City Workers to Vote for Mayor!
Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 12:32 pm
from adelaidenow:
THE city's 108,000 workers would get to vote for the Lord Mayor and five councillors in future elections as part of a high-powered plan to transform Adelaide into a "modern-day capital city".
The Advertiser can reveal the state's peak business group and a powerful trade union have formed an unlikely alliance to lobby for legislative changes to the Adelaide City Council's voting system.
The plan by Business SA and the Shop and Distributive Allied Employees Association will be tabled officially at this weekend's Labor Party state convention. The business/union alliance hopes the convention will support the plan and then commit the State Government to legislate for change.
Giving city workers a vote would increase the number of potential electors in the 2010 city council poll from 22,000 to as many as 130,000.
Adelaide would become the first capital in Australia to allow workers to shape the future of a major city. The business/union alliance states the city council is "continuing to avoid the bold and proactive decisions necessary for the future of the state".
Business SA chief executive Peter Vaughan said the council "should be elected by the people that they serve, and they must provide for workers and businesses as well as residents".
Lord Mayor Michael Harbison said the idea could have merit but argued the present balance was correct because city business owners, along with residents, could already cast a vote in elections.
Mr Vaughan said Business SA joined the union on the issue "in the best interests of South Australia".
"The current structure sees councillors pandering to minority residential interests at the expense of businesses, visitors and those who work in the city daily," he said.
He said SA was a city-state and it was essential "to have a democratically elected council that has the interests of business, workers and residents on an equal footing".
Union secretary Peter Malinauskas said "just because city workers don't push green wheelie bins doesn't mean they shouldn't have a say".
"People who work within the city need to utilise the council's services just as much as anyone else," he told The Advertiser.
In last year's council election, only 6010 votes were cast in the Lord Mayoral contest, in which Mr Harbison was returned with a margin of 127 votes.
Mr Malinauskas said the city was "the commercial heartland of this state and the only thing that makes it function are the 108,000 workers".
"We think the idea is good in principle and it makes perfect sense," he said.
As part of the plan, CBD workers would vote for the Lord Mayor and five area councillors but not for the six ward councillors.
Only workers aged over 18 would be eligible to vote and the plan was relevant only to the city council, not other metropolitan councils.
Part of the alliance's position paper states:
IT is not just the business community that has become disillusioned by the failure of the council to enhance the city as a place to do business.
THE council fails to meet its ongoing challenges or enhance the role of the CBD and, consequently, councillors must stop pandering to sectional and ward-driven agendas.
THE electoral structure and voting arrangements give residents undue control over issues that affect a much broader electorate than just residential and, therefore, the system must be changed.
BUSINESS and those who work in the city have long suffered from minority residential interests conflicting with the growth of the CBD.
THERE must be no stalling in helping to drive Adelaide forward into a modern-day capital city.
Mr Harbison said it was "important for workers to be represented". "We think the balance is probably about right now because just over half of voters in the electorate are in business," he said.
"Unfortunately, we offer that opportunity to them but the lowest voter turnout comes from those same people. Obviously, we would like to see more participation from this area in the election."
Making voting compulsory was another option being considered to increase participation, Mr Harbison said.
Local Government Minister Gail Gago said she would "be interested to listen to the debate" at the convention. "I respect the party's democratic process and will wait until after that to comment."
