Today I’m focusing on a block of 29 seats in the eastern half of Sydney. This area doesn’t really identify as “eastern Sydney” but could be defined as a number of smaller regions: the inner west, eastern suburbs, north shore, northern beaches, St George district and the Sutherland Shire.
I wrote yesterday about the Queensland government’s slate of reforms to Queensland local government elections, most of which I think are excellent. I focused on the shift to proportional representation for undivided councils (which is mostly synonymous with small regional councils).
The Queensland government has recently announced plans to introduce proportional representation to some council elections as part of a broad set of reforms. This proposal is a significant improvement to the local electoral system, but is facing a fierce backlash from self-interested groups, in particular the Local Government Association of Queensland. I’ll run through the reforms and explain why this particular change is so important.
One of the most fun parts of this website in the lead-up to an election is the comments on each seat guide. Every seat guide has its own comment section where you can discuss that electorate and what is going on.
One of the most interesting features of this election is the radically increased significance of the party now called the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers.
The Shooters Party was founded in 1992 by John Tingle, who won a seat in the NSW upper house in 1995. The party has won a seat at every election since 2003, as well as winning seats in the Victorian and Western Australian upper houses since 2014 and 2013 respectively.
The ACT is currently redrawing its electoral boundaries for the local Legislative Assembly, and as previously discussed there are not a lot of options for how the boundaries can be drawn.
I’ve defined this area to cover parts of the state which don’t neatly fit into any of the other categories. I’ve included the four seats in the Illawarra area, plus Bega, South Coast, Goulburn and Monaro.
I’ve identified four out of the eight seats in this region which are worth zooming in on.
This morning’s blog post focused on the how-to-votes being handed out on pre-poll. I’ve collected a bundle of how-to-votes, as well as some other leaflets and letters I’ve received in my local electorate of Parramatta. I’m sure I’m not the only person building up a little collection.
So what should we do with these materials when we’re done with them?
I’d recommend sending them to the State Library of New South Wales to add to their collection of election ephemera.
Today is the third of day of voting in the NSW state election, with pre-poll booths opening around the state.
I dropped in to the biggest pre-poll booth at Sydney Town Hall on Monday morning to collect all of the how-to-votes that were available, and grabbed a couple more this afternoon.
I’ve been running a lengthy Twitter thread posting all of these how-to-votes as pictures, supplemented by submissions from others and some stuff I found by contacting candidates directly.
The NSW Legislative Council race is looking likely be one of the most complex and difficult to predict since the current system was first used in 2003.
In addition to the major parties and four larger minor parties which currently hold seats in parliament, we have a number of high-profile challengers, and not enough seats to go around.