My local council, the City of Parramatta, is currently undergoing a consultation to seek views about whether the council should switch to directly electing the lord mayor, potentially as a precursor to holding a referendum on changing the system.
Directly elected mayors in New South Wales are a minority – 35 councils used the method at the 2021 election. But it’s a popular issue at referendums – at the 2021 election, two councils switched to directly elected mayors, one council narrowly voted against with a slanted question, and one council switched to a council-elected mayor.
I’m strongly opposed to directly elected mayors. I’ve been asked why I hold that position. I have previously touched on why I am opposed in this blog post and this podcast.
But I wanted to summarise why I think it is a bad feature that is incompatible with the best features of local council structures in New South Wales.
This blog post runs through a number of reasons why, but in summary, I don’t support directly elected mayors for NSW councils because:
- I believe accountability comes best through parliamentary democracy, with the collective will of a council making decisions, not by choosing just one person to hold a job on their own for the whole council term.
- Proportional representation encourages multi-party democracy, not just two opposing sides. A directly elected mayor doesn’t work well with multi-party democracy, since it deprives smaller parties from having any ongoing influence over that position once their preferences are distributed.
- NSW mayors don’t have a lot of power inherent to the office. They exercise power by leading the council. Council-elected mayors are less likely to be lame ducks without support on the council.
- Under the NSW system, a directly-elected mayor makes it very hard to have a council with the maximum number of councillors (15) which is barely enough for a big urban council.
- A directly elected mayor is a bonus seat to their party, who gains that seat in addition to their proportional share.
Not everyone may be a supporter of proportional multi-party democracy, but I think the case against directly elected mayors is actually stronger than the kneejerk assumption that electing a single person to this office separate from the rest of the council is “more democratic”.
Accountability comes through parliamentary democracy
The argument for a directly elected mayor often rests on there being “accountability” in voters knowing who they are choosing to lead the council. But this is often a distraction. In New South Wales, a mayor doesn’t actually exercise that much power on their own. If they have power, it’s as the leader of the dominant group on the council.
There are deeper issues with accountability due to the low levels of knowledge about councillors and council business. Some of that would be improved with more clarity about the partisan divisions on a council (how often does a newspaper run a story about a council without clarifying which faction the councillors belong to?), and it is definitely easier to improve levels of knowledge for more populous councils, so amalgamations have some benefits in that area.
But ultimately I believe in parliamentary democracy, and I think a mayor can be held accountable more effectively by their fellow councillors than by the voters.
I also think there can be improvements in terms of clarity and accountability that can be achieved through the council-elected-mayor system. If voters know the parties of the candidates they are voting for, and those parties make clear who their mayoral candidates are, voters can still cast a vote and understand who is likely to benefit, while understanding that ultimately the councillors will make the call.
Darcy Byrne has been the mayor of Inner West continuously since the first election in 2017, while Jerome Laxale was the undisputed Labor mayor of Ryde throughout the last term. Those two were clearly their party’s leader on the council at the previous election and there was no doubt that they would take on the mayoralty if their party was in a position to choose the mayor.
2-year terms have helped with stability in council mayoralties. It would be interesting to analyse whether there has been increased stability in amalgamated councils with 2-year terms but I have noticed a seeming shift towards councils giving the job to the clear leader of the majority faction, rather than sharing the job around throughout the term.
And of course it’s a question for voters – if they care about parties having a clear mayoral candidate, they could vote for those parties. But there’s not much of a sense that voters care about this.
Multi-party democracy is incompatible with directly-elected mayors
When you’re electing a mayor, you can only choose one person. That seems like a statement of the obvious, but it’s not the same as how politics works inside a council, where power can be shared around.
All councils in New South Wales are elected using some form of proportional representation. It’s rare that a single party has majority control of a council.
I’m a supporter of multi-party democracy, as you would know from my regular advocacy of proportional representation. I think it works better for most voters to be represented directly in a parliament or council, and then work out a majority coalition to form a government. While councils don’t always follow all of the conventions of party government, that is still mostly how they work in partisan councils – a majority coalition chooses a mayor and dominates the agenda.
In contrast, for a directly elected mayoralty, smaller parties’ voters can influence the winner through preferences, but ultimately their influence ends at that point. So it’s a majoritarian feature that brings councils closer to the way federal and state governments work under majoritarian electoral systems.
In New South Wales, we use optional preferential voting, which means when there are a larger number of mayoral candidates the winner can get elected with less than a majority of the vote. Which means a mayor can represent a smaller share of the electorate than a mayor who has been chosen by a majority elected by proportional representation (particularly when the magnitude is higher).
