No sausage and no sizzle: 2024 Melbourne City Council election

It was not that long ago we lined up at a local polling booth to cast a vote for our preferred local council candidate. Waiting in the line was for many distracted by a sausage in a slice of bread provided at minimal cost by a local club or organisation.

It raised funds, satisfied the hunger and took time off waiting in the line. The democracy sausage, as it became known in the 1980s, satisfied the hunger for democracy.

The polling booth at a local school, community centre or church was a community event even though it involved a personal and private vote for a preferred candidate.

The polling booth also required candidates to have local supporters to hand out how to vote cards in a last-minute attempt to influence voters.

The sausage together with the polling booth were a very local thing! It became synonymous with democracy and built a sense of community.

The recently held Melbourne City Council election lacked the sizzle. Only two-thirds of votes were received and five per cent were informal.

The general view was that the campaigns failed to interest voters and information on the teams was limited to the Lord Mayoral candidate.

The campaigns also provided no vision for the city’s future nor policies that reflected the interests and needs of residents and local business.

The election, however, did shine a blinding light on the electoral provisions of the City of Melbourne Act 2001 and revealed their shortcomings and pitfalls.

During the election campaign it became pretty obvious that funding and preference deals provided the best insight into the motivation, credibility and suitability of candidates running for the council, and also skewed the result.

The source of election funding was hidden, with most candidates declining to have the amount and source of their funding announced until 40 days after the result election.

No doubt the benefactors and the beneficiaries of the successful campaigns will be revealed in conflict-of-interest declarations in future council decision-making.

The Age editorial on October 16, 2024, called for reform of the City of Melbourne Act: “[the] voting system must change, It’s not a preference, it’s a demand”.

The editorial reported on the backroom deals and preference flows between candidates that it said could result in an unexpected Lord Mayor for Melbourne; “as The Age’s reports have made manifestly clear, reform is needed. To do nothing is to cast integrity out the window.”

Then on October 19, 2024, The Age editorial asked, “who’s the best for Melbourne? The Age cannot endorse mayoral candidates”.

It revealed that the leading Lord Mayoral team leaders were unwilling to accept The Age’s invitation to reveal their campaign donors in real time.

It went on to say that transparency in this campaign has been severely lacking, including for party membership. The complex flow of preferences, it stated, results in unexpected and unintended outcomes.

The election campaign has resulted in calls for a review and reform of the City of Melbourne Act and its electoral provisions.

We need electoral provisions that return the City of Melbourne to real democracy.

We need one vote one value, the reintroduction of wards, attendance voting and the election of the Lord Mayor and Deputy Lord Mayor by the council.

The Carlton Residents Association is well prepared to represent the interests of its members and friends over the next four years with its “Agenda for Carlton”, providing a platform for its advocacy role to the council. •