The Local Government Minister has just released the Council electoral structures that he will require be implemented for the 2020 and 2024 elections. No further surprises for 2020: 8 metro Councils going from multi to single member wards (for appalling and unjustifiable reasons).

But let’s look at 2024. It’s now formally confirmed that, whether their communities want it or not, all Rural City Councils (Ballarat, Bendigo, Horsham, Mildura, Shepp & Wodonga) will move to single member wards too. Multi-member ward or unsubdivided options banned by Minister.

Geelong will be single member wards by 2024 as well. In 2017 Labor was celebrating moving Geelong from single member to multi member wards, following the Council’s dismissal due, in part, to the governance problems arising from the old single member ward plus mayor structure.

(The media release is still online: https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/giving-geelong-the-council-it-wants-and-deserves/ Labor’s Local Govt Minister at the time sent her “Congratulations to the people of Greater Geelong who will get the first class council they deserve.” and she praises the citizens jury that devised the structure.)

But there have been two new Local Govt Ministers since then, and the current Minister doesn’t give a toss about the reasons Geelong was sacked or the costly & robust community consultation process that removed the single member wards. He’s just going to change it all back again!

This massively expensive, politically-motivated tampering with electoral structures, unchallenged by the Premier or the Labor Caucus due obviously to the power and terror wielded by Somyurek, is an enormous threat to the governance of Local Councils.

The 1989 Local Govt Act allowed communities to have their say. The 2020 Local Govt Act allows just one man to have his say.

The Victorian Government’s attitude towards democratic principles is trash, and we are all the losers for it.

List of electoral structures for all councils 2016-2020-2024 as released today is here: https://www.localgovernment.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/word_doc/0021/462162/List-of-individual-council-structures-Colour.docx