Clarence councillor fails to garner support from colleagues in push for limitations on elector polls
Clarence councillor Daniel Hulme says elector polls are too costly for ratepayers and wants to see limitations placed on them – but his fellow elected members have rejected the proposal.
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A Clarence councillor’s push to make it harder for community members to trigger an elector poll has failed after he was unable to garner the required support from his colleagues.
Daniel Hulme originally intended to move a motion that would have compelled the council to advocate for statewide reform in relation to the way elector polls are conducted and administered.
It comes after a highly publicised poll was held in Clarence last year regarding the proposal to build an AFL high performance centre at the Rosny Parklands and Charles Hand Park.
A narrow majority of voters (51.39 per cent) backed the facilities to be built at Rosny Parklands, while only 35.17 per cent supported the project extending into Charles Hand Park.
The poll cost $145,000 and about 63 per cent of electors enrolled in Clarence – 28,476 of 45,351 people – returned a ballot.
The state government has since shifted the preferred site for the high performance centre to the Kingborough municipality.
Cr Hulme, who supported the construction of the AFL facilities at Rosny, wanted the council to authorise the Clarence CEO, Ian Nelson, to request that Local Government Minister Kerry Vincent amend the Local Government Act so that elector polls could only be launched with a majority vote of the relevant council.
Should the minister not support that proposal, Cr Hulme said the threshold for the number of public signatures required to initiate a poll should be “significantly increased” as an alternative measure.
But following a briefing session attended by elected members, Cr Hulme heavily amended his motion, instead asking simply that councillors supported a workshop to be held on the issue of elector polls.
The amended motion was carried at the council’s meeting on Monday.
“A number of people have said to me that they resent the fact that their rates had to pay for an elector poll that they didn’t want and that they are concerned that the threshold for calling an elector poll is just far too low,” Cr Hulme said.
Under the Local Government Act, a council is required to hold an elector poll if requested by a petition signed by the lesser of either 5 per cent of total electors in the municipality or 1000 of those electors, provided the petition is received within 30 days of a public meeting about the same issue.
The results of elector polls are non-binding.
Greens councillor Jade Darko said raising the thresholds for community meetings and elector polls would be “patently undemocratic”.
Bellerive resident Brian Chapman, who was instrumental in calling the elector poll on the AFL high performance centre, said any effort to tighten the rules around elector polls would “restrict the community” and be “a concern for local government democracy”.
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