Too much democracy? No such thing

What if I was to say “it’s election time again”?

Would you be excited? Annoyed? Angry?

Who could blame you… we’ve just come off the back of a prolonged and tedious election and it’s a word we’d all probably be happy not to hear for a few years.

However it IS election time again.

But relax… it’s just the annual election of the Goulburn Mulwaree mayor. And it all happens in-house at the Council meeting tonight when the councillors make the call, so you won’t be bombarded by pamphlets and photos opportunities, there’ll be no corflutes or posters in your yard and you won’t even see or hear ads in the paper or on radio.

At the time of writing, current mayor Geoff Kettle is standing unopposed and so, with confidence (and only the slightest amount of trepidation in case there is a last minute challenge) I confidently predict his re-election.

Which makes sense.

He lapped the other candidates at the Goulburn Mulwaree elections – and that was while he was already in the role of mayor so logically he would have been the people’s choice if we had a say.

But we don’t have a say.

Many local government areas allow the popular election of mayor. Goulburn Mulwaree Council isn’t one of them.

That could change tonight.

One of the items on the council agenda for this evening is to decide if there is a referendum on whether we should popularly elect mayor.

I should probably declare that I’m in total support of the referendum. When it comes to making a decision on the very way democracy is delivered, surely it’s important that those affected get a say and it isn’t limited to nine well-intentioned representatives.

If you go over the pros and cons, the main con is cost. I’ll get back to that in a minute. Let’s look at the pros.

Firstly, you can’t have too much democracy… more say = more democracy. As I mentioned before, some councils already allow their ratepayers the right to select mayor (and just think on those words for a while… “allow” – as if we need permission to have a say). Also, the Labor Party recently made changes to their leadership processes so that rank and file members get a say who their leader is. If it’s good enough for all of them, why not us?

Secondly, allowing a referendum isn’t making the decision about whether we have popular mayoral election, it’s just letting the people make the call. The referendum could knock back popular mayoral elections… or it could approve them. But the people will get to decide. In any event, not allowing the referendum is just another way of saying “to be honest, we don’t care what the people want or think.”

Thirdly, be VERY cautious about any vested parties (ie councillors in this case) that suggest they know what’s in our best interest, presumably better than we do. It’s a ludicrous proposition to suggest we (the ratepayers) are smart enough to pick the nine of them, but just not quite smart enough to pick the person who leads the nine. Councillors serve us, they shouldn’t dictate to us, and that includes who we get as mayor.

Fourthly, we have a good council at the moment, in my opinion anyway. Not that it’s for me to validate them (and not that my opinion matters), but I’m pretty comfortable with the integrity of our current council. But it may not always be so.

There may be times when future councils get involved in favour-trading and deal-making… “vote for Joe Bloggs and we’ll put you on this committee or that ravel junket.” It’s not happening with our current councillors, but it COULD happen in the future. The best way to scotch-guard against that is to allow popular mayoral election.

So, back to the issue of cons… or negatives. And there’s only two I can see. The first is that the council may not be happy with the mayor the people elect. Would it sound uncaring if I said “tough?” Well there you go.

The other main negative is cost. And if cost is too big a barrier to democracy, let’s throw all the council elections out the window and just have the rich guys of Goulburn make all the decisions and that way we can save a packet from election costs.

But if we Do believe that decide that democracy is important, then it’s important enough that a certain amount of cost is justified and a popular mayoral election EACH year shouldn’t be a problem. AND, in years like this where there is only one candidate, we don’t need an election … ie, NO COST. It seems to me that NO COST definitely isn’t too high a price to pay.

Anyhoo, it will all be decided tonight. Let’s hope “what the people want” is uppermost in the councillors thoughts tonight.

Viva la suffrage universel.

Originally published on the Goulburn Post website.