After elections, governments talk about electoral system reform yet we seldom see comprehensive, effective action to improve fairness, transparency, convenience and efficiency.
Prior to the March 2020 local government elections in Queensland, the State Government introduced several legislative improvements – a ban on donations from property developers, a requirement for disclosure of donations $500 or more, real-time electronic disclosure of donations and expenditure, and some changes to mitigate against undue influence of council administrations by elected representatives - but they didn’t go far enough. Those few amendments made little difference and worse, they actually reduced fairness and transparency by sending the activities they intended to discourage, underground.
Nevertheless, in the 2020 council elections which proceeded in the midst and mayhem of the arrival of Covid-19, several good things resulted:
We saw how polling booths can be managed better;
The system for postal voting was made easier; and
There was growing impetus to expedite introduction of electronic voting (but this seems to have since waned).
In the wake of that election, I made a list of 11 Council Election Reforms to help make future council elections fairer and genuinely representative. They were discrete, but interrelated, and intended to be considered as a package.
In 2023, some sensible spending caps were introduced for mayoral and divisional candidates, however, the potential to conceal expenditure and in-kind ‘volunteer’ support is limitless which, in reality, renders the caps pointless.
Following the recent election in 2024, I refined the 2020 list and converted it to this infographic. The most important reform remains the same - to limit elected representatives to two consecutive terms. However, the changes mostly relate to improving the official source for information about candidates, and caring less about the wasteful proliferation of signage in the hope that such displays of banners and corflutes drop away when people can quickly, easily read about candidates on their mobile devices.
While the two-party political dominance continues there’s little incentive for governments in power to improve the system which favours them, but if anyone wants to campaign for change, here are a few simple-to-introduce starting suggestions…
