Local government electoral reforms By Jenny McKay (The following is an opinion article from Cr Jenny McKay in response to the Queensland Government’s proposals to change the electoral process for local government elections in Queensland. Jenny has declared she is not running at the next council election, so her comments reflect her views as an informed ratepayer.) Voting is the most powerful tool that a community holds in judging how governments are performing. That is the cornerstone of our democracy and it is not something that should be trifled with by politicians. Yet last week, we saw Local Government Minister Stirling Hinchliffe and the Queensland Government do just that with the local government electoral system. The minister released sweeping changes to local government legislation that the state government plans to introduce in the next month or so. Many of those changes are good and long overdue. Some were recommended by the Crime and Corruption Commission in its Operation Belcarra report and are widely supported by councils. But in the midst of this are many changes to the local government electoral arrangements that can only be described as politically motivated and not in the interests of anyone but the Australian Labor Party. To make matters worse … and here is the rub … the minister has not bothered to engage with the community locally on what these changes will mean, assist people to understand what the
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implications are or allow them to have their say before he released the proposals. He is dressing these changes up as being in line with Operation Belcarra. However, changes like the introduction of compulsory preferential voting for electing councillors and public funding of local government candidates were not recommended in the Belcarra Report. Compulsory preferential voting will do two things. As it mostly benefits political parties, it will encourage greater involvement of those parties in local government – something that has largely and proudly been held at bay for over a century. It also means that you, the voter, are now forced to cast a vote for a candidate or candidates that you do not want to see elected and by doing so, your preference could help to see that person become your councillor or mayor. Better minds than the minister – including the Electoral and Administrative Review Commission, which was established in the wake of the Fitzgerald Inquiry – have also made the point that the current system is fairer than compulsory preferential voting. As for public funding of local government candidates’ campaigns, don’t you think our ratepayers should have had a say in this? I am a ratepayer and I don’t support it. For our Sunshine Coast Council, if these arrangements had been in place for the 2016
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council elections it could have cost the ratepayers up to $410,000 in funding for the campaigns of candidates. This is on top of the $802,000 ratepayers paid to the Electoral Commission to actually conduct the election. The minister says that there is a cost for “clean elections”. Clearly, he hasn’t bothered to check his facts. Every state election between 1992 and 2015 was conducted under the same optional preferential voting arrangements as the local government elections, although the state parties and candidates received public funding of their campaigns from 1995. However, they had no expenditure caps in place (other than in 2012) so the parties and candidates openly courted and received donations from property developers, the unions and other interest groups. Is the minister now saying that those state elections weren’t clean? I have to say I am sick of this demonising of councils everywhere. Our minister, Stirling Hinchliffe, is supposed to be the champion of the local government system. Yet for political reasons all he wants to do is run it into the ground and paint the hundreds of hardworking councillors across this state as crooks. It is high time that this behaviour was called for what it is.
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