I know not everyone agrees with me, but if you think having more than two parties involved in government is a good thing, then directly elected mayors takes you in the other direction.
Some mayors are lame ducks
When you separate the mayoralty from the council election, you create the potential for there to be a majority on the council who does not support the mayor.
This plays out differently in a state like Queensland where the mayor has more direct executive power and control over the administration over the council. In Queensland, mayors more resemble those in big American cities or presidential systems in many countries around the world, and you can argue about whether it’s better to have a presidential or parliamentary system (I prefer a semi-parliamentary system personally).
But that’s not how things work in New South Wales. Executive power is invested in a general manager or CEO who is responsible to the whole council, not the mayor.
Their actual constitutional powers are mostly limited to chairing the council meetings and exercising a casting vote. They are also a spokesperson and act as a ceremonial figurehead for the council. They may be delegated other powers by the council, and as someone paid a higher salary are more likely to be able to exercise soft power by being around the office than other councillors, but there isn’t a lot of distinct power in the office of mayor.
A mayor is mostly influential if they are the leader of a faction on the council, ideally one that is able to win majorities much of the time. This is crucial for voters’ understanding of who is responsible for the direction of a council – how can you blame or reward elected officials if you don’t know who was responsible and who was opposed to council decisions?
But with a directly elected mayor, you can have mayors elected alongside a council in opposition to them. The best example I could find was Shoalhaven from 2016 until 2021. The Greens’ Amanda Findley was elected mayor in a race against two conservatives (with a great deal of exhausted preferences), but the council was controlled by the conservative independents.
In such a scenario, it would make far more sense for the council to just choose its own mayor rather than have a lame duck.
A directly elected mayor leads to smaller councils and less proportionality
This is specific to New South Wales. There is a cap of 15 councillors per council, and a directly elected mayor counts towards the cap. There is also a rule that every ward must elect the same number of councillors, and most large urban councils have 3-5 members per ward.
The most common structure we see in big urban councils, including all of the councils created through the 2016-17 amalgamations, is five wards of three members each for a total of 15.
If you were to have a directly-elected mayor, however, you could only maintain that council size by having 2-member wards (bad), 7-member wards (you’d only have two of them) or no wards.
The large councils that have wards and have mayors tend to either have 3 wards of four each (Ryde, Shoalhaven, Wollongong, Lake Macquarie), 4 wards of three (Newcastle, Maitland) or two wards (Fairfield and Liverpool). Apart from Liverpool, all the others have 13 members, including the mayor. Sydney and Canada Bay don’t have any wards.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to reduce the overall size of the council. I actually think these big urban councils probably don’t have enough councillors to represent the diversity and size of their local communities. Indeed there is extensive research around the world showing that the size of a political assembly (along with the magnitude of each electoral district) is correlated with the level of political diversity. A larger council would likely elect a more diverse range of members.
There is also a more immediate impact of disproportionality caused by a directly-elected mayor. Under the NSW system (unlike in Tasmania), a successful mayor is disqualified from the council ballot, and their votes flow on to the next candidate on their list at full value. In practice this means whichever party or faction wins the mayoralty gets a bonus seat.
As an example, take Clover Moore’s party on the City of Sydney. They have always won four or five out of nine seats on the council, but when you add Moore’s seat that gives them five or six out of ten. Once you also factor in the mayor’s casting vote, a 4/9 minority is turned into a majority in practice.
Now if that is how the voters had voted, it would be fine, but I believe in multi-party politics, so I don’t support majority bonuses of this kind.
Well that’s about it. I know it’s a long argument, but let me know what you think. If you agree, please consider making your own submission.
Interesting I assumed the reverse need to think.. to maintain the integrity of pr is the main argument
One interesting spin-off of this process occurred in Manly some years ago.
It came about because, in that election the two contestants for Mayor (Peter MacDonald Residents&Friends of Manly; Jean Hay Liberal) were also at the top of their tickets for Councilors [this would have been pretty logical and normal.
MacDonald won the Mayoral contest. That meant he was automatically a Councilor and so he was removed from the R&F Councilor ticket. In consequence,and in effect all of the Councilor ballot papers had the subsequent numbers “upticked” by 1. This should not have had any effect on the number of Councilors for Lib and R&F … but it did … R&F lost one notionally-elected Councilor and the Libs picked up 1.
We thought there must have been some mistake, but finally realized that a small number of voters who voted BTL at the Councilor level had voted MacDonald 1; Hay 2. This was just enough to upset the result at the Councilor level.
