The QPR Blog

My how time flies when you’re having fun! Yep, 12 September 2020 will be here before you know it and this time around there may be something more to consider. By the time you read this, Council will have resolved whether or not to hold a referendum in conjunction with the upcoming Council elections.

Under Section 16 of the Local Government Act, there are several matters that cannot be acted upon by Council unless approval to do so has been given at a constitutional referendum. These include decisions relating to the existence of electoral wards or ridings, the number of councillors on Council and the basis on which the Mayor attains office, and it is this last issue that will have been the subject of Council’s deliberations.

Around 25% of NSW Councils currently have their Mayor elected by the electors, rather than by the Council. There are obviously arguments for and against this arrangement, with the other 75% of the State’s Councils choosing to simply elect the Mayor from within their number.

In most cases, the Mayor will be aligned with the dominant political group within Council, but the way in which the Mayor is elected can have a direct bearing on how this situation arises. The Mayor elected by electors will, quite reasonably, generally reflect the dominant ideology or population group within the electorate. While this is not a problem in itself, in an electorate also comprising a number of smaller or less influential population groups the opportunity for representation of these smaller groups is diminished as a consequence of the way in which Local Government elections are conducted in NSW.

First of all, when the Mayor is elected by the electors, there are two elections—the Mayoral election and the Council election—and there is therefore one seat less up for grabs in the Council election (the Mayor is also a councillor). As a direct consequence, the opportunities for a minor candidate in the Council election are reduced—in an eleven member Council, from 1-in-11 to 1-in-10. The playing field is further tilted in favour of the dominant group or party in that, having elected the Mayor, the potential to also dominate the Council election is undiminished by the fact that one of their candidates (the Mayor) has already been elected.

This situation is exacerbated as a result of a quirk in the way concurrent Mayoral and councillor elections are conducted when the successful Mayoral candidate also stands for election as a councillor, which is almost always the case. Although the elections are held concurrently, the Mayoral election is counted first and the successful candidate is then removed from the count of the councillor election. However, rather than simply removing the successful Mayoral candidate from the councillor election, along with their quota of votes, their quota is passed on to the second preference on the respective voting papers (per Section 352 of the Local Government (General) Regulation). This may seem reasonable at one level, but note that the candidate in question has actually been elected as a councillor, albeit as the Mayor, so their quota is effectively being counted twice.

Group voting, as is commonly practiced in local government elections, also complicates the situation because it is then the Group or political party that effectively nominates the recipient of the Mayor’s Group votes in the councillor election, not the electors. The result is that, having been successful in the Mayoral election, the Mayor (or his or her party) effectively gets to choose to whom his or her quota will be allocated—the votes effectively cascade down the list of candidates in their Group until they rest with the first candidate who has not yet accumulated enough votes to be elected—thus gaining two seats on Council for the ‘price’ of one.

There would be less of an issue if all candidates stood in their own right, and there was no Group voting, but note that there would still be a difference between simply removing the Mayor’s quota of votes from the subsequent councillor election and passing them on as preferences.

Perhaps none of this would be a problem if the councillor election was counted first, and the electors, rather than the councillors, were then allowed to choose the Mayor from the list of successful candidates (perhaps simply as the first candidate elected—i.e. the candidate who attracted the most first preference votes could be declared elected as Mayor). This would not be an entirely impractical solution, but it would eliminate the opportunity for a candidate to stand only for the position of Mayor, and not as a councillor, which might not be a bad thing anyway—who wants someone who’s only in it for the glory?