First past the post for local government elections

Local Government Minister John Castrilli has been successful in delivering much anticipated change to the local government voting system.

The passing of the first-past-the-post (FPTP) legislation in State Parliament will see the FPTP system of voting implemented in time for this year's local government elections.

In response to approaches from the local government sector, Mr Castrilli had been determined to seek the abolition of the current system of proportional preferential voting (PPV) in favour of the simpler FPTP method.

"The return to FPTP voting is an important step in protecting local government from the influence of major political parties and the rise of political factions within councils," he said.

"Introduced by the previous Labor government, the comparatively complex PPV system was used for the council elections in 2007.

"It is a fairer, simpler system which makes the electorate process easier to understand and more accessible to people with a genuine interest in dealing with local issues and serving their local communities."

The Minister emphasised that the change of voting method had consistently been requested by the local government sector.

"It was their peak body representatives who, on behalf of their elected and professional members, strongly advocated the need for this change to return to a far less complex method of determining results of local government elections."

Mr Castrilli said that the Liberal-National Government had also worked co-operatively to secure this important outcome for the local government sector.

"First-past-the-post voting not only removes the potential for political or other tickets to be run, but the system will also mean election results will  be known in a very timely manner."

The Minister said a number of regulatory amendments would be progressed to ensure a smooth transition to the new system in time for the local government elections on October 17, 2009.