Back to the future for council wards

THE City of Greater Bendigo’s council electoral ward structure is set to change from its current three-ward, three-councillor system to a nine-ward, single-councillor model.

Mandated by the State Government as part of the Local Government Act 2020, two information sessions were held earlier this week by the Victorian Electoral Commission, before a draft report on the plan was released on Wednesday in the plans.

The municipality has had a single ward structure in the past and long-term current City of Greater Bendigo Lockwood Ward representative Cr Rod Fyffe has been elected under that system.

“I’ve always preferred the single wards, simply because the people get to know quite quickly who their councillor is,” he said.

“I think that that also makes it more manageable for the councillors themselves. When I had a single ward, I had 11 square kilometres, and I went to just over 1000 square kilometres.

“The community is not united in any way shape or form, whereas under a single ward structure generally there is more ability to get to some sort of commonality within the community, that’s what I think.”

City of Greater Bendigo CEO Craig Niemann said electoral structures need to be reviewed at times as they need to comply with voter volume representation limits.

Yet he also wasn’t supportive of the compulsory move back to single councillor wards.

“Council’s not convinced that that’s the right structure for this municipality, being a significant urban area but also a significant rural area in the municipality and the number of small towns,” he said.

“I think the single-member ward structure is going to be a challenging one to identify and deliver.”

President of Advance Heathcote, Peter Maine, said he was not sure if the proposed change would make much difference to the further out areas of urban Bendigo.

“The 64-million-dollar question there is who would come out the woodwork and who would actually take on the role and be able to deliver for the community of Heathcote?” he said.

“Overall, I think that a redesigning might be interesting, I’m not quite sure how single councillors would go over large areas in terms of their connection to community.”

As part of the planning for single councillor wards, the VEC is seeking feedback on the plan, mostly around electoral boundaries until Wednesday 19 July.