This is the letters section from the 11 September 2015 print edition of the Warragul & Baw Baw Citizen.
Time to split Warragul ward
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RE: Discomfort over VEC review submission (WBBC 14 August 2015): The council’s point about a mix of multi- and single-councillors wards resulting in inconsistent vote counting systems and confusion is a good one.
They could also have said that having such a mix is a good way to gerrymander results, if you have single-councillor wards in areas that favour a certain side, and multi-councillor wards in areas that aren’t so favourable to that side.
The same applies to having a mix of wards with different numbers of coun-cillors, if you make the quota higher in areas where your opponents don’t poll well, and make the quota lower in the areas where you don’t poll so well.
I’m not saying this has happened here, but it is not democratic for the quota to be 20 per cent in Warragul, 25 per cent in Drouin and 33.33 per cent in the East.
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The only three outcomes with nine councillors that make democratic sense are:
- nine single councillor wards (quota 50 per cent for everyone)
- three wards of three councillors (quota 25 per cent for everyone)
- the council elected as a whole (quota 10 per cent for everyone)
The easiest way to fix the council proposal would be for part of the Warragul ward to be excised and added to the Eastern ward so both wards would be of equivalent population to the Drouin ward, with three councillors each. It would make that Eastern ward even larger, but there would be an extra councillor to cover the kilometres. Having democratic councils is much more important than having small wards.
“Simon”
~ via warragulcitizen.com
Broadly bent
RE: Labor makes penalty rates an election issue (WBBC 14 August 2015): Good response from Mr. Broadbent with WBBC trying to nail him re. WorkChoices. Broadbent 1, WBBC 0.
“Raymond”
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~ via warragulcitizen.com
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