Council elections will be held in parts of New South Wales two weeks from now, on September 10. Voters will be able to start voting pre-poll as of today.
Not everyone in NSW gets to vote today. Any council which has either been amalgamated in the recent merger process, is proposed to be amalgamated, or has lost part of its territory to a boundary change, has had their election postponed until September 2017. Elections have been postponed across a majority of the Sydney region, as well as Newcastle, Wollongong, most of the central West and a bunch of other areas across the state.
In the Sydney region, most of the councils with elections are in Western Sydney, stretching from Blacktown and Hawkesbury in the north down to the Macarthur region in the south. Elections are also being held for the City of Sydney and Sutherland Shire, but the whole inner west, eastern suburbs and north shore regions, as well as Parramatta, Auburn and Bankstown, will have to wait another year.
For the first time I’ve decided to complete guides for some of the largest councils up for election.
There are eight councils in NSW with elections where the population is over 100,000 people. All eight are in urban areas, seven in Sydney. These eight councils are (in order of population) Blacktown, Sutherland, Fairfield, Lake Macquarie, Liverpool, Sydney, Penrith and Campbelltown.
So far I’ve completed guides for the first five of those councils, with Sydney, Penrith and Campbelltown to come in the next few days.
You can click through to the guides here:
I’ve also put together a map of the state showing the councils where guides have been prepared, and for the rest of the state indicates whether an election is due in 2016 or 2017.
It’s also worth noting that the election for Tweed council in the northeastern corner of the state has been postponed until October 29 due to the death of a candidate after nominations closed. Tweed was the tenth-most populous council due to have an election this year, after the eight listed above and Shoalhaven council, so if there’s demand I might do a guide for that special council election.
For each council I’ve tried to piece together the recent political history of each council but it can be difficult. Only a few councils have lists of former mayors, and council election results are only published as far back as 2004. If you have any insights or deeper knowledge of a particular council’s political history please comment and join the conversation.
Well done Ben, would love to see a Tweed and Shoalhaven guide!
I would love to but I don’t think I’ll have time – Shoalhaven has had a redistribution and their results from 2012 are not in an accessible format so it’ll take quite a few days to get that data ready, by which point it’ll be too late. I figured the 150,000 population cut-off (which will cover all councils from Newcastle to Wollongong once the amalgamations are through) was a good line to draw.
Fair enough mate, love your work
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