I very much doubt that this has ever happened elsewhere, but it does illustrate a particular peculiarity of the directly elected Mayor system
I believe in directly elected mayors because it avoids the corrupt horse trading after an election & avoids the spectacle twice over again. (the stories are legendary & regale barbecues of retired local councillors for year after).Perhaps a way around one of your problems would be to require a prerequisite to election as mayor, election as a ward councillor too. This would mean councils could have say 15/12/9 councillors in 5/4/3 wards & avoid these 2 councillor wards elected by PR which often mean 2 tickets & evenly split councils. Where I come from (Shellharbour) we have the ugly situation of constant 5/4 votes including a mayor with such serious hubris problems (surfboard shapers/council life guards are not very bright) that 18 months after first being elected to anything in his life, as a councillor (& mayor), he ran for the state seat on a ridiculous slogan of “unifying local & state government” in the area! Despite the Liberals giving him basically a clear run as “an independent” he only got 20% of the primary vote and crashed a burned thank goodness.
Shellharbour has quite possibly the worst electoral system in New South Wales – 2-member wards that split evenly almost regardless of difference in voting patterns, and a directly elected mayor to break the inevitable tie. So of course you get constant 5/4 votes. Although I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have some clarity about who is in power and who is not.
There is still plenty of stuff to horse trade over with a directly elected mayor. The answer is making councils large enough to pay attention to, and increasing voter and media interest. If voters wanted a mayor who stayed the same through the term, they’d get it. I don’t see much evidence they care.
Directly elected positions whether Mayor, Local Member or President lends itself to celebrity candidates rather than more thoughtful deliberation and consideration. Having a position selected by a group of peers allows those that know the candidates best to better select someone who has the skills to best serve the community.
The celebrity factor is greatest in local government where residents have little engagement and, with the loss of local papers, no media coverage. I think that it is a certainty that if Sam Kerr, David Koch, Kyle Mynogue, Pat Cummins or Kamahl were to run for mayor, they would win hands down. Whilst I am sure all are good people, they probably do not have the attributes making them ideal for a role like mayor.
This celebrity selection is perhaps best demonstrated in the US as TV and movie stars consider running for president against candidates with more traditional track records as either senators or governors.
A popular mayoral election which chose the mayor from among only the already elected councillors would be a better alternative if you thought that there was a material benefit to popular election.
The method would be to elect the council in the usual way, and then proceed to the mayoral ballot count. The first step would be to exclude any mayoral candidate(s) who were not elected as councillors, distributing preferences among the remaining mayoral candidates, and then count in the usual way.
This would eliminate the proportionality problem and the reduction of size for councils with 15 members. It would not ensure that the mayor could command a majority, but that can occur anyway.
Ben: system designed by ex mayor ex MP now ex labor Marianne Saleba & her pretend arch nemesis ex liberal & now Gareth ward independent & now deputy mayor Kellie marsh? In the only ward where there were three tickets – labor preferenced a labor member (now ex labor) & now elected councillor who was claiming to be “independent” running against the labor team (well sort of? because he preferenced labor team too [coincidently]) to defeat an ex labor, ex green sitting independent councillor. That newly elected councillor is ex labor now (not because ran “against” Labor) but because he voted against labor candidate for deputy mayor in favour of kellie marsh. He now sits on 10 committee out of 18? Figure all that out in advance as a voter? Meanwhile senior staff in their tailored uniforms (yes indeed) who live in Kiama mostly seem to run the show poorly (well for residents). But what can you expect? Shellharbour is the only council in NSW who owns and runs a trading hotel with poker machines? And next year we get to do it all again – although when the musical chairs stop after the election who knows which ex whatever will be sitting in which ex whatever’s lap? frankly the only non rats, non ex whatevers are the 4 labor councillors who the other 5 won’t even elect to the committee to organise Australia Day celebrations? So you are right about the electoral system
I didn’t bother going into this in the article, but Tasmania does resolve the proportionality issue. All mayors and deputy mayors (who are also directly elected) must be elected to council to qualify, and don’t get a separate vote in their leadership role. I don’t believe they’ve ever had someone who was going to win as mayor who was disqualified. I think it may sometimes happen with deputy mayors. It does help that they don’t use wards so the leading candidates are more sure of election to council.
I don’t have experience with NSWLG, but I did work as a town planner for some 20 years in a Brisbane metropolitan LG, where you directly voted for your Mayor.
