under this system, the first seat is filled using a regular preferential ballot (like how a House of Representatives seat, or a mayoral race, is decided). The second seat is decided by a similar preferential ballot after excluding the candidate who has already been elected. This process continues until all seats are filled.

This tends to result in lopsided results, with a majority voting block winning most of the seats up for election. While you would win one of eight seats with a vote of 11% under a proportional system, most or all seats would go to the majority under the exhaustive preferential system.

A similar system was used to elect Senators from 1919 to 1946. Almost all elections produced a result where all three of a state’s Senators up for election were from the same party. The United Australia Party and the Country Party collectively held 33 of 36 seats following the 1935 election, and the ALP commanded a similar lopsided majority following the 1946 election.

It is also used to elect two-member wards in New South Wales. It was used to elect Wollongong and Shellharbour councils prior to their sacking in 2004, and is used for the City of Botany Bay. Botany Council consists entirely of Labor members, who were all elected unopposed in 2008.

Alice Springs is a controversial council, with a recent history of targeting the homeless and conflict between the council and communities on the fringe of the town. The area has been the centre of conflict over the federal government’s intervention on indigenous issues. In 2009, the council decided to begin fining beggars and remove blankets from local homeless people.

The paper focuses on the indigenous population who live in town camps on the outskirts of Alice Springs. They make up approximately 10% of the population of the town of Alice Springs but are socially distinct from the urban Alice population.

While this population could consistently elect a single alderman to the Town Council under proportional representation, they have been locked out of the council under the current system.

With Alice Springs Council regularly taking a hostile attitude to local homeless people and the indigenous population, it is interesting to consider the way that the majoritarian electoral system encourages neglect of minorities and locks them out of representation.

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Councils to be restored in the Illawarra

By
Ben Raue
 – May 5, 2011

Voters in the UK are currently voting in a referendum on electoral reform, and the results should come in tomorrow morning. Closer to home, some electoral reform is taking place in two councils in the Illawarra area south of Sydney.

Wollongong City Council and Shellharbour City Council were both sacked in 2008 after allegations of corruption on the councils, and have been run by unelected administrators since then. Both of those councils previously were elected using a system of “winner takes all” preferential voting. Each council had six wards of two councillors each, along with a directly elected mayor. Each ward used a system that meant that the group winning a majority of votes after preferences would almost certainly gain both seats.

In contrast, most councils in NSW use some system of proportional representation, as is mandated for all wards electing at least three councils. Following the sacking of Wollongong and Shellharbour, the only councils still using the old system were Botany and Ku-ring-gai in Sydney and a number of small rural councils. There was an attempt to impose the system on a newly-created New England Regional Council last year, but the merger was scrapped and the electoral plan also went on the scrap-heap.

The new Coalition government has decided that the Illawarra councils will move away from the majority-rule system to the proportional system used in most NSW councils.

Firstly, they have decided that the two councils will face election this September, a year before all other councils in New South Wales are up for election. Secondly, they are making changes to councillor numbers and ward systems in both councils.

In Wollongong, the state government has decided that they will continue to have a directly-elected mayor and twelve more councillors, but they will be elected through three wards, each ward electing four councillors. This will mean that, rather than the majority winning all seats in each ward, a councillor will need to achieve a 20% quota to win a seat in any ward. This reflects many other councils in urban NSW, with 3-member or 4-member wards being the most common model.

In Shellharbour, the number of councillors will be cut to seven, with the mayor to be elected from amongst the councillors. No wards will be using, allowing candidates to win election with 12.5% of the vote in the council area. This is an extremely low number of councillors for a reasonably large council. Most urban councils in the Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra regions have between nine and fifteen councillors each. Kiama Council, immediately to the south of Shellharbour, has less than one third of Shellharbour’s population, but has nine councillors. The only councils in Sydney with less than nine councillors are Burwood (approximately 33,000 residents), Strathfield (approximately 35,000) and Hunter’s Hill (approximately 15,000). They each have seven councillors. Shellharbour, in contrast, has approximately 67,000 residents.

