Queensland ward boundary changes concluded
Queensland’s local councils will be up for election next March. Numerous Queensland councils, including the urban councils of the south-east, use single-member wards (called “divisions” in Queensland)....
View ArticleNSW ward redistributions completed
New South Wales councils will be up for election in September 2024, and the process of redrawing ward boundaries for these elections has now concluded. I have now finished making my new boundary map....
View ArticleLiberal nomination debacle put their opponents in box seat in NSW council...
Over the last few days I have been frenetically trying to keep my candidate lists up to date as many candidates announce last minute, and as we started to see official nominations appear on the NSW...
View ArticleNSW nominations day – tracking the Liberal gap
I wasn’t planning to do a blog post until we had the final lists of nominations and I could do all of my usual analysis, but I have been getting a lot of questions today about the scale of the Liberal...
View ArticleAssessing the political impact of the missing Liberals
I have been spending the last day updating my council election guides to include the full list of candidates, a summary of who is running and an assessment of the likely outcomes. I have now finished...
View ArticlePodcast #127: The NSW Liberal nomination mess
This is a solo episode, where Ben runs through all the key parts of the story of how and where the NSW Liberal Party failed to nominate almost a third of candidates for the NSW local government...
View ArticleNSW council elections – the big party presence
This blog is a follow-up to my post from November 2021, which tracked where the Labor, Liberal and Greens parties had run across the Greater Sydney region from 2004 to 2021. At the end of this post...
View ArticleDoes democracy have a role in throwing out bad councils?
When the NSW Minister for Local Government, Ron Hoenig, announced an inquiry into the City of Liverpool in July, it seemed clear that the council was headed down the path seen by councils like...
View ArticleWhere are small or local parties running for council in NSW?
Most candidates running in the NSW council elections are independents, or belong to the three big urban parties. Over 58% of candidates running for the council election are either independent or...
View ArticleIn defence of more councillors
If a council in New South Wales wants to change the number of councillors who sit on that council, they need to hold a referendum, with voters making the final decision. In 2024, four councils are...
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