Voters are going to the polls in the two NSW cities of Wollongong and Shellharbour to elect their local councils for the first time in over seven years.
Wollongong and Shellharbour city councils were sacked in mid 2008, shortly before the scheduled elections in September 2008. Both councils had suffered from corruption scandals which engulfed Labor councillors.
Prior to the sacking, both councils consisted of a directly-elected Mayor or Lord Mayor, and twelve councillors elected from six wards, using the block voting system which results in the same group winning both seats in each ward.
The Labor government had plans to wait until the scheduled council elections in September 2012 before restoring elected councils to the two council areas to the south of Sydney. The Coalition government quickly announced plans for elections in September 2011, and these elections will take place next weekend.
Wollongong is one of the largest councils in New South Wales, and is the focus of a substantial campaign, and I thought I would focus on the campaign in that area.
The new election will be fought in three new wards, with the six previous wards merged together to form the new wards. Each ward will elect four councillors using proportional representation, opening the way up for new groups to win seats on the council.
Ward 1 covers the northern suburbs of Wollongong, including Helensburgh, Coalcliff, Austinmer, Thirroul, Bulli, Woonona, Bellambi, Corrimal and Fairy Meadow. Ward 2 covers the central parts of Wollongong, including Keiraville, Figtree, Unanderra and Smiths Hill. Ward 3 covers southern areas, including Dapto and Port Kembla.
The key focus is on the race for Lord Mayor. Nearly all grouped candidates are linked to a candidate running for Lord Mayor.
The three larger political parties are all running for council and Lord Mayor. The ALP has traditionally dominated Wollongong politics and holds most of the electorates covering Wollongong. Despite a significant drop in their vote at the state election, they remain the largest party in the area and would be expected to win at least one seat and possibly two in each ward. They are running Chris Connor for Lord Mayor.
The Liberal Party has traditionally been hesitant in staking its claim in this Labor town. They ran a hard campaign in the area for the state election, winning the seats of Kiama and Heathcote. They gained an 18% swing in Keira, but fell short. They are running John Dorahy for Lord Mayor after his campaign in Keira. Dorahy is a former rugby league player from the 1970s and 1980s, who was the first captain of the Illawarra Steelers in the early 1980s. While it is unlikely they will win the Lord Mayoralty, you would expect them to gain a number of seats, possibly one in all three wards.
Wollongong has always been a strong area for the Greens, with the party winning the seat of Cunningham at a 2002 by-election. The Greens are running Jill Merrin for Lord Mayor and in Ward 1, and running George Takacs in Ward 2. The party is not running in Ward 3. You would have to think the party has a good shot at winning seats in the two wards where they are running.
Apart from these three parties, another nine independents are running for Lord Mayor. Nearly all groups running for the council wards are aligned to one or another of these Lord Mayoral candidates.
The favourite to win the Lord Mayoralty is apparently former Uniting Church minister Gordon Bradbery. Bradbery came very close to winning the state seat of Wollongong off the ALP at the March election, and polling has suggested he is on track to win the race.
A poll conducted for the Illawarra Mercury suggested that Liberal candidate John Dorahy is the primary opposition to Bradbery, but trailing far behind once preferences from other candidates are distributed.
Bradbery is not running for council and doesn’t appear to be linked to any council candidates. There is a plethora of progressives who will be aiming to win the votes of Bradbery voters for the council race.
Apart from the Greens, the most prominent of these groups is Community Voice. While they are running on a common platform, they are not registered as a party so will not appear with the Community Voice label next to their names on the ballot. They are running former Greens MP Michael Organ for Lord Mayor. Organ was Member for Cunningham from 2002 to 2004 and ran again in 2007. The group appears to have links to Socialist Alliance, with former SA candidate Jess Moore running in Ward 1. It is unclear what the political background is of their other lead candidates, but the group seems broader than just Socialists.
