With under a third of eligible voters casting a ballot during the state’s most recent local government elections, concern is growing that more extreme and single-issue candidates will use the small number of votes required to capture easily winnable council seats.<\/p>\n
Several of those candidates have already drawn criticism for inflammatory rhetoric.<\/p>\n
In Busselton, self-described “racist, sexist, democracy-scorning whites-lover<\/a>” Stephen Wells advocates for a return of the White Australia policy, while further south in Albany, Tamara Frewen, one of several candidates running on a self-described “anti-woke” platform, has come under fire for comparing the local pride group to Nazis on social media.<\/p>\n Mr Wells told the ABC he did not consider his views as extremist.<\/p>\n “I consider our current politicians extremists who project their own sins onto people with traditional views, like my own, to try and distract people from their own evil,” he said.<\/p>\n “But regardless of what any politician thinks or pretends to think about my views, they should trust the Australian public to decide these things for themselves.”<\/p>\n Ms Frewen said she strongly rejected the claim that she had compared Albany Pride to the Holocaust or Nazi ideology.<\/p>\n A comment made by Tamara Frewen on a Facebook post by news outlet Out In Perth. (Facebook)<\/p>\n ‘Extremely disappointing’<\/p>\n Speaking in parliament on Thursday, Local Government Minister Hannah Beazley said it was “extremely disappointing and concerning” to see candidates with “openly extremist views” vying for local council seats.<\/p>\n She implored voters to “do their research and vote for candidates who are representative of them and their community”.<\/p>\n “We encourage a wide range of diverse views to provide an overall representation of our communities,” she said.<\/p>\n “Extremist views and ideological positions based in hate and prejudice do not reflect our society or the community’s views and values in WA.”<\/p>\n Earlier, she told the ABC that she would consider reforms “if necessary” to ensure councils were focused on serving their communities.<\/p>\n Premier supports compulsory voting<\/p>\n Compulsory voting has long been mooted<\/a> in WA as a solution to the public’s lack of engagement in local government elections.<\/p>\n Asked by ABC Radio Perth’s Nadia Mitsopoulos whether he backed compulsory voting, WA Premier Roger Cook said he did.<\/p>\n WA Premier Roger Cook has flagged his support for compulsory voting in local government elections. (ABC News: Nic Perpitch)<\/p>\n “It really seems that our local government sector is very fragile at the moment and vulnerable, particularly in a world which is soaked or immersed in social media,” Mr Cook said.<\/p>\n “I think we need to step forward carefully on this \u2026 but I think everyone agrees that we now need more reform in that sector.”<\/p>\n Less than a third of eligible voters cast a ballot at WA’s most recent local government elecitons. (AAP: Richard Wainwright)<\/p>\n However, Notre Dame University political analyst Martin Drum said the disruption caused by single-issue candidates could still emerge under a compulsory system.<\/p>\n “The problem with single-issue candidacy is that when you are elected you are expected to collaborate and work effectively with the other council members on a whole range of issues,” he said.<\/p>\n “So if you are just focused on one single issue and have strong views on that, does that bode well for that kind of work? Possibly not.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n While Professor Drum said while compulsory voting would be a “significant change”, it may not impact the election of candidates who ran on inflammatory platforms in less populous councils.<\/p>\n “So you can make them go to the polls \u2026 but if you have 200 electors in a small council, you still only have 200 electors,” he said.<\/p>\n Martin Drum says compulsory voting may make “little difference” when it comes to single-issue candidates. (ABC News: Andrew O’Connor)<\/p>\n Uncompetitive councils a concern<\/p>\n Professor Drum said the number of councils without any election, or candidates, at all was a greater concern.<\/p>\n When nominations closed earlier this month, 143 candidates were elected automatically, while 10 councils did not have enough candidates to fill the available seats.<\/p>\n Those local governments will now go to extraordinary elections for those seats, with a date to be set by the local government and the Western Australian Electoral Commission.<\/p>\n If at the close of nominations there are still not enough candidates to fill the vacancies, the council \u2014 by an absolute majority \u2014 can appoint someone to the position.<\/p>\n “It shows that there’s not sufficient interest \u2026 in running for council and it also means that voters are not having a choice,” Professor Drum said.<\/p>\n Both higher turnout and a stronger field of candidates were put forward as potential ways to improve the recently-dismissed Port Hedland council, which this term had a sitting councillor travel to Russia to endorse Vladimir Putin’s election<\/a>, among other controversies<\/a>.<\/p>\n The desire for more candidates has been met in some communities, with the City of Busselton recording its biggest field in a quarter of a century, the City of Albany its third-highest in history, and Derby West Kimberley tripling the number of potential councillors on the ballot from previous elections.<\/p>\n Voters in Derby will choose from one of the town’s largest fields of council candidates in recent memory. (Supplied: Nick Sundblom)<\/p>\n A beleaguered system<\/p>\n The emergence of extremist candidates is the latest in a string of controversies plaguing local governments in WA, with multiple councils dismissed over poor policy, infighting and outlandish public behaviour in recent months.<\/p>\n Since March, the Shire of Derby West Kimberley<\/a>, City of Nedlands<\/a> and Town of Port Hedland<\/a> councils have been dissolved.<\/p>\n Resignations left them without a quorum, with the state government stepping in to appoint commissioners.<\/p>\n The state government has conceded there is nothing barring candidates from previously dismissed councils from running again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A West Australian minister has condemned the emergence of “extremist” candidates nominating for the state’s forthcoming council elections,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":241862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,11125,129115,129116,129113,129114,2650,50,80,129117,129112,8632],"class_list":{"0":"post-241861","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-candidates","10":"tag-city-of-albany","11":"tag-city-of-busselton","12":"tag-compulsory-voting","13":"tag-councillors","14":"tag-local-government","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-shire-of-derby","18":"tag-wa-electoral-commission","19":"tag-wa-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115237635126268552","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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