MILDURA council candidates are lining up to challenge the merit of the ward voting system if elected at this month’s local government elections.
A veteran of 20 years in local government and former mayor, Glenn Milne said the ward system, introduced to the Mildura municipality this year, was the “worst change” for the municipal structure and he would “absolutely” fight to return the voting system to nine councillors, regardless of where they, or voters, lived.
Cr Milne, who served seven terms as Mildura mayor, said there was much community angst about the new structure, which allows candidates to run in any of the nine nominated wards, but restricts ratepayers to voting only in the ward they live.
Two wards have already been decided before voting begins as there was only one nominee in each of those wards.
“This new ward system has really warped the whole election process given that your nine councillors have to make decisions that are in the best interests of the whole council area,” Cr Milne said.
“Now we have people saying ‘this is what my ward needs’ and the expectation will be that you fight for that area.
“The election is becoming localised in local ward areas and there is a real danger in that.
“But candidates are being forced into going to their local community and saying ‘this is what I can do for you’ or ‘this is what I think I can do for you’, so the expectation will be that you do it.”
Cr Milne said that while there were “real needs across the community”, the pressure will be on elected councillors to represent their ward first and community second.
“The new ward structure basically pitches councillors against each other trying to get the others to support projects in their ward, rather than sitting down and working through the process of who is in greatest need, what’s required, what’s been spent in the district and how much money does council have to spend, if any,” he said.
“So who is going to get the priority?
“You can fight or advocate for your area, but it still takes at least five councillors to bring something about and a lot of council decisions are actually made on the back of the council plans where the whole community gets asked to give input and that’s where a lot of the decision making comes from.
“At the end of the day nine people make the decision, so everyone should have that choice of nine (representatives).
“We have got a great community and people are frustrated and they weren’t really asked at all about the new ward system.”
Meanwhile, another council candidate and former Member for Mildura Ali Cupper said the “winner-takes-all races” in contested wards had made the whole experience “unnecessarily desperate and divisive”.
“The argument that having one dedicated councillor for each dedicated area will enhance representation, falls apart when you realise that your one councillor will be automatically outnumbered one to eight on every micro issue that relates to your ward,” she said.
“It was far better insurance to have nine councillors responsible for everyone.
“The most frustrating part of all is that the problems were foreseeable and avoidable.”
She said a single-ward structure was never suitable for our municipality, but the Victorian Government gave the Electoral Representation Advisory Panel no room to move.
“Our beautiful region deserves so much better than this,” she said.
“If elected to council, I’ll be fighting to have this stupid system overturned and the unsubdivided structure restored by 2028.”
