By popular demand, here’s a thread for discussion of the New South Wales council elections. Can’t tell you much about them myself, except that they’re on tomorrow. Antony Green has an index of candidates and the ABC will be publishing results, no doubt in more digestible form than the New South Wales Electoral Commission.
The LIBs in Manly are Fuglies. The current local member and putative Saviour of the Libs in NSW is one of them with strong links to the “The Family” via his pa.
People in Manly voted strongly IND
Gary Bruce, you sound like a person complaing about a neighbour’s fence that needs painting… all the while ignoring the fact that your own house has burnt to the ground.
Was it so long ago? I remember it as though it was yesterday… with Li’l Al gimping his way up the stairs to the celebrations and a sore head for a week…
I don’t know much about NSW local govt elections, but it doesn’t look as if the Libs are picking up huge swings. If they can’t do that, it doesn’t look that great for them. You can compare with the last UK local elections, when the Tories flogged Labour 45-24.
I believe 78 and 81 were the years of the two great Wranslides, when Labor won 55%+ of the PRIMARY vote.
Lord D
UK LG politics is far more the creature of the parties than it is here. But that is changing at least in NSW especially the really big LGAs.
Steve Annabelle – what in the heck have I said that suggested that? I’m after info not criticism.
In Gosford (home of the Iguana Bar) GRN and ALP neck and neck on 15% behind LIB on 33%
In Newcastle it looks like the IND Tate is safe as mayor with really close races for most of the wards
can some one please advise me how group preferences are distributed
Is a preference distribution registered with the sec … like the senate & nsw upper house?
eg alp has 2 quotas but is short of a third remaining 2 candidates are also less than
a full quota… i presume lower of 2 would be excluded then those preferences would
be distributed to the remaining 2 candidates
GRN top the poll in all four wards in the Leichhardt SSR. Another LIB/LAB coalition in opposition?
I give Leichhardt and Marrickville GRN councils about 3 weeks before whoever survives that long as the state ALP minister for Local Govt. to move to dismiss them for being “unworkable” and putting administrators in.
Or am I being too cynical?
No 204
LG elections are seen as more of an inconvenience to most NSW voters anyway. If they were a real barometer we would have wildly different results in federal and state elections.
I think it’s great the Greens are doing well. It shows, I think, that the people are saying to the major parties “a pox on both your houses”.
With one third in GRNs running second in one of the wards of the Fascist State known as Warringah and may get one poor soul up to represent all that is good and honest. But prefs may tell against them…
Interesting: it looks like the Greens will win 2 seats on Hornsby Council(my area)!
Labor might get one seat too, assuming they get Green preferences.
Overall: a patchy result for Labor. They’ve done badly in inner city areas – Sydney City, Randwick, Waverley, Randwick, their vote has gone to the Greens & Clover Moore.
But, conversely Labor’s vote seems to have held up in Western Sydney, Strathfield and Canada Bay.
And, although the Liberals have done well in some places, I can’t see much evidence of some huge swing to them, so I find it hard to believe that O’Farrell can take much out of this.
Holroyd Council (centred on Merrylands near Parramatta) ALP 36% Lib 32%. And in the South ward they are outpolling ALP. I didn’t realise there was a liberal section of Holroyd.
In Lismore GRN running second to Country Labor – that’s with about a third of the vote in.
I have heard through a source that the Liberals think they could win the mayoralty in Liverpool. That would be unheard of. At present the candidate has 20% but claims that preference flows are moving his way.
That might be something for Barry O’Farrell to gloat about.
Dare I say having a new Premier from Western Sydney helped Labor hold council seats in places like Parramatta/Blacktown?
In Ballina GRN leading in one ward with 2/3rds in.
Nathan who?
Decent chance of Greens candidate Ray Goodlass getting up in Wagga… (6th in group totals 0.74% quota … a reasonable preference flow from group G is expected this time around… also from ALP Ind Elliott-Rudder)
Liberal and Labor are rooted, honestly. Labor are rooted for obvious reasons. Liberals are rooted because with EVERYTHING going for them, the vast majority of votes went to the Greens and independents.
This is a good day for local communities at the expense of partisan and selfish politics.
Steve A
Holroyd has traditionally been a very conservative area.
They prided themselves on having the lowest rates in NSW. Of course not having bourgeois things like public libraries and having residents leaching off the the ones in Blacktown and Parramatta helped with that.
It is a very small LGA too. I mean in area compared to say all the surrounding ones. It should have been amalgamated years ago.
I really want to see state wide votes, or something that can compare the state of the parties now compared to previous years.
No 222
Ditto albertross.
Indeed, it would seem that in many safe Labor areas that the turmoil of NSW politics had little significant influence. Which immediately suggests that voters are clever enough to distinguish between the issues of all three levels of government.
It was interesting that the Australian Business Party polled reasonably well in a few LGAs. Can’t understand the point of the party, except to fragment the Liberal vote.
