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.

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.

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.

• 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.

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.

Tasmania's local government areas

]]> http://www.tallyroom.com.au/2252/feed 19 http://www.tallyroom.com.au/1631 http://www.tallyroom.com.au/1631#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:00:24 +0000 Ben Raue http://www.tallyroom.com.au/?p=1631 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?

Prior to 1948, Sydney suburbs such as Glebe, Newtown, Annandale, Balmain, Alexandria, Vaucluse, St Peters, Petersham, Erskineville, Darlington, Macdonaldtown, Granville, Mulgoa and Ingleburn formed their own councils.

Today’s local councils largely reflect the population distribution of the immediate post-war period, with Western Sydney councils covering much more land and residents than those in the eastern half of the region. Populations vary from about 13000 residents in Hunter’s Hill to over 290,000 residents in Blacktown. The following map shows the various populations of each Sydney LGA:

The colour code represents:

• Red – 200,000+ residents
• Dark orange – 150-200,000
• Orange – 100-150,000
• Yellow – 75-100,000
• Light yellow – 50-75,000
• White – Less than 50,000 residents

It becomes clear that almost all Western Sydney councils have over 150,000 residents, with the exceptions of Campbelltown (which falls just below the threshold), Camden (which is about to begin growing rapidly) and Holroyd. In contrast, the Eastern Suburbs, Inner West and Lower North Shore have much smaller populations, and this translates into more councils covering a smaller population. Western Sydney has over 1.8 million residents covered by 11 councils. In contrast, the Inner West, inner city and Eastern Suburbs have a population of about 750,000 residents covered by another 11 councils.

Of course, there isn’t a strict injustice in such malapportioned local government areas in the same way that there would be if electoral districts were so skewed. Indeed, there can be benefits to both large and small councils. Smaller councils tend to be closer to the local population and often form an important part of a local community. In contrast, larger councils can be more efficient, hold more political clout and tend to result in more attention from local media, who tend to ignore local government and help contribute to the lack of engagement many have with their local councillors and local elections.

While you can argue about the proper size of local government areas in terms of population, I would argue that there is a big problem in having a large city having such massive differences in population in local government areas between east and west. I would argue that the main reason there has been no change through sixty years of massive population growth is the inertia that comes in handing control over local government boundaries to the very councillors and council officials whose power relies upon the maintenance of existing boundaries. In large councils, powerful mayors and councillors generally will oppose any breakup of council areas that would reduce their power, while mergers of small councils undoubtedly reduce the number of councillors, mayors and senior executives.

In contrast, the few attempts by state governments to intervene and overrule councils have proven to be unpopular and generally have shown little interest in respecting local democracy.

So my idea would involve a number of ideas. First of all, there would need to be a re-examination of what areas we want local government to cover. In particular, local government authority over planning would need to be strengthened, in my opinion, but this post isn’t about determining what powers rightfully belong to local government. I would think this could be part of a process of redrawing local government boundaries and re-examining numbers of councillors on each council. At the end of this process, the powers and rights of local government could be embedded in the NSW Constitution by a referendum across the state.

I’m suggesting that all local governments in Sydney should at least cover 100,000 residents. The following map shows how I would redraw council boundaries. All of these involve merging existing councils, it might make sense to redraw boundaries completely. and such a map might look a bit different. On this map, I have reduced the number of councils in Sydney from 38 to 26. I have not touched Hawkesbury, Camden, Wollondilly or the Blue Mountains, as they are on the edge of Sydney, likely to grow, and don’t make sense to merge with any others. In the case of Camden, I considered merging it with Campbelltown but, considering Camden’s imminent population explosion, I determined that in the long run Camden would quickly rise to the population levels I imposed on all other Sydney LGAs.

I made the following mergers:

• Sydney – Sydney, Marrickville and Leichhardt
• Waverley – Waverley and Woollahra
• Randwick – Botany Bay and Randwick
• North Sydney – Manly, Mosman, North Sydney and Willoughby
• Ryde – Lane Cove, Hunter’s Hill and Ryde
• Northern Beaches – Warringah and Pittwater
• St George – Kogarah, Hurstville and Rockdale
• Inner West – Burwood, Strathfield, Ashfield and Canada Bay
• Parramatta – Parramatta, Holroyd and Auburn

This also creates a siituation where the two cities in Sydney that have Lord Mayors, Sydney and Parramatta, become the two largest LGAs, each having a population of over 300,000. Amongst other things, it would add to the significance of the role of the Lord Mayor. At the moment this position is given tremendous power and prestige for a Mayor who covers less residents than six other councils. I also considered that Leichhardt and Marrickville have a common community with residential suburbs in the City of Sydney like Glebe and Erskineville.

The other element, in addition to clarifying the powers of local government and increasing the population of eastern Sydney councils, would be a change in the governance structure. In the United Kingdom, local unitary authorities in big cities, which tend to have similar populations to large Sydney LGAs, have much larger numbers of councillors. The City of Wolverhampton, part of Greater Birmingham, has a population of 236,000, similar in scale to the current Blacktown and Sutherland and many of the proposed councils, but has 60 councillors, which is similar to many similar councils.

I’m not suggesting we go that large, but I’m suggesting a formula that ties councillor numbers to population. I’m thinking one councillor for every  10,000 residents plus 10. This formula would result in small councils like Wollondilly having 14 councillors (+5 from current numbers). It would give the new Parramatta and Sydney councils over 40 seats on their councils, down to 21 on Ku-ring-gai Council (which would not gain any territory under this proposal). This would mean that, while the number of councils would shrink, the overall number of councillors would grow and, for most of the Sydney region, there would be an increase in local representation. This formula would increase the number of councillors across Greater Sydney from 488 to 699.