Byron Shire Council election results show Michael Lyon leading poll
Byron Shire’s incumbent mayor, who left the Greens to run as an independent, has welcomed a move away from his former party in the mayoral race.
Byron Shire
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Byron’s incumbent mayor is cautiously hopeful about his prospects of leading the next council.
A total of 14,556 formal first preference (mayoral) votes had been counted for the Byron Shire by Monday afternoon.
That was more than half of the 25,414 people enrolled to vote in the shire this election.
A total of 13,680 votes for councillors had been voted by the same time.
Independent incumbent mayor Michael Lyon has retained his position topping the race for the shire‘s leadership, with 23.05 per cent of the first preference votes counted so far.
Another independent but first-time council candidate Mark Swivel has held onto second position; he’s now holding 18.44 per cent of votes in the mayoral race.
The results so far have marked a big departure from the 2016 results where Greens mayor Simon Richardson claimed the top job with a whopping 49 per cent of first preference votes.
That council term – extended by 15 months due to two Covid-19 delays – involved the highest number of Greens councillors to date.
Mr Lyon and Jeanette Martin were among them but they ran together on an independent ticket while Mr Richardson stepped down from his job early to focus on fatherhood.
Although preferencing calculations will need to be made, Mr Lyon said he was pleased to clearly be returning to the council in its new term.
“Mission number two, we gave the Greens a good whipping, and the cherry on top, (it’s) looking like a strong possibility for mayor so I’m obviously very hopeful,” Mr Lyon said.
Having taken on the role of mayor when Simon Richardson departed the council earlier this year, Mr Lyon said he felt “heartened, supported and understood” to have received a strong response from voters.
“I’m very pleased that people are engaged and really thinking about it,” he said.
He said of the candidates looking to have secured a place on the council, it was “a good group”.
In the mayoral race, Mr Lyon and Mr Swivel are followed by Greens candidate Duncan Dey (14.89 per cent), Cate Coorey of the Community Byron team (14.49 per cent), Labor’s Asren Pugh (11.81 per cent), Alan Hunter (7.01 per cent), Bruce Clarke (5.52 per cent), John Anderson (3.39 per cent) and finally Christopher McIlrath (1.39 per cent).
In the election of eight councillors, the Byron Greens is the team leading the polls with 21.92 per cent of votes.
Most of those came in the form of above-the-line votes.
But the leaders of some other teams have had more direct votes than Duncan Dey, who tops the Green ticket.
2.47 per cent of votes so far have gone to Mr Dey directly as a councillor candidate.
Cate Coorey has meanwhile attracted 3.9 per cent, compared with 3.22 per cent for Mark Swivel and 3.24 per cent for Michael Lyon.
As a team, Michael Lyon’s group has drawn 19.83 per cent of councillor votes so far.
Mark Swivel‘s team is close behind at 17.12 per cent, followed by Cate Coorey’s team at 14.84 per cent.
Vote counting is expected to continue through the week.
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