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 holding referendums on reducing the size of their council. Central Coast and Woollahra are voting on cutting councillors from fifteen to nine, Hilltops may go from eleven to nine, and Port Macquarie-Hastings from nine to seven. Central Coast is particularly notable, being driven by a state-appointed administrator in one of the most populous councils in the country.
While Hilltops and Woollahra have some basis, a Yes vote in Central Coast or Port Macquarie-Hastings would leave the council with a exceptionally small council for an area with such a large population, and weaken local democracy.
In 2021, two councils held referendums on reducing council seats, with over 80% of voters supporting the referendum. A referendum in Ryde on introducing a direct election did lead to a slight increase in the council’s size, but that wasn’t the main point.
There has been a historical trend towards councils shrinking in size. While I don’t have a complete dataset, there are a number of examples of councils having a larger membership than the current cap of 15. The City of Sydney had 27 councillors plus a mayor as recently as 1982-87, but now has just nine councillors plus a mayor.
Even as councils have been amalgamated to form larger units, it hasn’t led to larger councillor contingents.
It’s easy to make a populist argument in favour of less politicians, but I actually think this trend is driven by an ideology that favours streamlining councils and keeping local democracy pushed to the margins. Having larger and more representative elected bodies is a good thing for democracy. Democracy becomes weaker when councils become smaller, more insular, groups.
Smaller elected bodies tend to be less diverse. A dominant political view will be more likely to win a clean sweep or other be very dominant. It is harder to sustain opposition views on a council of nine than a council of fifteen, because the opponents are likely to be just one or two people, whereas the same proportion of a larger council is a larger raw number of councillors.
This means issues that come before the council are more likely to only have one point of view represented.
This push to reduce the size of councils comes from an ideology that values efficiency most highly. You can see this in the “Yes” argument on the Central Coast Council website which claims reduced council size will lead to “greater cohesion and improved decision-making.”
It is easy to see why mayors, general managers and other council leaders might like to see a council where you’re less likely to meet opposition. But “cohesion” isn’t always a good thing if it means ideas aren’t tested. Corruption can often thrive when the whole council is in on the deal. And I don’t agree that a council that operates more like a corporate board, with less public airing of issues, has improved decision-making.
Councils are political institutions that have a key role in resolving different views on how limited resources are allocated, and are not the same as corporate boards.
A larger council creates space for multiple points of view to be presented, and makes an internal opposition more viable. I am a democrat and believe that effective opposition and criticism tests policy and makes it better.
The ideal number of councillors in each council can vary, but I do believe large populous councils need a large number of councillors.
There are four councils which are holding referendums, and the merits of each referendum vary. This chart shows the 2023 population of each council and the current number of councillors in blue, with the proposed changes for those four councils marked in red.
I think there may be some case for a downward change for Woollahra and Hilltops, at least in terms of making them similar to similarly-populous councils. Hilltops currently has a smaller population than any other 11-member council. It would still be a relatively low-populated council amongst 9-member councils.
Woollahra currently has the maximum fifteen councillors, and is much smaller than every other council with that number. Woollahra has just over 50,000 residents, while the next least populous council with fifteen councillors is Randwick, with over 140,000 residents.
But a drop from fifteen to nine is very dramatic. A drop down to something like 12 would be much more defensible, bringing Woollahra in line with other urban or semi-urban small councils like Hawkesbury, Blue Mountains and Waverley.
The case for Central Coast and Port Macquarie-Hastings is very weak.
Port Macquarie-Hastings has already reduced its council size from eleven to nine in recent history, at a 2003 referendum. If the council was reduced to seven, that would be the smallest size currently used in New South Wales. Port Macquarie-Hastings has a population of almost 90,000, which would make it the second most populous 7-member council, just behind Tweed (which is badly in need of an increase in council size). Indeed Port Macquarie-Hastings is already one of the most populous 9-member councils, and you could easily justify an increase to 13 members for a council of this population.
Central Coast is the most outrageous. For a start, this change to the council’s democratic institutions hasn’t come from the people’s representatives, but from a state-appointed administrator, which I see as being far outside of their remit.
Central Coast has the third-largest population in New South Wales, and is ranked eighth in Australia. Excluding Blacktown and Canterbury-Bankstown, there are another ten councils which are as large as Central Coast, all of which have a population at least 80,000 less than Central Coast.
If Central Coast was cut back in size to nine councillors, the council would have almost four times as many people as most other nine-councillor councils. The main exception is the fast-growing Camden Council, which is also desperately in need of a council size boost.
Central Coast Council is a large institution and it should have a large enough elected body to reflect the diversity of views and interests in that community, and is enough to sustain both a governing majority and opposition voices who can present different attitudes on how the council should run. A cut back to nine would send the council in entirely the wrong direction.
Indeed I would argue that the most populous of NSW councils, including Central Coast as well as Blacktown, Canterbury-Bankstown and potentially including some other councils if they were amalgamated (such as Parramatta and Cumberland, or Georges River expanded to include Rockdale), should be able to have a council quite a bit larger than 15. The role of a councillor would change, but council amalgamations don’t actually need to reduce the levels of democratic representation.