From today Councils have just six weeks to secure agreement with the State Electoral Commission on providing postal voting facilities for the new proportional preferential voting system.

WA Local Government President Cr Bill Mitchell said the State Government should have given consideration to providing financial support to Councils to make the transition in the limited timeframe.

Cr Mitchell believed there was significant potential for this year’s Local Government elections to be affected by the hasty introduction of the new system passed last night by State Parliament.

“The proportional preferential voting system is far more complicated than the simple first-past-the-post system and there should have been some recognition of this,” Cr Mitchell said.

“Councils now have just until August 1 to secure agreement with the Electoral Commission to offer postal voting or face having to work out how to manage person to person voting under the new system.

“The State Government has a record of imposing its decisions on Local Government with little regard for the implementation issues at the local level but democracy is too important to be abandoned.

“The Carpenter Government’s irresponsible approach to governing, as shown in changes to food labelling and smoking legislation, is now putting at risk the veracity of the election process at the community level.”

Cr Mitchell repeated his concerns that the proportional preferential voting system with its inherent preference distribution mechanism was open to manipulation by big political parties.

“The new system caters for candidates who can organise dummy candidates, running mates and factional allegiances and the groups best placed to do that are the major political parties,” he said.

“Party politics has largely been kept out of Local Government in this State but this new system of voting is almost certain to result in communities losing control of their Councils to the major political parties.”

Ends