Twenty women and one man attended a public forum on Getting Women Elected to Council on Saturday, June 22.
Run by the Australian Local Government Women’s Association (ALGWA), the session took place at the Erina Hub.
One group was wearing possible election T-shirts but most seemed to be still considering their options.
A young woman had driven down from the Mid North Coast to attend the session as there wasn’t one closer to her council area.
Three councillors from three different Sydney councils gave an overview of a councillor’s role and the things candidates needed to undertake to get themselves elected.
The need for a good team of supporters who could man the voting booths on the September 14 election date was one tip.
The councillors talked about choosing which booths to man if the number of volunteers were an issue and printing flyers for the number of people likely to attend those booths, going on the last election statistics.
The Central Coast has five wards and residents will be voting for three councillors per ward for a total of 15 councillors.
In 2017, the last time the Coast voted in elections, six women were voted in – two Independents, two Labor councillors and two Liberals.
They came from a total of 94 candidates of whom 45 were women.
Only the Gosford West ward failed to vote in a woman.
Both the East Gosford ward and The Entrance ward voted in two women while Budgewoi ward and Wyong ward voted in one each.
In total, irrespective of gender, four of the five wards voted in one Liberal, one Labor and one Independent, except for Budgewoi ward which voted in two Labor and one Independent.
This gave the Council six Labor, five Independent and four Liberal councillors.
At this year’s election, the Central Coast will also be asked to vote in a referendum to reduce the number of councillors to nine and the number of wards to three.
The guest speakers from the ALGWA were not in favour of reducing the numbers, saying it would increase the workload for the reduced number of councillors.
Merilyn Vale