This blog is a follow-up to my post from November 2021, which tracked where the Labor, Liberal and Greens parties had run across the Greater Sydney region from 2004 to 2021. At the end of this post I’ve added posts showing which Greater Sydney wards were contested by each of these three parties over six election cycles from 2004 to 2024.
But I’ve also more precisely demonstrated which areas the Liberals failed to nominate for in 2024, and how that compares to the areas they (more deliberately) withdrew from in 2021.
I’m mostly focused on Greater Sydney here for a few reasons. Firstly, partisan elections predominate here, unlike in most of regional NSW. Although on that ground maybe it would make sense to expand the territory to cover everything from Maitland to Wollongong. But secondly, I’m working off old work where I analysed the Greater Sydney results in greater detail. So I’ll stick to that geographical boundary for now.
Also when I’m analysing the extent of coverage I prefer to look at the proportion of population who has a particular party as a choice, rather than a raw count of council seats which prioritises smaller councils in the eastern half of Sydney and also creates a discontinuity when a bunch of councils were amalgamated in 2016.
But to start on a high level, this chart shows the proportion of the population of Greater Sydney who had a candidates from each party on the ballot somewhere in that local government area.
The ALP traditionally contested a lot more councils in Sydney, but those numbers declined as the state Labor government reached the end of its life for the 2008 and 2012 elections. The Liberal Party also drew even with Labor in 2012 and 2016-17.
For the first post-amalgamation elections, both major parties contested almost every council. The Liberals were absent in Mosman, North, Sydney, Ku-ring-gai and Wollondilly. Labor did contest Wollondilly, but were also absent in Woollahra and Hunter’s Hill.
The Liberal presence collapsed in 2021, when the party withdrew from a bunch of large councils. Interestingly, despite the large-scale nomination crisis in 2024, the party is still running in more LGAs.
While this is going on, the Greens are running in significantly more councils than the Liberal Party. But if you look at the share of wards contested by each party (again as a proportion of population) the Greens lag behind. The Liberals tend to contest whole councils or not at all (even with the nomination issues) while the Greens often choose to strategically contest one or two wards in a council. The Greens are running partial tickets in councils like Penrith, Blacktown, Parramatta, Central Coast, Cumberland, Ryde, Ku-ring-gai, Lane Cove, North Sydney, Georges River and Sutherland.
At this point it’s necessary to focus on where the Liberals are running again. This next map groups Greater Sydney wards into whether the Liberals have contested in both 2021 and 2024 (and I’ve included councils which did not hold an election in one of these years if the party has otherwise been present), as opposed to those where they were absent in 2021, absent in 2024 or absent in both years.
The areas missing in 2021 are relatively small but dense, mostly around north-western Sydney and south of the Harbour. The map also shows one ward of North Sydney – the Liberals did not withdraw from here in 2021, rather they are contesting it in 2024 for the first time.
On the other hand, most of the missing Liberal areas in 2024 are on the outer suburbs – Penrith, Camden, Campbelltown, Blue Mountains, and outside of the map area you could include Shoalhaven, Cessnock and Maitland.
The same information can also be included in a table with the share of the total enrolment in each category.
| Liberal status | Description | % of enrolment |
| Liberals in 2021 and 2024 | 43 wards | 34.79% |
| Liberals withdrew in 2021, returned 2024 | 25 wards | 22.13% |
| Liberals ran in 2021, didn’t nominate 2024 | 21 wards | 19.52% |
| No election 2021, Libs contested 2024 | Central Coast | 5.94% |
| No Liberals have run ever | Wollondilly, Ku-ring-gai, Mosman, Willoughby | 5.53% |
| Liberals ran most recently in 2016-17 | Fairfield, Inner West Marrickville | 4.69% |
| Libs contested 2021, no election 2024 | Liverpool | 4.51% |
| No election 2021, no Libs 2024 | Central Coast Budgewoi | 1.51% |
| Liberals ran for first time in 2024 | North Sydney Cammeraygal | 0.72% |
| No Liberals have run ever, but planned to in 2024 | North Sydney St Leonards | 0.68% |
About a third of the city has consistently had Liberal candidates, plus another 10% where they are only absent because of a council’s election being suspended. The nomination failure covers about 21% of the city, and the deliberate decision not to run in 2021 covered about 22% of the city.
