When local council parties break into state politics

During the most recent NSW council elections, I wrote repeatedly about how party systems for local councils are not the same as the state or federal party system. A different electoral system and different limits to the size of the polity tend to spit out different groups.

In a lot of councils that are in areas that tend to be safe for one of the major parties at a higher level, a second major party pops up in opposition to the dominant major party – but that second major party usually exists only within that council, and does not usually contest higher levels of election.

But sometimes those parties burst out, winning state seats, and recently a federal seat. In this story I’ll run through the history of some of these local parties and then look at the surprising number of these parties emerging as threats in this state election.

It’s worth clarifying, I’m not talking about just any independent councillor who runs for parliament. There have been councillors like Alex McTaggart who were elected mayor of a non-partisan council without their own alliance, and then went on to win a state seat. I would also not count Clover Moore when she first won her state seat in 1988 shortly after her term on the City of Sydney was ended by the council’s sacking.

As council elections in urban NSW councils have become more partisan, however, in some cases alliances have been formed which can only be described as political parties – they run multiple serious candidates, win multiple seats and if their council has multiple wards they run across most or all of them. Sometimes they have a registered party name (although genuine independents will sometimes register a party name simply for the purpose of having a name above the line), and others do not.

There are plenty of councils where only one of the two national major parties is competitive. Often a local party emerges to be the opposition in that local area.

These parties often have a dominant leading figure, but they aren’t just one person, and on occasion they’ve been able to hand over the reins to a second generation.

These parties can often plug along at the local level largely unnoticed by the statewide political media, until they break through.

The first I can identify as breaking through was the Manly independents. Peter Macdonald had been elected to Manly council in 1984, and then went on to win the state seat of Manly in 1991, holding the balance of power in the 1991-1995 parliament. He actually continued to sit on the council until 1999, serving as deputy mayor alongside his parliamentary responsibilities for one term in the mid 1990s.

Macdonald stepped down from both the council and the state seat in 1999, and successfully handed over his state seat to David Barr, a fellow Manly independent.

Macdonald returned to council in 2004, winning the directly-elected mayoralty and bringing in a number of councillors on his ticket.

The independent machine began to decline in 2007, when Barr lost his state seat to Liberal candidate Mike Baird. Macdonald also lost the mayoralty in 2008 to Liberal candidate Jean Hay. As of the last Manly council election in 2012, the machine’s mayoral candidate polled 16% in the mayoral ballot, and won two seats on the council, but they haven’t emerged on the new Northern Beaches council.

Sitting MP Greg Piper also came into parliament at the head of a local party called the Independent Lake Alliance which at one point dominated local council politics in Lake Macquarie. Piper had first been elected to council in 1991 and went on to win the directly-elected mayoralty in 2004. He won the state seat of Lake Macquarie in 2007, and was re-elected to a second and final term as mayor in 2008. The ILA held six out of thirteen seats on the 2004-2008 council, and five out of thirteen on the 2008-2012, enough to be the leading party in a minority position.

Piper stepped down as mayor in 2012, with Labor taking the mayoralty and leaving ILA with four seats. The 2016 election was devastating. The ILA did not have a party registration. A different group called the ‘Lake Macquarie Independents’ were registered, and the ILA was reduced to just one seat despite polling over 18% on the council ballot and coming second (narrowly) on the mayoral ballot. They did not contest the 2021 election.

The other recent example of a crossover between local and state politics is Clover Moore’s party in the City of Sydney. Moore stood alone throughout the 1990s, but in 2004 the City of Sydney was expanded to cover much of the old territory it had last covered when she’d sat on that council in the 1980s. She ran successfully for the mayoralty, bringing in four colleagues. Over the last 19 years, Moore’s party has usually either held a majority or fallen just short.

In 2012, when Moore was forced to resign her state seat to re-contest the lord mayoralty, her party managed to support Alex Greenwich to win her seat of Sydney. While Greenwich runs as an independent, and sits in parliament as an independent, his allegiance to Moore’s group is very clear and a lot of the same people would support his campaign as support Moore’s council campaigns.

A number of other local parties that impressed at the 2021 election are now poised to jump into state politics.

Michael Regan leads the Your Northern Beaches party, which holds six out of fifteen seats on the Northern Beaches council, and has effectively run the council with the help of a small number of crossbenchers since its first election in 2017, while the Liberal Party, who dominate the area at state and federal elections, have been confined to opposition. Regan also served as mayor of Warringah at the head of a similar team prior to its amalgamation.

Regan is now running for the seat of Wakehurst, where longstanding Liberal MP Brad Hazzard is retiring after 32 years in the job.

Frank Carbone is the directly-elected mayor of Fairfield. Carbone had first been elected as a Labor mayor in 2012, but lost his preselection in 2016. He formed a loose alliance with a number of Labor and Liberal breakaways, including fellow councillor Dai Le. He narrowly retained the mayoralty in 2016, with the Carbone-Le group winning four out of thirteen seats on the council. He was in office but not necessarily in power, with Labor holding six seats.

Carbone and Le formed two council-wide tickets in 2021, with Le supporting Carbone for mayor. Carbone won the mayoralty in a landslide and their alliance won nine out of thirteen seats on the council, with the Liberal Party sitting the election out. While Carbone and Le don’t share a party registration (Le had a registration using her name), they clearly form a group that was on the ballot across the council and won the support of voters. Le then went on to win the federal seat of Fowler in 2022. While I’ve found a number of examples of local council parties winning the local state seat, I’ve never found one who has gone on to win the federal seat before.

Carbone is now threatening to run for Cabramatta, and has suggested his party might find a candidate for the seat of Fairfield too.

This story overlaps with the story of the large number of councillors running with a serious chance of winning a seat in 2023 – I’ll return to that topic later. Former mayors or deputy mayors are also running in Wollondilly and Coffs Harbour after making it to second place in the 2019 state election. The mayor of Shellharbour, who is at the head of a loose alliance of five independents who govern Shellharbour council, has also thrown his hat in the ring for Shellharbour.

There are also parallels to be drawn with the experience of the Greens, who were a major political force and won the mayoralty in Leichhardt, Marrickville and Byron before winning the overlapping state seats. Just like with Your Northern Beaches or Carbone-Le, the Greens are one of the major parties in the Inner West council, which gives backing to their state political representation. The Greens’ best prospects of success are in South Coast (where their candidate is the mayor), Lismore (where their candidate is a councillor, and they held the mayoralty until the last election) and Summer Hill (where the Greens are a major council party).

Local council politics is not a simple echo of state and federal politics. The different voting system and different political boundaries provide space for different groups to emerge, and as they strengthen they have the potential to break out of the local petri dish and influence state (or even federal) politics.

Liked it? Take a second to support the Tally Room on Patreon!