Council elections: who are you voting for?

Yet again, council elections are upon us. It seems like only yesterday our Southbank Residents’ Association (SRA) committee was planning its last “Meet the Candidates” event giving the community the opportunity to ask their questions and hear directly from the candidates. 

This year will be no exception with our event scheduled for Thursday, October 10, 6.30pm at Boyd Community Hub, moderated by ex-City of Melbourne councillor, shareholder activist and Walkley award-winning journalist, Stephen Mayne. SRA has been holding these events for more than 20 years.

However, this year would see the greatest number of Lord Mayoral candidates since I have been living in the municipality, which is 18 years.

So, “where does one start with their considerations?”, I hear you pondering.

The City of Melbourne is unique, insofar that it does not operate on a ward allocation (like every other municipality), i.e. sections of the municipality (wards) vote for their representative, and then the council elects the mayor. 

Instead, the City of Melbourne runs two elections. The first to directly elect the Lord Mayor and Deputy Lord Mayor by popular vote and the second for councillors. Councillors are elected by a quota system whereby the elected officials are determined by the overall allocation of votes, creating quotas. There are nine quotas (one for each councillor position). 

The council will be made up of 11 councillors with the Lord Mayor and Deputy being two of those positions and the remaining nine are councillors as determined by the quotas. Essentially each quota is 11 per cent of the votes. Candidates are elected if they successfully obtain one quota, or teams can have one representative for each quota they obtain. Team members are elected in order of their position on the team ticket. 

The successfully elected candidates are determined after preferences are allocated and quotas achieved. Likewise, the Lord Mayor and Deputy are determined after allocation of all preferences and the team with the majority of the votes is declared the winner.

One other key difference in the City of Melbourne, is that businesses and non-residential property owners can vote twice, while residents can only lodge one vote each. This change was introduced in 1996 by the then Premier Jeff Kennett after he sacked the City of Melbourne council. The city looked remarkedly different at that time with very few residents. In 2001, Labor locked it back in. 

For more than a decade there have been calls for reform and to fall in line with the rest of the state (and Australia for that matter) of one person, one vote. In my opinion, the current system is fundamentally unfair on the residents of the municipality, who now make up the majority, therefore should have an equal vote on the make-up of who will represent us. Any candidate who is pushing for this reform would certainly get a tick from me.

When considering your vote, be mindful of what they are promising. I am hearing promises of things which are not within the remit of council, therefore next to impossible to achieve. Of course, they can lobby to the respective institution which does have control over those items for these desired changes, but just remember a promise of what they WILL do is not the same as lobbying. But I guess, this is normal electioneering no matter the election. Many candidates are spruiking promises which are targeting the populist vote, I would like to think our electorate is smarter than falling for that.

Likewise, I am hearing many promises which will cost many dollars, yet there is no mention of how they will pay for them. A candidate with a holistic policy including funding would certainly get a tick from me.

You may not know, within the City of Melbourne, a councillor doesn’t have to live in the electorate. They merely need to have a desk somewhere where they can call their “address”. 

In years gone by, many candidates have nominated under this premise. I can recall several terms ago where only two of the 11 councillors lived in the municipality. A candidate who lives in the municipality would certainly get a tick from me too.

Since we have a preference system, then you need to remember who you vote for may not be where your vote will end up. It is important to try to understand where your vote might be preferenced to. When you know where it might end up, then you may not be happy to support that candidate. If you are concerned where your vote may end up, then you have the option to vote below the line and take full control.

As someone who has been attending council regularly for the past 10 years that I have been the president of SRA, I have been disappointed with the performance of many of the elected representatives. 

Sadly, and it happens too often, individuals are there purely as a stepping stone to their next political move. These individuals are usually elected on a party affiliated ticket where the voters are merely voting along their party lines and not asking if the proposed representative is there for the right reasons or binging some desirable skills or characteristics to council. I have seen first-hand how engaged our councillors are.

Sadly, this year we have lost one of the community’s greatest assets in Cr Rohan Leppert. While being a councillor is a part-time commitment, for the past 12 years Cr Leppert has essentially been a full-time councillor, by choice. He is across all the detail on every report that council needs to consider and is always available for to anyone in the municipality. 

SRA would like to extend a tremendous thank-you to Cr Leppert for his tireless efforts and advice with our lobbying over those years and we wish him well with his future endeavours where we are certain he will excel.

I believe it will be a tight contest this year with possibly three main contenders. I hope this will give you some guidance with what to consider when casting your vote. 

SRA has also produced a guide which collates the preferences for ease of understanding. This can be found on our website at southbankresidents.org.au.

I hope to see you at our Meet the Candidates event on October 10, 6.30pm, Boyd Community Hub. •