Douglas decides 24' - Fair play or grave disservice? a look into the electoral system

Councillor Lisa Scomazzon is also standing for mayor. In the past term she was easily the best performer on council, especially in the last year, on my following of council meetings online. Most voters, of course, do not have the time or inclination to view council meetings. So, journalists try to do it for them.

Of all the councillors including Mayor Michael Kerr, to me she seemed to have the best grasp of the issues.

But under our present system, it is now inevitable that Douglas Shire will, on one hand, either lose the continuity and experience of Scomazzon and risk a newcomer stepping into the top role or, on the other hand, will not have the benefit of at least trying out a promising newcomer on the council.

Both of those potential losses could have been avoided with a better electoral system. We should have a full preferential voting system for all five positions on thecouncil and after the election, the councillors would choose the mayor – presumably starting with the candidate with the most votes.

And that leads us to the second defect of the separate mayoral election. At the last election Michael Kerr was directly elected mayor. As the term went on it became increasingly clear that a majority on the council were extremely dissatisfied and were especially concerned about communications and reliance on procedural technicalities to block councillors’ motions.

Three of them – Scomazzon, Abigail Noli and Roy Zammataro – successfully moved a no-confidence motion against him. Councillor Peter McKeown sided with Mayor Kerr.

But under the present electoral system, the motion had no effect. If, however, the council itself elected the mayor, the mayor would have been replaced by another Councillor but would have retained a place on the Council.

So, during the last council, the mayor and one other councillor could drive their agenda on things like water and the ferry and the other three were left relatively impotent but, to some extent, got tarred with the same brush and some of the blame for the failures of Council, despite doing their level best to improve things.

With a better electoral system some of the pain of the past four years would have been avoided. Most likely the defeated mayoral candidate in 2020, Julia Leu, would have retained a Council seat and the Council would have had someone to turn to when things did not turn out as well as voters would have hoped.

That loss of experience and knowledge was very damaging for Douglas Shire. And we should be mindful of the dangers of a repetition of it.

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