We need fulltime mayors and voluntary voting to boost council democracy

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]t least two of our local councils will need some serious reform to help them cope with the challenges of growth.

Firstly, both Camden and Campbelltown need to seriously address the need for a full time mayor in the near future.

Camden has experienced massive population growth in the past 10 years, and will continue to do so.

After 10-15 years of consolidation, Campbelltown is about to embark on another era of growth that is forecast to almost double its current population of just under 160,000 residents.

Recent changes related to planning approvals on councils have meant the mayor, and the rest of the elected councillors, can no longer consider developments.

As a result of the State Government changes, all planning powers now reside with the council general managers and their executive team, and so called independent planning panels.

The aim was to reduce the risk of corruption which the State Government believed existed when elected councillors had planning powers.

In theory, a good plan.

In reality it means accountability has gone out the window when major decisions are made affecting tens of thousands of people.

When councillors could make these decisions they had to face the music at the next election.

General managers and other senior council staff do not have to worry about such democratic requirements, and nor do the planning panels.

That’s because none of them are elected by the people.

Making things worse, few of them even live in the area and so don’t have the benefit of the kind of local knowledge required to make the best possible decisions.

One way to address that in the future is to have popularly elected, full time mayors with planning powers.

There are a lot of other good reasons why big councils like Campbelltown and Camden ought to have fulltime mayors, but those can be discussed at another time.

In any case, a referendum is needed in each council area to bring in popularly elected mayors.

With the next elections due in September 2020, even if a referendum was successful then, the first popular vote for mayor in Camden and Campbelltown would be four years later in 2024.

But debate and planning need to start now if we are serious about addressing such serious planning challenges in our region.

If there are any doubts take a look at Liverpool, where they are powering ahead off the back of 20 years of electing a fulltime mayor. It hasn’t always been smooth sailing, but overall it has been a winner.

At the outset I said there were two council reforms needed.

The second is voluntary voting.

The time has come to do away with compulsory voting in this country – one of the few major democracies that makes its citizens vote.

Let’s start he process with local government in 2019.

I have no doubt that voluntary voting will be a winner.

It will do two things: it will get rid of the donkey vote and will encourage more voters to invest a little more time in finding out who the best candidate is for them.

It might just be the shot in the arm our democracy needs.

Personally I’d go further and provide for referendums to decide controversial policies, such as increasing rates or taxes by large amounts.

We need more democracy, not less and more openness, less secrecy.

An engaged electorate in the age of social media, coupled with voluntary voting could produce some big dividends for us.