Mayor’s View – 3rd April, 2008
The new council members met informally for the first time on Tuesday 1st April.
At this meeting issues for today’s post election meeting were discussed, along with induction matters and the work schedule for the first month of the new council.
The post election meeting will commence at 10.30am in Chjowai Hall, McGowan Drive Innisfail and like all council formal meetings is open to the public. Items on the agenda include formalities regarding the appointment of the Mayor and councillors, the election of a Deputy Mayor, setting the remuneration of councillors and the times and dates for future meetings.
The Electoral Commission of Queensland (ECQ) has come in for criticism, with numerous examples of poor decision making, slow response and undue delay. There will now be a wide ranging review. Whilst this is the first time the ECQ has handled a local government election and some problems were to be expected, my own view is that there is certainly room for improvement. In my case for example, a complaint was made to ECQ during the campaign, by persons unknown, claiming my brochure was a How to Vote card and not a brochure because it contained the words “Vote 1” above my name ( as did many other candidate’s election material). This should have been dismissed immediately as a vexatious complaint. In fact it took over a week before I was finally informed my brochure was indeed a brochure. Meanwhile I had had to alter the wording and print more to be able to continue distributing them. (As it turned out the complainant did me a favour as I needed most of the extra ones). It is also unsatisfactory to sit for a fortnight with approximately 50% of the vote, with the nearest two main opponents at approximately 20% each, before a result is declared.
Following an invitation from the Premier, Anna Bligh, I attended a summit for Queensland mayors in Brisbane. Most of the elections had not been declared, although the results of the mayoral contests were known. The state government paid for mayoral attendances, possibly because the mayors elect had no authority to incur expenses. Attendance at council expense by acting chief executives or chief executives was welcome and worthwhile. Our Acting CEO Mark Kelleher introduced me to many of the local government departmental staff and Local Government Association Queensland (LGAQ) personnel. The relations between the LGAQ and the government appear to be repaired following the disagreements brought about by the forced amalgamation process.
The government, through Minister Pitt and senior departmental staff, made much of the new amalgamated regions, new regulations, the new local government act currently being written and the creation of regional local government offices. There will be an office in Far North Queensland which will cover the Cassowary Coast Region. At the same time as the mayors were meeting, Brisbane hosted a meeting of all planning and infrastructure ministers in Australia and the federal minister, Anthony Albanese, also addressed our meeting. He stressed continued support for local government from the federal government.
During the Brisbane meeting the Deputy Premier, Paul Lucas, stressed the importance of our Region having a vision for the future. I agree that the new council will need to articulate a clear, shared vision as a priority. Without a big picture and direction to work towards for our new Region the process of decision making can become piecemeal. We need to go one step at a time, but we also need to know where those steps are taking us.
Cr Bill Shannon
Mayor