There are other prominent candidates running. Rod Oxley was the former General Manager of Wollongong City Council who faced an adverse report from the Independent Commission Against Corruption. ICAC found that Oxley had allowed a culture of corruption to develop in the council.
Alice Cartan and Andrew Anthony are both former independent councillors who are running for Lord Mayor. Cartan was previously Dave Martin’s running mate covering one of the northern wards, and she has support candidates running in all three wards under the ‘Active Community Team’ platform. Anthony was a former councillor who has been reported as having complained to ICAC originally about the situation at Wollongong Council and is running on an anti-corruption platform.
Vicki Curran is a former Council staff member who had apparently been a victim of harrassment under the old council. Greg Petty is a former independent candidate for Heathcote at the recent state election who was connected to John Hatton’s independent bid for the Legislative Council.
The final two candidates, Julius Kudrynski and Shaun Prince, don’t seem likely to make much of an impact on the race.
In addition to these campaigns there were only two groups running for seats on council who weren’t clearly aligned to one of the Lord Mayoral campaigns. Sara Howson is leading a group running for Ward 1. Howson is a Junior Vice President of NSW Young Labor, raising questions about why an active Labor member is running on an independent ticket separate from the official Labor ticket. The other group running in Ward 3, led by Romeo Cecchele, doesn’t appear to have much of a public profile.
Predictions
With so many candidates it is difficult to pick where the result is headed. It seems Bradbery is the clear favourite for Lord Mayor, but without any aligned council candidates, his lead doesn’t do much for us in predicting the council breakdown.
The ALP should be able to win at least one seat in each ward and probably two in Dapto, although Chris Connor’s dismal showing in Mayoral polls suggests their vote could have dropped further than it was at in March.
The Liberal Party should likely win a seat in each ward. They are running a strong Mayoral candidate and are on a high after their victory in March. While the Liberals still are a minority in a Labor-leaning town, they don’t face much competition from centre-right candidates, so should be able to win a seat in each ward. I think it’s unlikely they’ll win any more than that.
I would expect the final two seats in each ward to be divided between the various progressive groups, including the Greens and Community Voice, with an outside chance of Labor picking up a second seat. Alice Cartan in Ward 1 and Andrew Anthony in Ward 2 as former councillors who seem to have avoided being tarred by the previous council’s corruption seem favourites to pick up seats, alongside the Greens candidates in those wards.
Michael Organ’s Community Voice ticket would also be a strong contender for a seat in one of the wards. As Labor has traditionally had a higher vote in the third ward, the party would be most likely to pick up its fourth seat here, where there is no competition from former councillors or Greens candidates.
I will be looking to cover the results in Wollongong and Shellharbour on Saturday evening.
Is Michael Organ still an active Greens member? If so that would put him in the same boat as Sara Howson.
I don’t know if Michael is still a Greens member but he certainly has not been active in a long time.
Michael Organ is not a greens members and hasn’t been for some time
This Sara Howson “independent” ticket apparently is approved by the ALP (running against ALP candidates without approval results in dismissal from the party).
I guess their hope here is to two candidates in each on around 15% of the vote, instead of the one they’d get for 30%, but this strategy could backfire.
Clinton: It’s a bit reminiscent of student politics, isn’t it?
Indeed. It’s also a similar tactic that worked (perhaps unintentially) in getting the Coalition 4 out of 6 seats in the 2004 Queensland Senate election.
However, Senate elections have ticket voting, so aside from a few percent leaking from below the line votes, splitting the vote does not hurt.
Local government elections have optional above the line preferential voting, so it’s quite possible that this could backfire and result in Labor winning no seats in the ward on say 28% total, despite the quota of 20%, e.g, if the final 6 candidates had vote totals (18%, 18%, 18%, 18%, Labor 1=14%, Labor 2=14%) and there was little preference flow between the Labor candidates.
I think Community Voice may have originally been inspired by belief that Labor was not going to endorse candidates and that this would create an opportunity to appeal to traditional Labor voters.
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