Many people assume that in a civilised country like Australia, electoral boundaries are all taken care of by impartial officials, but in Ballina, it turns out councillors have some say in deciding their own ward boundaries within the shire.
As the local population changes, this has led to an ongoing kerfuffle, with the latest chapter occupying much of the latest Ballina Council meeting.
Defying staff suggestions, Cr Rod Bruem and his allies are continuing to push for a new boundary adjustment which they say is based on common sense geographical boundaries.
This includes moving North Ballina to A Ward, moving Cumbalum to A Ward, moving areas of Newrybar west of the motorway to C Ward, and moving areas of East Ballina (north and north-east of the Richmond River) to B Ward.
After the latest period of public consultation, there were a grand total of two submissions in support of this idea and 55 objections, for reasons including; perceived councillor disadvantage, too many people being impacted, little benefit, high cost, poor forward planning, perceived political interference, and the fact that there is greater variance between the population of wards under the Bruem approach than via the original staff proposal (flying in the face of the whole reason for boundary adjustments).
Green left Echo vs brown right Bruem?
In the meeting, Cr Bruem blamed the ‘green left Echo newspaper’ for stoking misunderstandings about his proposal among the general public.
He said accusations from critics that his new boundaries amounted to gerrymandering were ridiculous and unfounded, later claiming that he was actually correcting earlier gerrymandering by the 2007 council. He described the current ward division in Ballina as being like the way Berlin was carved up during the Cold War.
Cr Bruem said that residents had tried to have him thrown out of the recent Cumbalum Residents Meeting (this is one of the main areas to be affected by the proposed change) and he had to be rescued by Cr Kiri Dicker.
Cr Bruem claimed he was simply acting based on electoral commission principles, and reducing confusion, by seeking to follow easy to understand geographical boundaries in his proposed ward boundary adjustments. If there were going to be unfortunate political ramifications for his opponents, such as Cr Jeff Johnson (Cr Bruem denied this), then that was nothing to do with him.
Cr Johnson called on councillors to follow their previous unanimous decision to accept staff-suggested ward boundaries back in February, as had already been supported by the electoral commission. He said Cr Bruem’s last minute change was ‘politically motivated’, and a waste of council resources and ratepayers’ money.
New low
He said the recent majority decision to proceed with the Bruem changes was ‘a new low for this council’ in his fifteen years there.
‘It may seem trivial, but I believe that for a councillor or a group of councillors to overturn a unanimous decision and to draw up a different electoral boundary is not the precedent that we want to set,’ said Cr Johnson.
‘It compromises this council as a whole. That is not why we’re here.’
He went on to say that far from simplifying things, the proposed changed would lead to greater confusion, as well as increasing the population differential between wards, from 4.85 per cent to 7.68 per cent, meaning the whole issue would likely have to be revisited again in the near future.
While the original change would have affected about 400 households, 2,500 would be affected by the Bruem proposal. Cr Johnson said it would be inappropriate for the mayor to use her casting vote to push through this change to the status quo.
Cr Kiri Dicker said, ‘It’s pretty clear to everyone that there’s a massive trust deficit in this council… It’s worsened by this persistent practice of moving resolutions against the advice of staff, and the council is divided. When there is division, we need to do better at achieving consensus, not to double down on decisions and just try and get our own way.
‘Maybe in the short term, you get a little win. You get what you think is right, but in the long term everyone loses because it just drives this lack of trust and division.’ She said the East Ballina ward issue (with the boundary going between houses in some cases) could have been easily fixed independently without dragging Cumbalum into it, where ‘the people are happy with their ward councillors and are suspicious about this change.’
Cr Dicker said that while Cr Johnson lives in that area, she doubted he was influential enough to make 58 people write letters in opposition to the boundary change.
Tectonic plates?
Cr Eva Ramsey spoke about following ‘geological guidelines’, with Cr Nigel Buchanan being similarly confused about geology and geography. They both said they would continue to support Cr Bruem’s approach.
Cr Buchanan said there was no point in elected councillors coming to meetings if they constantly followed staff advice.
Cr Phil Meehan said there was no gerrymandering involved, and having moved from one ward to another during his time on Ballina Council, he had found it made no difference. At the same time, he said he wouldn’t support Cr Bruem’s proposal.
Cr Simon Chate said that as soon as it was made clear to him how many residents would be affected by Cr Bruem’s proposal, and having read the public submissions against it, he would be voting for the original staff suggestion instead.
Mayor Sharon Cadwallader said she had ‘never heard anything more ridiculous’ than the suggestion that the boundary adjustments were about gerrymandering. She said there was nothing suspicious about the proposal.
Cr Rod Bruem reiterated that his boundary change proposal fitted within the guidelines and ticks the boxes. ‘It follows the law, particularly around having communities of interest together and following the geographical principles,’ he said.
In the end, Mayor Cadwallader again used her casting vote to decide the issue in Cr Bruem’s favour, with Crs Dicker, Johnson, Meehan, Chate and Johnston voting against.
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