No 225
I disagree. Janice Crosio ruled that area for a long time. It is a working class area. I know because I used to live there.
“I really want to see state wide votes, or something that can compare the state of the parties now compared to previous years.”
I agree Oz it really is hard to get a handle on.
Clearly they don’t see any parties that have the interests of business close to their hearts… irony much?
Oz
It wouldn’t be apples with apples.
There are a lot of councils with no elections eg. W’gong
I think it really is difficult to get proper statewide votes in a council election, because there are so many independents and groups that change from election to election.
For example, from the figures on Antony Green’s site, there is a 32.4% swing to the Liberals in Holroyd, but this is their figure, so presumable they didn’t contest the election last time. These figures make it very hard to see how they are doing.
I think it is OK to look at councils or regions and examine the major parties, but there is not a lot of analysis, other than Labor down a lot, Greens up a lot, independents doing well.
One thing, I don’t think Craig Wing has made it onto Randwick Council.
There are a few, true, but out of the 170? councils would they make that big a difference? Let’s take them out of the equation of the previous results then.
We can look at every council result individually and make guesses to the final vote and then weight them according to population… but that would take a very long time.
We can already see things that are fairly across the board – Labor losing, Greens and Libs gaining. But even that isn’t really uniform. Kind of just want some way to quantify the general “feeling” that’s come out of these results.
GP
Janice only controlled the western end of Holroyd. The City (joke) is split between four federal divisions: Prospect, Parramatta, Reid, and Blaxland
Prospect is much larger than the Holroyd LGA ie. 4 times as large in area.
From memory the Parramatta booths in Holroyd are majority Liberal.
Valid points, Boundary Man, but it is frustrating not being able to have conclusive figures as to the state of mood in the… state and the state of the parties. Of course these are council elections and the issues vary council to council but they can be used to gauge public mood regarding state issues and people are going to try, but it’s hard with ad hoc figures at present.
Oz
Frankly the results are all over the place. I expected the ALP to be uniformly thrashed. But this is not the case. There are respectable ALP showings all over the place.
In Blacktown’s Third Ward there were two fine INDs both well known in the area. However it looks like it will fall 2 ALP and 1 LIB. The LIB is not even a resident.
Why do the political parties persist in putting up Rugby League people as candidates?
Graham Annesley couldn’t win Miranda at the last N.S.W state election.
I agree OZ. But I also wonder, why in Canterbury the ALP is holding up and doing about the same whereas in Marrickville, just along the Cooks River, the ALP is getting flogged. Partly it is demographics, Canterbury is old-Labor and Marrickville is green left. Linda Burney will have no trouble, but Carmel Tebbutt might be in trouble.
I think we actually jumped the gun a bit. We saw the ALP get hammered in pretty much 90% of the regions and saw the Greens increase markedly in about the same number, and get control of two councils and increase their number of seats by a pretty big proportion.
And then things kind of slowed down and we thought “Well it’s not that bad because they kept spots and gained a few” but if you’re comparing councillors today to what councillors yesterday the definite thing in there is a thrashing of Labor.
It’s interesting to note too that Labor’s vote is actually up in the Canada Bay Council area – Homebush, Drummoyne, the Olympic stadium site etc
You are right on that last one Oz.
I think Rees needs to bring on an early election to clear the air rather than have all the by-elections.
Part of it is demographics but part of it is the unique situation The Greens are in. On top of their core support base of the far-left (comparatively) and environmentalists, they get votes from people who just “anti” the two major parties, they get Liberal votes from the upper-crust who are a bit worried about climate change, and more pronounced in this election, they get Labor votes from people who believe in social democracy and traditional Labor things but really despise the machine Labor has become.
It’s a very mixed bag and usually The Greens do well in areas that have a mixture of all the above. Trendy left-wing types, environmentalists, more affluent people with an environmental conscious, left-leaning working class, disenfranchised voters and disenfranchised Labor party voters. Inner-city areas manage to have all those kind of diverse groups.
Who got 32% of the votes last time in Canada Bay and aren’t contesting it this time? Are the independents re-badged? Is it part of the anti-amalgamation battle from earlier?
Yeah he does need too and it would be the best thing for the State, but I don’t think he wants to jeopardise his position and become the shortest serving premier in history.
Were Kevin Ryan, Michele Cleary and John Fahey merely the boofs that prove the rule?
[I think Rees needs to bring on an early election to clear the air rather than have all the by-elections.]
Won’t happen. Fixed terms and all that.
A fixed term can be got around if you want to. Lose all those by-elections and see if some of the rats don’t vote down a confidence motion.
Considering the byelections: the Liberals don’t have a prayer of winning Lakemba and Cabramatta. Labor might be in more danger if there are a couple of decent independent candidates in those seats. We’d agree the Nats will get back Port Macquarie, and the Libs should take Ryde.
How many by-elections are we talking about? Are they all in losable seats?