You Choose the Mayor: Yes or No?

TO help voters sort out fact from fiction and fright surrounding the referendum, scone.com.au spoke to the electoral commission and Brian Dollery the Professor of Economics at the University of New England who has keen interest in the area of Mayoral elections.

First, both systems of a directly elected Mayor and an indirectly elected Mayor are perfectly legitimate forms of Mayoral election in Australia’s incredibly stable democratic system and the New South Wales electoral commission could not point to any examples of violent civil unrest, coup d’etats, political revolution, political assassinations or the need for martial law to be implemented as a result of changing to either option in Australia; so we should be fine either way.

We have two basic systems to choose from:

1. The community votes directly for the Mayor – directly elected Mayor.
2. The Councillors elected by the community then elect the Mayor – indirectly elected Mayor.

Below are some common statements in relation to Mayoral systems with insights from Professor Dollery, advice from the New South Wales electoral commission, general background and considerations.

Having a directly elected Mayor can be like two systems.

“It effectively means you haven’t got one governing body you’ve got two, because the Mayor has a popular mandate and if the Mayor disagrees with the Council then it can be a problem; whereas when the Mayor is indirectly elected you can still get those sorts of problems but the other Councillors can replace the person with someone who commands the majority third,” said Professor Dollery.

“But then sometimes you have Councils who are deadlocked in conflict and have a history of conflict and they are trying to overthrow each other to become Mayor and it can be very dysfunctional and in that case there is a strong case for a directly elected Mayor because that person can break the deadlock,” Professor Dollery said.

If a directly elected Mayor dies in office it would mean an expensive by-election.

For this scenario we had to check with the NSW electoral commission who had to do some checking themselves; what they confirmed was:

If there is any Councillor vacancy you need to have an election within 90 days to fill that vacancy, regardless of which Mayoral election model is in place.

However, in the indirect model, if a Councillor vacates for any reason within the last 18 months of the four year term, the Council can ask the Minister for Local Government to postpone filling the vacancy until the next general election.

But a by-election may only be avoided if there is no imbalance within the Council, for example there may be imbalance if there is an even number of Councillors who may become locked when voting on issues.

Since the Upper Hunter Shire has nine Councillors, if the Mayor died, there would be an even number of Councillors left, which could create imbalance and everyone would have to head to the polls early anyway.

A local example is that under the current indirectly elected model, when Mayor Barry Rose died a by-election still had to be held.

So the statement is true, but then it is also likely to be the case if it is an indirectly elected Mayor, or indeed the death of any Councillor.

Directly elected Mayors have a mandate from the people.

“With a directly elected Mayor they can claim they have a mandate from the community and can make a stronger case, whereas if you have other Councillors and there is no party politics they often don’t share a common platform and there is no mandate from the public,” said Professor Dollery.

Political parties prefer an indirectly elected Mayor, so that they can run enough candidates to choose the Mayor.

“Most country Councils in New South Wales don’t have overt party politics and that’s a good thing too,” said Professor Dollery.

“In Sydney you see party politics in local government and in the literature there is a thing called political entrepreneurship where a person thinks gee I’d like to be in the state parliament but first I’ll get into local government and get my name out and be known by the local community and use that as a platform to launch a political career,” he said.

“So their real interest isn’t in doing something for the local community it is in grandstanding and getting publicity.

“So I think party politics is not a good idea, but you do also have this covert party politics which is pretty common, where you don’t have overt party politics and there is an argument that if you have a directly elected, non-party Mayor then that suppresses that overt party politics,” said Professor Dollery.

Does the size of the town matter?

“I think in smaller communities the case for a directly elected Mayor is smaller because people can approach Councillors, that distance between the electors and the elected representatives isn’t as big,” Brian Dollery said.

Could the same argument work for a directly elected Mayor that people know who they are voting for because it is a small town and they know them?

“Yes, I suppose so, but sometimes you think you know somebody and then they get into power and all of a sudden they are not the same as they used to be,” laughed Professor Dollery.

How many votes is enough to become a directly elected Mayor?

Having the “most” amount of votes, won’t mean you become Mayor, unless you have 50% of the vote plus 1.

The electoral commission explained that for Mayoral elections, it is ‘optional preferential’ voting, which means voters can vote for just one person, or list in order of their preference who they would like as Mayor and only list as many as they like and they don’t have to fill out every box. (PLEASE note this is different to the local Councillor elections being held on Saturday).

By putting down preferences if your first option does not become Mayor you still have further options to indicate your next preference, it’s a bit like being asked do you want beef, chicken or fish?

If there is no beef left what is your second preference?

Maybe if you can’t have beef you decide you don’t want a second option and that is fine too.

The electoral commission starts by looking at if any Mayoral candidate has 50% of the vote plus 1, in which case they become the Mayor.

But if nobody has more than 50% of the vote plus one then they look at who has the least number of votes and they are excluded and any second preferences on those ballot papers are given to the person the voter has chosen, so that makes everyone’s pile go up every time you exclude a candidate until you get a point where someone is over 50% of the vote plus one and that’s where it ends.

The indirectly elected Mayor is based on the Westminster system founded in England and what our political system is based on so therefore we should stick to that model for local Mayoral election.

True, but also in the United Kingdom they use the first past the post system to elect single members of parliament, whereas in Australia we have proportional representation.

To try to base the Australian local government Mayoral elections on the same system used in the United Kingdom, arguably could be like implementing the first past the post system for the Mayoral election where the person with the most amount of votes becomes Mayor, hence a directly elected Mayor.

Just to add further confusion there is a third model in the United States known as the directly elected chief executive model, so the Mayor is also the chief executive of the Council, so they are political and administrative head of the Council, thankfully the third option is not an option on the table in Australia.

Other points to consider:

• The majority of Councils in New South Wales are not directly elected, but that is gradually changing as there are more referendums.
• A directly elected Mayor is in office for the full four year term which can give predictability for leadership, support long term planning and stability in the office.
• Having a directly elected Mayor would avoid the possibility of a Mayor being elected out of a hat, which can happen with indirectly elected Mayors.
• There is no cap on political campaign spending for local government elections, which means there is an argument wealthier candidates for Council and Mayor could run a stronger campaign and with a directly elected Mayor campaign budget could have an impact.
• An indirectly elected Mayor could be assessed and changed by the Councillors each year if they feel the Mayor does not perform or if conflicts develop.
• A directly elected Mayor could be popular but not have the skill sets or experience needed.
• An indirectly elected Mayor may be chosen by Councillors as part of party or factional politics but not have the skill sets or experience needed.

“An educated, enlightened and informed population is one of the surest ways of promoting the health of a democracy” – Nelson Mandela.