The Coalition government has made the argument that “Fewer councillors has shown that council can effectively focus on the bigger picture and seek whole of council outcomes”, but I don’t really see any evidence for that argument. Considering that councillors are paid very little money for their role, and considering the large size of Shellharbour Council, it seems like halving the size of their council brings little financial benefits while substantially reducing the link between the community and their representatives.

I have previously argued that councils in Sydney should be designed so that there are more councillors on each council, not less, and that bigger councils have more councillors. While the government’s decision makes these councils’ electoral systems far more democratic, the unnecessary reduction in councillor numbers in Shellharbour reduces democracy.

A note on my local government maps: New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland will all be holding local government elections in 2012. The ward maps I have on my maps page are for the 2008 council elections in those three states. At some point when I have time I will go through and identify which councils have redistributed their ward boundaries and produce new maps. Obviously I will have to produce a map of the new Wollongong City Council wards once they have been announced, which will be added to the 2012 ward map for New South Wales when it is produced. Sorry Western Australia and South Australia, I don’t think I’ll have time to do yours.

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Tasmanian council results

By
Ben Raue
 – October 28, 2009

Local government election results have now been posted on the website of the Tasmanian Electoral Commission, showing primary vote figures from election night. I don’t know about most of the races, but a few key points of interest:

  • Mayor of Hobart Rob Valentine has been reelected with over 80% of the vote.
  • Greens councillor Helen Burnet was 80 votes ahead on the election night preference count for Deputy Mayor of Hobart. Burnet polled 41% of the primary vote to 38% for Peter Sexton, and she polled 50.22% after preferences. I don’t know if that is the final result.
  • The four Greens council candidates collectively polled 1.67 quotas in Hobart, with 1.37 quotas received by Burnet herself.
  • In Burnie, incumbent mayor Alvwyn Boyd has survived a challenge from Steve Kons of the ALP, with Boyd polled 51.26% after preferences.
  • In Dorset, incumbent mayor Peter Partridge only managed 13% of the primary vote, with Barry Jarvis polling almost 57%.

Post any other interesting results you have seen in the comments thread below.

Update: The Greens haven’t made any major gains in terms of council representation, although the election of Helen Burnet as Deputy Mayor of Hobart is an achievement for the party. Five incumbent councillors elected in 2005 were up for election: in Clarence, Hobart, Huon Valley, Kingborough and Southern Midlands. Four of these seats have been retained, whilst the Greens have lost their seat on Southern Midlands council. So far the party has won no extra seats, but is in with a good chance of electing a second Green on Hobart council and outside chances of a second councillor in Kingborough and a councillor in Launceston. The Greens polled much less in Launceston than in 2007, despite narrowly missing out on the Deputy Mayoralty. If the Greens win a second seat in Hobart it will give them a total of 4 seats and the Deputy Mayoralty, which puts them in a strong overall position on that council. As it currently stands, the party should win 11-14 seats, compared to 12 since the 2007 elections.

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Tasmanian local council elections

By
Ben Raue
 – October 6, 2009

Tasmania goes to the polls in October to elect local councillors across the state. Tasmania is broken up into twenty-nine LGAs. Tasmanian councils are not elected using wards: instead half of each council is elected every two years representing the entire council area, with councillors serving a four year term. Each council’s Mayor and Deputy Mayor are also directly elected by the voters at every council election for a two-year term.

Nominations have now closed for this year’s council elections, where each council will elect a Mayor and half a council. Voting is by postal ballot and will take place for two weeks from 13 October to 27 October.

I don’t have any particular information about this year’s council elections, although there has been coverage at the Tasmanian Politics blog. I have reviewed my Tasmanian LGA map, which was originally a very large file and difficult to use on slower computers. It should now run smoothly for anyone interested in following Tasmania’s council elections. Consider this post an opportunity to comment on any interesting council races.

taslga

Tasmania's local government areas

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Redrawing council borders in Sydney

By
Ben Raue
 – July 6, 2009

I’ve been thinking recently about the Local Government Areas in Sydney. With the exception of the City of Sydney, which has grown and contracted over time, and Canada Bay, which was formed by a merger of Drummoyne and Concord in 2000, local government in Sydney has remained largely intact since a massive round of mergers in 1948-49, which saw many of Sydney’s councils merged into larger units. Is it time to rethink local government in Sydney?

Read the rest of this entry »

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