A few surprises in council election outcome

What a surprise to see the old faces back in council, it doesn’t seem that long ago that many of our civic leaders were advocating for them to be banned from public office.

Another surprise was the amount of people who did not know who to vote for as they claimed there was not enough information pre polling day.

This information intrigued me, and asking why they knew nothing about the candidates, the common answer was “I don’t get a local newspaper and I don’t listen to the radio”.

This common reply was from everyday workers, truck drivers, butchers, school teachers, painters , plumbers, printers retirees etc, many not knowing that they have a free newspaper on their mobile phone that gave a very comprehensive coverage on all of the candidates, details of meetings and lots of news about the election prior to voting day.

Gone are the days when election leaflets were put on power poles, shop fronts, fences etc advertising who to vote for.

It’s disappointing to see three or four thousand informal votes in each ward, again the common reason was “they didn’t know the candidates”.

However, all of the candidates should be admired and respected for standing, particularly the genuine independents who put hours of work and a lot of dollars into their campaign not having the backing that the big political parties have.

A surprise omission from the council line-up is Kevin Brooks who has relentlessly taken the administration to task over recent years highlighting many shortcomings in our local government.

Several genuine independents just missed out as they never had the resources of the powerful political parties.

The reward for these elected representatives is less than average with a weekly wage of six or seven hundred dollars, the elected mayor will receive about three times this amount of around $2,000 per week with the CEO of council David Farmer receiving over $10,000 per week similar to former CEO Gary Murphy.

Let’s hope when our councillors get to work it doesn’t end up like before when it was Smith v Best, hopefully it won’t be Smith v Eaton. We can only hope.

Email Oct 2

R Pickett, Kincumber