I’ve been an unusual number of councillors announcing their candidacy for the state election. It made me wonder, how many are actually running? How many are likely to win? And how does this compare to recent history?
I’m using the same methodology I used for yesterday’s post on gender. Seats are classified as safe or likely for a candidate or marginal for 2-3 candidates.
By their nature, councillors who win a seat in parliament tend to be new MPs. Indeed it is now the law that someone can’t run for council while sitting as a member of parliament. So unless someone had won a by-election recently, only non-incumbents are capable of winning a seat in parliament while sitting on a local council.
The “Get Clover” law was passed following the 2011 state election. At the time there was a record number of councillors in state parliament. The vast majority of these councillors were new members of parliament and were planning to retire at the 2012 council election. There were just two who had been re-elected to their council seat since winning a state seat. Greg Piper had won the state seat of Lake Macquarie in 2007 and was re-elected as the local mayor in 2008. Clover Moore had held a state seat since 1988 and won a second term as lord mayor of Sydney in 2008.
The legislation forced Moore to resign from state parliament at the time of the next council election in 2012, while every other sitting MP/councillor chose not to recontest their council seat.
The law now allows any councillors elected this month to finish their term and step down at the next election due in September 2024.
Since only new MPs are councillors, they tend to be more common when there’s a lot of seats changing hands or a lot of retirements. We know there is an uptick in retirements in 2023, but not reaching the levels of 2011.
Here are my estimates of the numbers elected at each general election since 1999. Prior to then it gets harder to tell who had been a councillor from their Wikipedia page.
2011 stands out with 22 lower house MPs elected from councils. I had seen numbers closer to 30 referenced. I found a comment on my blog from 2012 saying that 28 councillors were affected by the law. I know that all three Greens elected to the upper house in 2011 were councillors, so it's possible the other three also were elected in the upper house, or possibly I've missed someone.
So what about the prospects for 2023?
I've identified at least 45 candidates who are councillors but quite a few of these candidates don't have a real chance of winning. A third of those 45 candidates are running for Labor, with another 14 Greens. There's also nine Coalition councillors, six independents and one running for the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers.
There are five seats where there a councillor will definitely be elected. Mark Hodges (Castle Hill, LIB) and Charishma Kaliyanda (Liverpool, ALP) are running for safe seats. There are three other seats where two councillors are facing off for a vacant seat: Balmain, Drummoyne and Leppington.
I've also classified Ryde as "likely". The Liberal mayor of the City of Ryde is the favourite to win the seat.
I've also classed the seats of Oatley and South Coast as "unlikely". I think the chances of councillors (Labor in Oatley and Greens in South Coast) are relatively small.
Then there are ten other seats where councillors are running with a real chance of winning. In nine of these seats the councillor is the challenger to another party which holds the seat. The Nationals are running councillors in Port Macquarie, Orange and Murray - three seats the party traditionally held but has lost to two independents and an ex-Nationals Liberal.
Independent councillors are challenging Liberals in Wakehurst and Wollondilly, and Labor councillors are challenging Liberals in Penrith, Parramatta and Winston Hills. There's also a Greens councillor running in Lismore. The final seat on the list is Pittwater, where the Liberal candidate is a local councillor.
The number of councillors set to win seats has already exceeded the 2019 levels. If most of these marginal councillors lose, the levels would likely be similar to the 1999, 2007 and 2015. But it's also possible numbers could end up quite a lot higher - close to but not reaching the levels we saw in 2011.
When you have time, you might find it interesting to examine the performance of councillors after being elected to State Parliament.
My impression is that they stop attending Council Meetings, but continue to collect their councillor fee for as long as the law allows them to. Two I have in mind are John Barilaro and Bronwyn Taylor (I know of them because they are from my region).
Both of course were “independents” on a council, before becoming National Party members just before an election (another phenomenon worthy of research).
I would have to question the effectiveness of a councillor who is also a state MP, particularly on a regional council when the other job requires so much time in Sydney. Also the potential for conflixtdmkf interest would be large, so if they were operating ethically there would be many council debates and votes they would have to absent themselves from, and some State Parliament votes too (though I’ve never heard of a State MP doing that – which goes to show how unethical they are).
Conflicts of
That might be more of an issue with regional councillors than Sydney councillors.
To be honest I think this is an argument for bringing council elections closer to state elections to minimise that overlap period. Up to 1999 they were just six months later. Then they extended it to 12 months in 2004 and 18 months in 2008.
The Lismore City Councillor Adam Guise does not ‘have a real chance of winning’. Incumbent Janelle Saffin very likely will increase her 2019 primary vote. For Guise to win he would have to match that increase plus an additional 2.5% to overcome the higher (than local green voters) Labor exhaustion and leakage rates that occurs whenever their vote is distributed There will probably be a lower vote for ‘others’ this time but not enough to cater for the above hypothetical increases.
So that implies that the bulk of any Nat swingers must go Green rather than Labor, which is unlikely. If Guise only heads Labor by a small amount, as he achieved in 2015, then that would result in a win for the Nat Alex Rubin.
The smart money on Sportsbet was plonked on Saffin at $2.00 when they first opened their market, driving her price down to $1.30, and now, have quite likely hedged that wager by putting a bit on Rubin, who had drifted out to $10.00.
Sportsbet has again shutdown their ‘Electorate’ market. Too many savvy psephologists around?
It’s not likely, but it’s possible Graham. There’s been a favourable redistribution and a well-known candidate. Although I generally agree that Saffin is far more likely to hold.
Sportsbet shuttering their electorate market makes me happy. Election enjoyers should stop flushing their money down the bogger with this betting crap. I have a friend who wasted $1000 from betting on Fujimori at the last Peruvian election. Why.
Is it Sportsbet or TAB that have shut their electorate betting? I can still see electorate betting on Sportsbet but on TAB seems to have vanished.
An unintended consequence of amalgamations maybe? Fewer Councillors getting greater profile in an area bigger than an electorate. Although my own theory does not explain the Liverpool, Ryde, Camden and Penrith situations, so maybe I should take it all back
Honestly I think it’s just the level of likely change in the next parliament – a combination of expected government losses and retirements.
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