I have just spent a week in NSW which included the lead up to and their council elections. Council elections are run much differently with all voting being by attendance at polling booths instead of the postal ballots which are used in Maroondah. However the most significant difference was the overwhelming involvement of all political parties and the volume of advertising and campaign expenditure that this brought with it. In country areas the television and radio were totally dominated by political advertising; in the suburbs it was local radio and all of the print media. This makes it extremely difficult for independent or community based candidates to compete and makes it easy for big business interests to virtually purchase control of councils.
We need to guard against this happening here in Maroondah. It is unlikely that you will see direct public involvement by the political parties but there is already involvement in the background. What you will see is indirect funding and promotion of candidates and the running of dummy candidates all allocating preferences to a particular candidate. I have already heard of representatives of political parties offering financial support to community groups in return for support of their candidates.
You need to ask each candidate if they belong to or are receiving support from a political party and we can stamp this out BEFORE we end up like NSW.
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2 comments:
Why have preferenced a Liberal Party office worker 2nd? Clearly she is being supported by the Liberal Party.
You are right, Anonymous, Nora is a member of the Liberal Party and I would be much happier if she acknowledged this on her brochures. However, she is a genuine candidate running by herself and without, as far as I know official party backing. I respect her as a person and what she believes in and advocates is fairly closely aligned to my own beliefs and it was tactically a good move for us to exchange preferences. This is a far cry from the flood of candidates in all wards closely aligned to an ALP candidate. These candidates don't really want to win they are just there to direct preferences towards another candidate.
I was mislead by one of these candidates myself. I agreed to an arrangement to exchange third prefences with a candidate who in fact then went ahead to put me ninth and revealed herself as part of a plan to get the son of our mayor elected.
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