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.
In most of Australia, single-member electorate vacancies are filled via by-election. Another small election is held just in that one electorate. But in Brisbane, that doesn’t apply in the final year of a council term.
The City of Brisbane has a rule whereby any vacancy in the first three years of the council term results in a by-election, but any vacancy in the final year allows the party of the former councillor to appoint a replacement.
This method has been abused by all parties on the council to give new candidates the benefits of incumbency leading into an election.
In one sense this is not unique – there are other examples of local democracy where councils are allowed to dispense with by-elections and leave a seat vacant when they are within the last 18 months of a term. It’s particularly strange that this approach is used in NSW alongside countbacks, since the cost of a countback is minimal.
While by-elections are far from ideal for multi-member electorates due to producing imbalanced representation (and sometimes a disproportionate cost and effort when, say, a whole council must vote to replace a single councillor), it remains best practice for single-member electorates. The whole electorate is left without representation, so it’s fair to come together to replace someone together.
In one sense, you could defend a party appointment as a cheap and easy method that maintains the political balance of the council, but it produces a perverse incentive, since it allows a party to parachute a new candidate into a council ward as an incumbent without having to face the voters. And what do you know, that’s exactly what the parties in Brisbane are doing.
I’ve analysed how often councillors retire from Brisbane City dating back to 2004, either at the election or before the election.
In the most recent term, seven out of 26 councillors retired prior to the end of their terms: four LNP councillors, two Labor councillors, and the sole Greens councillor.
Every single one of those councillors chose to quit in the last year, depriving their electors of the chance to choose their replacement. None of them chose to retire at the end of their term. All 26 incumbent councillors are running for re-election, but only 19 of them have been in their job since 2020.
The chart above shows that this trend has been accelerating for two decades. Party appointments haven’t filled more than three seats per term in 2004, 2008, 2012 or 2016, but replaced six councillors in 2020. This included the bizarre example of Ryan Murphy, who had served seven years representing the LNP in the marginal ward of Doboy before he quit his ward in 2019 to take the much safer ward of Chandler, which had been vacated by new lord mayor Adrian Schrinner. Murphy thus created a second casual vacancy in his old ward, and was able to contest his new ward as an incumbent.
By-elections have always been rare. There were two by-elections in the 2004-2008 term after LNP councillors won state seats. A third by-election was triggered in Walter Taylor in 2010 when the incumbent councillor jumped to the federal seat of Ryan. The only by-election not triggered by a councillor winning a higher office was when former Labor leader Shayne Sutton retired in 2017.
While by-elections used to be rare, it used to be quite common that councillors would see out their full term. Four councillors retired at the 2016 election without invoking the party appointment method of giving their successor a head start.
Why is this bad? Partly because these new councillors have no democratic mandate. An option for party appointment could be justified in multi-member wards where you can’t hold a by-election just for the voters who had voted for the vacating representative (although even then countbacks are more democratic and preferable). But secondly, the benefits of incumbency are substantial and should only be given to those who have already been voted in. I don’t have exact figures, but I know that BCC councillors have staff, a platform and funds to communicate with their constituents, all of which help them win re-election. That benefit shouldn’t go to those who haven’t won a mandate.
It’s also totally unnecessary. I doubt many of those councillors who have resigned right before an election wouldn’t have been capable of finishing their term, if there wasn’t such a convenient method of handing over your ward. While there may be a few more by-elections without the party appointment alternative, most of those retiring councillors would just see out their term.
While I was calculating these numbers, I also looked at how incumbent councillors have performed at past elections.
Generally most incumbents have been re-elected. The main exception was in 2008, when four councillors were defeated and another four retired. At this election, the Liberal National Party increased its numbers from nine to sixteen as Campbell Newman won a second term as Lord Mayor. It also saw a substantial redistribution which left two councillors without a ward – one retired and another was defeated after contesting a new ward against another incumbent.
One incumbent lost their seat in 2012 (when Ryan Campbell won Doboy off Labor), and ex-LNP independent Kate Richards was defeated for re-election in 2020.
The LNP now holds a lot of seats by quite small margins, but have continued to increase their share of seats from eight in 2000 to 19 in 2016 and 2020. This election could see incumbents lose their seats in numbers not seen since 2008 if there is any swing to the left.