The Liberal Party’s monumental stuff up in failing to lodge their nominations on time has been the biggest talking point about tomorrow’s local government elections.
Ironically it didn’t affect that perennial basket case Liverpool because that council decided against using the Australian Electoral Commission to run the election.
A private firm called Australian Election Company will run their election.
It’s fair to say nobody expected the elections to go ahead, so a bizarre result in Liverpool will surprise nobody.
And there’s no fewer than 10 candidates for mayor, including Ned Mannoun and his former Liberal Party colleague on council Peter Ristevski, veteran independent councillor Peter Harle, plus Labor’s Betty Green and community campaigner Michael Andjelkovic.
We sincerely wish the voters of Liverpool luck when they get into that polling booth to cast their vote.
In Wollondilly, the “other shire’’, there are just four mayoral candidates, Matt Gould, Benn Banasik, Paul Rogers and Bev Spearpoint, making the task for voters a little easier than in Liverpool.
Camden and Campbelltown continue the old school system of electing mayors via a vote among the newly elected councillors, usually a few days after the result is known.
But back to the Liberal Party implosion: there is just one Liberal candidate standing in Camden, the former mayor Therese Fedeli, who is in the same ward as the woman who replaced her in the top job, Labor’s Ashleigh Cagney.
Here in Campbelltown, Josh Cotter, the leading candidate on the Community First Totally Independent Party, thinks they may be picking up a few of those Liberal Party supporters.
“Best thing I do is say to them, isolate every single person in our team, from 1 to 10, and ask them to read the profiles of every one of them because when they read that they can see that they’re all community servers, and people committed to the community,’’ says Cotter, who could very well become mayor in the new term of council.
“On our flyer it says we’re committed to staying true to Australian traditions and values, and also staying true to upkeeping traditions of what Campbelltown is, and the history of this city, balanced by bringing in fresh ideas and new faces.’’
Meanwhile, earlier in the week Jayden Rivera, the lead candidate for the Greens in Campbelltown, revealed why the party decided not to employ corflutes (or posters in plain English) in the lead up to the election.
“For years, we have seen the flooding of political signs plastered all over the suburbs of Campbelltown, with many being vandalised, defaced and removed,’’ Rivera said.
“This has resulted in seeing many signs being left in our waterways and often seeing other parties place them on trees, some with wildlife sightings, nailed and therefore creating a potential risk for harm to the wildlife and also littering our green spaces.
“I believe that whilst acknowledging that it may make the community aware that an election is looming, the excessive placement of corflutes around is an eye-sore for the community and we should advocate to either stop, or severely limit the signage and the placement of signage around Campbelltown and focus on working towards better engagement measures for our community.”
Tomorrow, Saturday, September 14 is voting day, from 8am to 6pm.
Thank you for your overview of the Council pre election candidates and news on what is happening
I’m commenting on your page for the first time as I was interested in the corflutes ideas
I am one who believes there is a flood of them wherever you are campaigning and for many reasons I would support a reduction in the number that could be put up especially at the polling sites
A ban on the corflutes altogether would be interesting but not sure all political parties would go along with that idea as it may change the voting habits of those voters who are not fully committed to their party of preference 🦋