By Luke Voogt
Geelong residents should keep their mayoral vote, according to a survey for a Citizens’ Jury deciding the city’s next council structure.
Fifty-nine per cent of 956 respondents to the online Democracy in Geelong survey wanted to retain the direct mayoral election.
The jury of 100 residents will deliver its recommendations to the Andrews Government on Saturday, including councillor and ward numbers and how the mayor should be elected.
Local Government Minister Natalie Hutchins described the jury as money well spent.
“We want to hear from Geelong residents about how they think their council should work,” she said.
“The Citizens’ Jury was a great way for this to happen.”
However, the jury’s written submissions defied the survey result.
The jury received 28 submissions, with 13 wanting the mayoral election scrapped, 10 wanting it retained, and the rest blank or unrelated to the mayor vote.
Two submissions were anonymous, one had no surname, and one was blank. Several had one or two line answers or failed to address any questions.
Submitter Stephen Hogg wanted the vote scrapped to prevent “well-known, well-funded individuals” continuing to have a “greater (say) over the core matters of our local government”.
The Citizens’ Jury was “no replacement for local democracy”, said shadow local government minister David Davis.
He described it as a “snappy forum” run by “expensive consultants”.
“The whole process has been a farce, spending almost $250,000,” he said.
“The money could instead have been spent on a range of worthy projects.”
Mr Davis believed that the Government wanted to use the jury as cover to take away residents’ mayoral vote.
“Consultants” conducting the jury had “tight riding instructions from Labor’s ruling cabal”, he said.
“There’s no doubt Labor is desperate to avoid a return to local democracy with a directly elected mayor.”
Geelong polls over a decade have found overwhelming support for residents choosing the mayor.
The support reached 78.5 per cent, state parliament heard in 2011 before introducing the vote in 2012.
The state commissioned NewDemocracy Foundation to establish and conduct the jury.
NewDemocracy director Iain Walker said the jurors considered Geelong’s local governance issues “expansively”.
“We’ve definitely seen that people are very capable of thinking beyond the next how-to-vote card,” he said.
