I often compare the City of Brisbane to a small state parliament. With its single-member wards dominated by parties and its large size, it often resembles a state election more so than a local council. But one of the main differences between the City and most state elections is the method of filling vacancies on the council when a seat falls vacant during the term.
The AEC last week officially commenced a redistribution of the Northern Territory’s two federal electorates.
I’ll keep this blog post short and sweet. I won’t bother with a map, since there are only two seats, making the equation simple.
Ben was joined by Stewart Jackson from the University of Sydney and Tasmanian political scientist Mike Lester to preview next month’s Tasmanian state election.
We discuss the widening field of independent candidates, political events in the last term and the issues around the 25-member House that led to the expansion of the Parliament. We also briefly touch on this weekend’s Dunkley by-election.
Nominations will close next Thursday for the Tasmanian state election, and we’ve seen a surge in candidate announcements in the last few days. I’ve just finished updating my candidate lists, and they show that there is a real increase in independent candidates compared to recent elections, pointing towards larger ballot papers than in previous Tasmanian elections.
The Victorian state government last week announced the final ward boundaries for 39 councils for this October’s council elections.
I’ve been compiling those ward boundaries as a shapefile and that’s now finished.
Ben was joined by this week by Marcus Mietzner from the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at the ANU, and the author of The Coalitions Presidents Make, to discuss Prabowo Subianto’s clear victory in the first round of the Indonesian presidential election.
We’ve known it’s coming for about four years, but the Victorian government has finally implemented the final stage of legislation first passed in 2020, imposing single-member wards on all but one council across Melbourne along with many regional councils.
I have focused my analysis of the upcoming Queensland council elections on the City of Brisbane for a number of reasons. It is the most populous council in Australia, but it also has elections that are strongly partisan, with Labor, the LNP and the Greens running in every ward and holding all but one ward.
Nominations closed on Tuesday for the two Queensland state by-elections and the Queensland council elections, all to be held on March 16. I have now updated my candidate lists for my Brisbane City, Inala and Ipswich West guides.
For this post I’m most interested in the nominations for the City of Brisbane. I have some other thoughts about nominations in other councils which I might return to in coming days.
It has been looking more and more likely that Tasmania would be going to an election in recent weeks, with the premier, Jeremy Rockliff, demanding new assurances from two ex-Liberal independents and threatening to go to an election if those demands weren’t met.