In that time, my experiences with Mayors have been mixed. One I hardly heard boo from and I had NO idea of what she actually stood for apart from her non-specific campaign slogan. But as far as giving us strategic direction on how she wanted the the city to develop – she was very hands off and it was left mainly to staff to put forward our vision and proposals. Our second last Mayor was, on paper, the golden child – good Christian man who did a lot of community and charitable work, but recently he got a 18 month suspended sentence for corrupt dealing with property developers. At the election he won, it was the largest campaign spend by any Mayoral campaign in Queensland, even outstripping Brisbane which is the largest LG in Australia. The reason? We had just previously taken over significant land from an adjoining LG through forced Council amalgamations and much of this land was earmarked for future urban development – a developers dream! I wonder who was funding his campaign? and he was much more hands on in shaping city development vision.
So Mayors themselves can be hit or miss and it doesn’t matter whether they were directly elected or voted by their peers. You can still get duds or diamonds and everything in-between. So that is a long winded way of saying the QUALITY of the Mayor is NOT affected by how s/he is elected.
So my view on your proposition is framed somewhat by my musing over the American Presidential system, where I am coming very strongly to the view that having a directly elected President is a recipe for creating un-necessary tension and division for governance. Now I understand the American model is based on having checks and balances and that is all fine when the system works as intended, but we are moving into a hyper-partisan political environment, where the allure of big money to be made from doggy property development, just exposes weak people to too much temptation. Up to recently the Queensland LG scene was mainly non-political, but that is now changing (BCC being the exception of being political for as long as I have lived here).
Without having a real understanding of the people standing for Mayor (their values, quirks and weakness etc), it is, IMHO, open for the charlatan or smooth talker to gain the “popular” vote, who could then turn out to be a real wolf in sheep clothing. Better the rest of Councillors to make this decision and have the ability to change their minds at any stage if they see nefarious things going on.
Unfortunately, politics is an occupation that attracts a certain type who will play the game. My general rule of thumb was people are drawn to politics for one of three reasons:
1. To do a public good. Still the majority of people in LG land.
2. For power and status. Often LG is the stepping stone / kindergarten for those wishing to move onto bigger and better political office.
3. For nefarious reasons. Some, but still significant numbers IME, who see the opportunities offered in this role and they operate their own little networks and side hussles without staff or the public having any real idea of what is going on.
Many start at 1, but a good number soon gravitate towards 2 & 3.
Queenslander chiming in. Up here, we have several very populous urban councils. Not only is being Mayor a full time job, so is being Councillor. Our three largest councils each have on the order of 40,000 residents per single-member ward!
Directly elected Mayors have pros and cons for single member wards.
The pro is that as Mayor your time isn’t split between your ward and the council as a whole. For our largest councils, that’s an absolute necessity.
The con is that if an existing Councillor wants to become Mayor, they have to give up their ward. No Brisbane City Councillor has forgone their ward to win the Lord Mayoralty from opposition in my lifetime, though it may have happened in other councils. [see [1] for BCC history]
There’s not really a proportionality problem, because single member wards are already so majoritarian. However it is possible to have a lame-duck-type situation – in 2004 BCC had a Labor majority of (mostly incumbent) Councillors but the Liberal Campbell Newman won the Mayoralty. In 2008 the LNP got a very strong swing and won full control.
For any small council elected completely at large, which includes many rural Qld councils, I believe a parliamentary Mayoralty based on a ticket-STV council election would work pretty well. The Mayor would chosen by the Councillors post election, but the lead candidate for each ticket is effectively a Mayoral candidate.
For medium sized councils (50,000 to 200,000) or larger ones with several multi-member wards I’m not incredibly convinced one way or another about direct election. Maybe your ward can do without you, but is the skill set for a Councillor the same as that for a Mayor? This probably depends on how much executive power the Mayoralty has – if as in many NSW councils that’s “very little” then sure, no need for direct election.
[1] Side note on “giving up your ward”. Qld law provides that if a sitting Lord Mayor steps down in the final year of their term the Deputy (who is a Councillor) takes office without a by-election. Going back to the 1980s, three Lord Mayors of Brisbane City Council have taken office this way (Schrinner, Quirk, Quinn); another three won office from opposition without prior Councillorship (Newman, Soorley, Atkinson), and finally only Roy Harvey (the earliest in this list) was a Councillor but not Mayor going into his successful election (I believe the rules have changed since Harvey’s day, too).
Finally (and this goes beyond local government), there’s a broader question of separation of powers, and how having a directly elected executive can make space for a proportionally elected legislature.
Thanks for the article, Ben. I agree with all your reasoning. For me, the defining factor that makes this the best fit is the simple principle that that the Mayor should have the confidence of the majority of the Councillors.
