Politics at the grassroots

Voters are expected in some cases to examine up to 50 candidates and to also cast an additional vote for a mayor. Admittedly, this is not as mind boggling as it is for voters in say, Campbelltown, where they have to select from almost 100 candidates among independents, traditional parties, and those calling themselves the “Save Campbelltown Koalas” group.

All this makes a bit of a mockery of the seriousness of local government in which serious full time officers and managers administer budgets frequently larger than some of our top 500 listed companies.

The difficulty for the voter lies in the lack of information available about the candidates and about mechanisms of voting and election. It is not enough for us to get a flyer in our letterbox from a candidate stating they are a “family man (or woman)” who has lived in the “community” all their lives, has a good job and a couple of kids. We need to know how they will engage when they are elected, how they will cope with the huge workload of being on committees and making decisions that directly affect our daily lives.

We need to know why they want to be councillors, when they are paid very little (elected representatives are part-time and paid an allowance rather than a salary), and get very little in recognisable return for their involvement.

This is why local government is rarely truly representative - it reflects the lives of those who have unlimited time to “slip out” to committee meetings, to be available for site visits, to be free to talk with council officers at all times of the day, and to spend Saturday kissing fat babies, shaking hands, and cooking snags outside the hardware shop.

It looks like the start of some interesting grassroots politics in local government.