I’m focusing this blog post on Greater Sydney, but I did a statewide comparison of which councils the Liberals ran in over the 2016-17, 2021 and 2024 cycles. Every council where they ran in 2021 and 2024 has already been included in my analysis of the nomination errors, but there are a few councils where they ran in 2016-17 but haven’t returned. Those are Fairfield, Shellharbour and Tamworth. I haven’t heard anything to suggest they had planned to run for those councils in 2024 but were thwarted by nominations, but I cannot prove that negative.
Finally, I have posted here three maps which you can use to toggle the Liberal, Labor and Greens candidacies by ward over the last twenty years. You can click on each ward to see the name of the council and ward and which of these parties contested it in that year.
I have done some related analysis already which I will save for some upcoming blog posts, particularly around the candidacies of small parties, rates of councillors retiring and the size of ballot papers. So keep an eye out for those, probably after the NT election.
So the Liberals are contesting Gosford East?
Yes, but not above the line.
Hi Ben, I read your article in The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/21/liberal-party-nsw-local-government-election-nomination-fiasco-bad-for-democracy
Can you tell me, please, who wrote the headline?
Council elections should not be party based I think Parts of NSW especially Sydney are the only area. Other council election in other parts of Australia are Independents but you might guess their party leanings. Also it should not be compulsory voting. It seems to work fine here in South Australia.
Great commentary on the Council elections. Thanks
Also Brisbane City Council
Hi Ben,
perhaps it might benefit may readers to clarify that when a status is “No Liberals have ever run”, it it almost certainly the case, and is undeniably the case in Willoughby, that the true status is “No Liberals have ever run as endorsed candidates on the State party”. Th majority of candidates for councilors in Willoughby have for a long time been Liberal party members standing as IND, and most often selected through some sort of local party unit informal process.
I don’t know who wrote the headline.
I think at the minimum Rozos (Middle Harbour), Eriksson (Sailors Bay) and all 3 West ward councillors were Independent Liberals in Willoughby (I vaguely remember reading in Willoughby Living). I never knew that there was an actual Liberal party process for this though (that @High Street mentions of). Seems like this is pretty unique to Willoughby and Kuringgai (and Mosman)
I think (relative to how small each wards are), awareness of ward boundaries may be stronger in Willoughby too (and is referenced in descriptions of parks, and their namesake)
I assume the relative political leanings of each ward (dunno how useful this is) within Willoughby in order from left to right is:
Naremburn (Some parts may be similar with North Sydney/Lane Cove LGAs)
West
BIG GAP
Middle Harbour
Sailors Bay Ward
(I have lived Willoughby all my life and have lived in all wards except West.)
It’s a very North Shore phenomenon to have known Liberal members and sometimes staffers elected as independents to Council. ‘Parties shouldn’t be involved in local government’ is a fairly common refrain when you’re campaigning for Councils in that part of Sydney.
Agree with that Willoughby ward ranking too, Leon. West Ward had a popular Greens Councillor for at least 2 terms. Naremburn has a lot of younger voters and the Greens vote is quite high there for federal elections. The Castlecrag area is a bit of a desert for progressive politics.
@Josh
I do pick up that vibe on too. I wonder if this has anything to do with Ted Mack (North Sydney) and/or Pat Reilly (Willoughby) but Kuringgai and Mosman had neither of them but are still independent-heavy (with no endorsed Liberals at least).
Lane Cove seems to stick out as the exception (unless Hunters Hill counts as north shore), having had endorsed Liberal councillors since 2008 right until the deadline debacle that has just happened.
Hi Ben,
Well, with respect for all the work you do, aside from the truly horrible headline, the article was also thoroughly flawed and unsupported by evidence. Obviously the vast majority of the comments on the article thought as much as well, and good on you for trying to respond to some of them, but your suggestions along the lines of ‘it would be better if we had 5 big parties and PR’ don’t cut it because for better or worse, that’s not the system we’ve got right now.
In the real world, apart from the terrible shame of candidates missing nominations through no fault of their own, our democratic system has held up very well. No extensions have been granted, almost every voter (albeit not in one ward in Penrith, very unfortunately) has multiple candidates who did nominate successfully to choose from, and in the passing of time, this next local election will probably end up being just another blip in history.
In quite a few councils, such as Penrith, Northern Beaches and Camden, and to a lesser extent Blue Mountains, there is going to be little relationship between how people would have voted and the results of the election, because the Liberals failed to nominate. I am very clear that the fault is entirely theirs, but it takes the results further away from the intention of the voters.