And on your points about political diversity, I also agree – the more the better. It could even be helpful to take this argument one step further by suggesting that we get better policy outcomes if we can elect a roomful of collaborators who will vote on ideas on their merits, rather than an unchanging majority ‘yes’ / minority ‘no’ split.
I strongly disagree with this, My case for directly electing mayors is that the voters have full control on who the person is who leads their area/city, and can easily vote them out directly if it is a corrupt official.
Like or hate American-style presidential systems, at least the voters have a clear choice, and if you vote for that person, you get them, rather than a parliament or a legislative body, who can just choose one of their mates to lead the council/state/country.
The parties shouldn’t be deciding who leads us, it should be WE the voters, we should decide who leads us. not the parties. this is why I’m personally also in favor of a primary system like the US. even Dominic Perrottet called for this system to be implemented here, and I’m sure there are ways it could work.
I’m not sure why the author believes ”Accountability comes through parliamentary democracy” when the body can simply remove the elected person mid-term, and end up with someone the people did not elect, and often have to wait 2-3 years before they have an opportunity to vote them out. at least if this happens, at least pass a law like in the Canadian province of Newfoundland & Labrador where if the leader changes, an election must be held within a year. this will give voters the power to judge the new person.
In summary, an elected Mayor, Premier, Prime Minister should serve a full term and face voters without being removed by his/her party simply because of ”electoral circumstances” obviously the sitting leader may resign or in unfortunate circumstances die in office which cannot be controlled, but removing a democratically elected leader to only be thrown out by the body which you call a ”parliamentary democracy” should not be allowed ever.
@Daniel T
It seems that the core of your view is that voters should be electing one individual who wields all or most of the power. Certainly that’s not my view, but the conclusions you arrive at make sense if that is your starting position. Would you prefer that Australia adopts a presidential system like the United States where the cabinet is appointed by the President?
Daniel, if you took your argument to its logical conclusion you’d just get rid of elected bodies and just elect a single dictator to run the show.
Irrelevant but would Alice Springs Crime Wave make the white population in Alice Springs vote No in the Voice referendum?
A president or prime minister who can’t be removed is unaccountable. Accountability can be provided by a parliamentary chamber, council, etc, in a way that voters can’t do. Once you vote that person in, your job is done.
Of course parties that have stability and can maintain a leader will likely benefit, but that leader needs to earn that.
That is partly true. But how was removing Malcolm Turnbull accountability? It wasn’t about that. He was only removed because of the polls. Same reason Abbott was removed. Nothing to do with ill-conduct on their ends.
A president can be removed if the cabinet invokes certain articles in the US. And the legislative bodies can remove the president if a 2/3 majority votes to do so which has never happened but was 1 vote short in 1867.
Perhaps my other suggestion could work. Keep parliamentary systems. But require an election within a year (there was an election within a year of Gillard, Rudd, Turnbull and Morrison anyway) even in the UK, May and Johnson both had elections in a year.
This will give the people a choice on whether the decision to change leaders was the correct decision and the leader can get their “own” mandate. MP’s,MLA’s, and councillors should also be forced to resign and trigger a by-election IF they switch parties to give the voters the choice.
Obviously if they are expelled they shouldn’t such as in Gareth Wards case, because they could be innocent and could return in future.
I believe there was a map on wikipedia which showed how much voter power/democratic countries are.
I live in a council (Wollondilly) that fairly recently changed to a popular elected mayor, and my personal experience is it has been incredibly beneficial for the area so far and I certainly would hate to go back to way things used to be.
The mayoralty used to get passed around like a prize every 12 months and that doesn’t happen any more, which means the mayor actually has the time to settle in and focus on their job as mayor. Our first popularly elected mayor is so, so much more accountable and accessible than any other mayor has been certainly in the time I’ve lived here and there seems to be clear leadership for the first time in a very long time. Now because we’ve only had one popularly elected mayor I will admit that it may be that the mayor we have holding the position is the reason it’s working so we’ll, rather than it being a structural benefit but seeing the amount of improvement I really doubt it.
I do wonder if the way our council elections tend to run may be why it seems to be work so well here, we don’t have parties run at all, so all the candidates are independent and because of the geography and insular nature of a lot of Wollondilly they tend to end up being elected for a group of villages rather than primarily on ideology which I think probably goes a long way to addressing some of the issues Ben identified.
You make a good point about accessibility and accountability – particularly for councils with wards. A popularly elected mayor needs to retain the support of all council residents, while councillor-chosen mayors might only be, or be more responsive to the residents in their ward.
Councillors who pass the mayoral and deputy positions around for personal political advantage rather than in the interests of responsive government should generally be voted out.
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