By Cara Waters
A City of Melbourne electoral system “held together by sticky tape” could throw up surprise victors when voters go to the polls in October.
One potentially confounding outcome in a process with some extraordinary rules, including giving businesses two votes while residents only get one, is candidates vying for the top job can miss out but their supporters still fill council benches.
The “Team Kouta” ticket for the City of Melbourne elections comprises (from left) Intaj Khan, Anthony Koutoufides, Gladys Liu and Zaim Ramani.Credit: Penny Stephens
Former Carlton star Anthony Koutoufides’ entry into the race for lord mayor raised some eyebrows among his competitors, who claim the celebrity candidate is being used as a frontman to attract votes for the rest of his “Team Kouta” ticket.
Under this scenario, voters could support Koutoufides for lord mayor but see him miss out, while one-time federal Liberal MP turned fitness instructor Gladys Liu or property developer Zaim Ramani wins a spot on council.
Team Kouta denies this is its strategy. “We are in it to win it,” his deputy lord mayoral candidate, Intaj Khan, said.
The quirky system has been described as “the worst electoral system in the country” by Cr Rohan Leppert, with other candidates in the upcoming election, including the Greens’ Roxane Ingleton and Labor’s Phil Reed, calling for it to be overhauled.
Lord mayoral candidate Arron Wood with Erin Deering, who is running for the position of deputy.Credit: Justin McManus
Candidates in the City of Melbourne can nominate for the leadership team of lord mayor and deputy lord mayor, or for the position of a councillor, but not both.
If nominating as a councillor, they nominate individually but can agree with other candidates to form a group and appear on the ballot paper together.
Voters in the City of Melbourne will receive two separate ballot papers, one for the leadership team and one for the councillor team. A vote for “Team Kouta” councillors on the second ballot paper may lead to the council candidates on the ticket, including Liu and Ramani, getting elected even if Koutoufides does not succeed in his campaign for the lord mayorship.
In the previous City of Melbourne elections, this led to results such as Jennifer Yang and Arron Wood both failing to get elected as lord mayor but councillors on their tickets, CFMEU official Elizabeth Doidge and business owner Jason Chang, securing a spot.
Another anomaly in the City of Melbourne electoral process is rules giving additional votes to business and property owners.
Melbourne is the only municipality in Victoria in which businesses get to vote in council elections, and their power is increased at the ballot box: they get two votes each, compared with one per resident.
And property investors and business owners have yet another advantage: they don’t have to be Australian citizens to vote.
The result was an electoral roll in the 2020 election made up of 55.09 per cent business owners and out-of-the-area property owners. Locals made up only 44.91 per cent of the roll.
So much for one vote, one value.
A probe into the 2018 byelection for lord mayor found 6889 ballots were sent to voters “care of” real estate agents, with large real estate group MICM receiving 1700 ballot packs alone.
For the 2020 election, the Local Government Inspectorate found 20 real estate agents had illegally completed ballot papers on behalf of landlords whose properties they managed.
Most of the owners lived overseas, “usually permanently and most commonly in China”, and some had “authorised their agent verbally or in writing to vote on their behalf”.
The property owners generally “had limited English”, “were not interested in the election” and “communicated with their agents in Chinese through WeChat”.
The council unanimously passed a motion two years ago calling for an overhaul of the City of Melbourne’s voting system, but this has been ignored by the state government.
“The City of Melbourne electoral system is being held together with sticky tape,” Cr Leppert says. “The distribution of ballot papers via property managers is an obvious fraud risk, identified election after election, that still hasn’t been adequately addressed.”
Group voting tickets that distort the will of voters are still used despite being abolished in nearly every other jurisdiction.
It adds up to a voting system which keeps the council dominated by business and the wealthy and out of the hands of the people who live and work in Melbourne.
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