City of Liverpool election, 2016

The City of Liverpool covers parts of south-western Sydney, including Liverpool, Chipping Norton, Warwick Farm, Moorebank, Holsworthy, Casula, Prestons, Lurnea, Green Valley, Hoxton Park, Austral and Badgerys Creek.

Liverpool has a population of approximately 200,000 people (as of 2014), which makes it the eleventh most populous council in New South Wales. Liverpool is the fifth most populous NSW council to be elected in September 2016.

Wards
Liverpool is divided up into two wards, with each ward electing five councillors. The council also includes a directly-elected mayor.

North ward covers parts of Liverpool council north of Newbridge Road and Hoxton Park Road, including Chipping Norton, Warwick Farm, Ashcroft, Cartwright, Miller, Busby, Hinchinbrook, Green Valley, Cecil Hills and parts of Liverpool, as well as the rural western edge of the council, including Badgerys Creek and Bringelly.

South ward covers the remainder of the council, including those suburbs at the eastern edge. The suburbs include Holsworth, Wattle Grove, Moorebank, Casula, Lurnea, Prestons, Hoxton Park, Horningsea Park, West Hoxton, Austral and Rossmore.

Incumbent mayor
Ned Mannoun (Liberal)

Incumbent councillors

¹Labor councillor Anne Stanley resigned from Liverpool council in April 2016 to stand for the federal seat of Werriwa at the 2016 federal election.

History
Liverpool has been historically dominated by Labor. Labor dominated the council up until 2004, but the Liberal Party has been resurgent on the council over the last two terms.

The first directly-elected mayor of Liverpool was Mark Latham, who won the mayoralty in 1991. He resigned as mayor in 1994 after winning the Werriwa federal by-election.

Latham was succeeded by George Paciullo. Paciullo had a previous career on Liverpool council from 1959 until 1971, including one year as mayor in the late 1960s. He had then served as a state MP from 1971 until 1988, and as a minister in the Wran and Unsworth governments. He returned to the local council after leaving state politics.

Paciullo was elected mayor in 1995 and 1999. Liverpool City Council was sacked by the state government two weeks before the 2004 council election, in part due to issues around the controversial Oasis development. This ended Paciullo’s ten years as mayor.

The council was kept in administration for four years, and in 2008 a new council was elected. This council was led by Labor mayor Wendy Waller. The ten members of the council included four Labor members (not including the mayor), three Liberals, two members of the Liverpool Community Independents Team, along with conservative independent Gary Lucas.

While Labor held the mayoralty, they did not have a working majority on the council, and more often than not the three independents sided with the three Liberals to outvote for the five Labor councillors.

Labor had a poor election in Liverpool in 2012, as they did across Western Sydney. Labor’s vote dropped by 5.9%. The vote for the Liverpool Community Independents Team also dropped by 9.3%, and 7% less chose to vote for independents. Most of this vote flowed to the Liberal Party, who gained a 16.25% swing.

The Liberal Party’s Ned Mannoun won the mayoralty comfortably ahead of the incumbent Waller. The Liberal Party won five other council seats out of ten, with Labor winning four and the LCIT winning one seat. This gave the Liberal Party an overall majority on the council.

Candidate summary
Four groups are running full tickets across Liverpool City Council: Labor, Liberal, the Greens and the Liverpool Community Independents Team. These four parties are running a full ticket in each ward as well as a mayoral candidate. In addition, Phil Sim is running as the lead candidate for an independent group in the south ward as well as for mayor, Seema Mishra is running for mayor and as an ungrouped candidate in the south ward, and two other candidates are running as ungrouped, including one standing for the Animal Justice Party.

The Liberal Party is running sitting councillor Tony Hadchiti for mayor, as well as the lead candidate in the south ward.

Incumbent Liberal mayor Ned Mannoun is not running for re-election after ICAC raided his office in July. Mannoun was previously banned from acting as spokesperson for the council in March, suggesting a loss of support amongst the Liberal councillors who hold a majority on the council. Mannoun had originally nominated for Liberal preselection but later withdrew that nomination.

Three of the five sitting Liberal councillors are running for re-election. In the north ward, sitting councillors Mazhar Hadid and Gus Balloot are running for the first two spots. Balloot currently represents the south ward, but has chosen to move. Sitting north ward councillor Peter Ristevski and south ward councillor Sabrina Mamone are not running for re-election.

