Cost of NSW’s long-delayed council elections balloons to $146m

The cost of holding council elections for more than five million voters in NSW in December has ballooned to $146 million, a near three-fold increase on the last polls during the controversial local body amalgamations.

The bill has been blamed largely on the COVID-19 pandemic, which has twice forced the postponement of polls this year and last.

The NSW Electoral Commission’s latest estimate includes a $29 million cost from postponing the poll by three months to December 4, and $37 million for measures to reduce COVID-19 risks.

Local council elections in NSW have already been postponed twice.Credit: Jono Searle/Getty Images

It is a major cost increase on the last local government elections held over two years – in 2016 and 2017 – due to council amalgamations, which ran to just over $50 million.

This year the commission will be forced to hire thousands of extra staff and hundreds of additional polling venues to ensure crowds adhere to restrictions.

It expects to recoup $46 million in direct costs for conducting the elections from councils, raising concerns that it will pile pressure on cash-strapped local bodies.

Labor local government spokesman Greg Warren said the government needed to explain why the cost of elections had risen so dramatically, and why councils and their communities bore a significant part of it.

“This is a government that has had over 20 months to plan for the local government elections, yet all we have seen is delay after delay with no real plan in place,” he said.

Last month Electoral Commissioner John Schmidt warned the elections for 125 councils could potentially fail if voter turnout faltered or if staffing and polling booth logistics fell short.

He recommended in a report last year that the government opt for a full postal vote for council elections in 2021 due to COVID-19 risks. However, the government later ruled this out.

Mr Schmidt’s report, which has been tabled in Parliament, estimates $54 million in savings could have been made had the full postal voting option been adopted last year.

The NSW electoral commissioner John Schmidt.Credit: Louie Douvis

The report also estimates that implementing COVID-19 measures will require the number of staff at polling stations to rise from about 16,900 people to more than 27,000. It will also need an extra 500 venues.

Voting is compulsory and those who don’t vote face a $55 fine, which is paid to NSW Treasury.

Mr Schmidt has reiterated that he believes it is now too late to amend legislation to enable postal-only voting on December 4, supported by limited internet voting.

“The Electoral Commission also no longer has the time, or capacity, necessary to conduct a single tranche of postal-only voting in December 2021,” he said, responding to questions on notice.

He cited the “overwhelming logistical challenges” of dispatching millions of ballot papers within the next 10 weeks, and “serious risk of catastrophic failure” from re-purposing the commission’s “ageing information system” at short notice to cope with postal-only voting.

The commission is seeking an extra $29 million from the government to meet the cost of the recent three-month delay to the elections.

A spokeswoman for Local Government Minister Shelley Hancock said a request from the commission for extra funding was received last Friday, and was under review.

“The NSW government has already allocated a total of $57 million for the NSW Electoral Commission, including $37 million to deliver elections in a COVID-safe way,” she said.

Local Government Minister Shelley Hancock.

The peak body for NSW councils called on the government to act to address the costs of the elections, which it said had “dramatically escalated” in recent years, even before the pandemic.

“The two election delays, decided upon by the state government, have been extremely costly. It is up to the government to fully fund the elections,” said Local Government NSW president Linda Scott, who is also a Labor councillor at the City of Sydney.

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