Some Geelong councillors have questioned whether changes to council election rules and the reversion to a single councillor ward structure have had their intended outcomes.
The comments came at Tuesday night’s council meeting, where the City’s report on the 2024 Greater Geelong general election report was presented.
Councillor Emma Sinclair, who joined the council after being elected last year, noted the 2024 council election was the first since the redistribution of wards.
“So this is the first election where we’ve seen single council wards, (and) there’s no analysis in this report that talks about whether that’s good for diversity, how that ward structure has impacted election results,” she said.
“I hope that’s something the state government continues to look at as part of their ongoing assessment of the 2020 reforms.”
Cr Trent Sullivan echoed Cr Sinclair’s comments, saying there were “large concerns” the single-member ward structure was “prohibitive to many members of our community”, including women.
“We, as an organisation, were a signatory to the Victorian government’s 50-50 target by 2025, meaning last election,” he said.
“I question us signing up to government programs and targets when they implement structures which are actively recognised as prohibitive to reaching those targets.”
Cr Anthony Aitken said non-resident ratepayer voting numbers had dropped in his ward from 1000 to 2000 voters to 148 last year after a controversial change required them to enrol to vote manually rather than automatically being entered.
Cr Andrew Katos, a Liberal member, suggested that change had been made under a Labor government to limit the numbers of landlords and non-resident owners who “perhaps vote a certain way”.