Former mayor Wendy Waller is running again as the Labor mayoral candidate. Waller is not running for the council. Sitting Labor councillors Geoff Shelton and Ali Karnib are both running as the party’s lead candidates in the south and north wards respectively. The fourth Labor seat was held by Anne Stanley, who resigned in April to successfully run for the federal seat of Werriwa.

Councillor Peter Harle is running for mayor and as the north ward lead candidate for the Liverpool Community Independents Team.

Signe Westerberg is running for mayor for the Greens, and also running in the north ward.

The full candidate list is at the bottom of this guide.

Assessment
The Liberal Party did well to win the mayoralty in 2012, as well as managing to win a third seat in the south ward. Liberal Party fortunes have soured since 2012, and the party may be damaged locally by the scandals affecting outgoing mayor Ned Mannoun.

Labor and Liberal will likely each win two seats in each ward, with the final seat up for grabs. Peter Harle and the Greens will both be aiming for a seat in the north ward, and Harle may well hold ambitions of regaining his group’s second seat on the council.

If Labor wins back the mayoralty, they’ll need two seats in each ward and an additional seat in one of the wards to give themselves a working majority. That could come through Labor winning three seats, or by the election of a Green. It’s unclear how a new Labor mayor would work with independent Harle, who generally wasn’t supportive in the 2008-2012 council.

2012 council election result

2012 mayoral election result

Vote breakdown by ward
Vote data has been broken down by ward. Mayoral results have been split based on which booth the vote was cast at, and special votes have been treated as a separate category.

The Liberal Party council candidates performed significantly stronger in the south ward, with 44% of the primary vote, while Labor could only manage 30%. The vote for the two major parties was much closer in the north ward, with both parties polling just over 38%. The LCIT polled around 9% in both wards, and the Greens polled 5.5% in both wards. The vote for other independents was slightly higher in the south ward than the north.

Liberal mayoral candidate Ned Mannoun outperformed his party in the north ward, polling 44% in the south and 43% in the north, with a similar vote in the special votes. Labor polled slightly higher (31%) in the north compared to 28% in the south, while independent candidate Gary Lucas polled slightly higher in the south than in the north.

Council results by ward

Mayoral results by ward

Election results (Liberal and Labor) at the 2012 City of Liverpool council election
Click on the ‘visible layers’ box to toggle between primary votes for the Liberal Party and Labor Party.

Election results (independents and Greens) at the 2012 City of Liverpool council election
Click on the ‘visible layers’ box to toggle between primary votes for the Liverpool Community Independents Team, the Greens and for all other independents.

Election results at the 2012 City of Liverpool mayoral election
Click on the ‘visible layers’ box to toggle between primary votes for Liberal candidate Ned Mannoun, Labor candidate Wendy Waller and independent candidate Gary Lucas.

Candidates – Mayor

• Seema Mishra
• Peter Harle (Liverpool Community Independents Team)
• Phil Sim
• Tony Hadchiti (Liberal)
• Signe Westerberg (Greens)
• Wendy Waller (Labor)

Candidates – North ward

• A – Peter Harle (Liverpool Community Independents Team)
• B – Liberal
  1. Mazhar Hadid
  2. Gus Balloot
  3. George Germanos
  4. Daniella Frisina
  5. Russell Vickers
• C – Labor
  1. Ali Karnib
  2. Nathan Hagarty
  3. Sam Kayal
  4. Patricia Glossop
  5. Betty Green
• D – Signe Westerberg (Greens)
• Ungrouped
  • Kieran McGuire

Candidates – South ward

• A – Liberal
  1. Tony Hadchiti
  2. Tina Ayyad
  3. Fiona Macnaught
  4. Jose Correia
  5. Richard Ammoun
• B – Karress Rhodes (Liverpool Community Independents Team)
• C – Lance Westerberg (Greens)
• D – Labor
  1. Geoff Shelton
  2. Charishma Kaliyanda
  3. Brad Parker
  4. Raffaele Catanzariti
  5. Ethan Monaghan
• E – Phil Sim
• Ungrouped
  • Ellie Robertson (Animal Justice)
  • Seema Mishra