The new laws are coming into force in the current election. It is a sweeping change impacting all councils. It makes councils much less representative - it means that one ticket of councillors can have 51% support but 100% of all seats on the council.
Based on the speeches, it sounds like basically everyone was against Labor on this, both the VEC expert recommendation, and also pretty much everyone in state parliament except Labor - see the linked hansard starting from page 30. That said, when the Greens proposed an amendment to it, the Liberals voted with Labor to defeat it, and the single-member ward thing became law.
Their rationale was, get this, “people don’t know who their councillors are”
Like holy shit nobody ever knows who their local MLCs or senators are, but are we scrapping hare clarke? No.
It’s a sleazy tactic to increase the impact of major parties.
it means that one ticket of councillors can have 51% support but 100% of all seats on the council
Or more problematically, it can have 26% support and 100% of control over the council. Since you only need 51% of seats to effectively get 100% of control.
Geez that’s scummy. So transparently self-serving.
It honestly doesn’t matter which party. You’ll be bent over one barrel or another. They’re professional conmen, shaping the laws to help their game.
Until we build actual grassroots power, we’ll remain screwed.
