Outside of the election campaign itself, commentary on local government issues is provided on my personal website blog.
The Voice
… of the Queanbeyan-Palerang community
The Results Are In
The result of the first Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council election was declared at 10.30 this morning. The new Council will comprise the following candidates, elected in the order listed:
- Tim Overall
- Brian Brown
- Mark Schweikert
- Trudy Taylor
- Peter Bray
- Trevor Hicks
- Kenrick Winchester
- Michele Biscotti
- Peter Marshall
- Pete Harrison
- Radmila Noveska
The Community Strategic Plan
During one of the Meet the Candidates meetings last week, I was a little alarmed to find that only one person in the audience was willing to admint that they knew anything about council’s (or, really, that should be the community’s) Community Strategic Plan (CSP). This is not really the right place to dig into the NSW Integrated Planning and Reporting (IP&R) framework, but I thought it might at least be worth providing an overview of where the CSP fits into that program. (more…)
Local Government Reform
If you heard the news of the NSW Government’s abandonment of outstanding council amalgamations and wondered where that left their local government reform agenda, I’m sure you would not have been alone. It’s a bit disconcerting that while amalgamations were apparently a critical element of that agenda, 15 of those 35 originally proposed have now been abandoned. Mind you, amalgamations were not a centrepiece of the report presented by the Independent Local Government Review Panel back in 2013, so maybe there was some other, perhaps more political motivation for council amalgamations in the first place. (more…)
Voting in Local Government Elections
As the Queanebyan-Palerang Regional Council elections approach, it’s a good time to review how votes are distributed under the proportional representation voting system that is used for Local Government elections. The following is by necessity a simplified overview. The interested reader should consult Schedule 5 of the Local Government (General) Regulation 2005 for more detail. (more…)
The Bigger Picture
When election time rolls around, it’s all too easy to become preoccupied with our own individual issues, talking about fixing this or fixing that. We also live in a world that has come to expect political conflict, a battle, just like the political bickering we see on the news each night over what issue might or might not be more important. (more…)
Why form a Group?
Filed under: Election Commentary
As in both Federal and State government elections, candidates in Local Government elections can choose to stand as either a grouped or ungrouped candidate. In Federal and State government elections, groups are almost the exclusive domain of registered political parties, but this is not so much the case in Local Government elections. (more…)