Rose coloured council election glasses, off for good

Reporter John Ryan has been elected to Dubbo Regional Council. He reflects on a hectic and sometimes bizarre election campaign.

I’VE covered plenty of election campaigns and I’ve interviewed literally hundreds of candidates and volunteers who spend time out the front of Pre-poll electoral booths to hand out How-to-vote cards, and I thought I knew something about it.

But for the two weeks that option was open in the recent Dubbo Regional Council (DRC) elections I realised it was far different when you’re actually involved.

In fact, by 10am on the first Monday, I was wondering if I’d made a huge mistake.

Some candidates and their supporters claim they like it, but I liken it to a puppy begging for some scraps.

I may be looking at the whole thing through a different prism because for all that time I felt I was competing against the Ben Shields’ team who had five to 10 people handing out, and the rest of the crew who were organised by former mayor Greg Matthews into a make-shift coalition, handing each other’s flyers out to compete against the Shields’ juggernaut.

I can see why other candidates did it, and it almost certainly garnered them more votes, increasing their distributive power by a factor of five to 10, but I was concerned that unholy alliances were being formed before candidates even got voted on to council, so I made the decision not to get involved and just did my own thing.

Even so, that coalition honeymoon didn’t last for everyone concerned – a week is a long time in politics – and by the end of the fortnight some people were swapping flyers on a far more limited basis.

There was plenty to observe and plenty of time to do it.

I’d have to say I learnt a lot but if I never have to go through that again, it’d be way too soon.

The Shields team had an initial huge advantage, not only outnumbering any other individual candidate, but by having a single flyer which had a candidate from each Ward.

While I’d be talking to an average of just one person in every four or five who could vote for me in Central Ward, and explaining the craziness of the Ward system, the Shields Team asked which ward they were in and then highlighted their team member who could be voted for – it was incredibly effective.

It was frustrating not only to have to stand in the gutter opposite the Pre-poll doors and asking people to come over to me so I didn’t violate the six metre exclusion rule for electoral material from the polling booth, but exacerbated by having to give long explanations to all those who couldn’t vote for me, as to why the state government introduced the wards and left unpaid people like myself to explain it to the punters.

Plenty of people, including my wife, went into the booth only to be given the wrong voting slip, so who the hell knows how many people voted in the wrong ward, with many people probably not realising they’d been given the incorrect piece of paper.

One video I posted to Facebook of a young bloke voting in the wrong ward quickly shot up to more than 4000 views, and that was without boosting it. This sort of publicity did mean more people were researching what ward they were in and how the system worked, but it shouldn’t have been up to candidates to educate the masses.

It was also interesting to pick the brains of other people, including Dubbo’s resident election “tragic” Peter Bartley, who called past most days to see how things were going – in fact any departure from the norm at this most mind-numbingly boring of occupations was warmly welcomed.

Right from the start most people involved seemed to pick the candidates who’d get up.

Jane Diffey’s handouts were going off like hotcakes in all directions, the choice in North Ward being fairly stark, whether her or Ben Shields, and it was interesting to see that the Shields Team didn’t spend any of its large advertising budget in that area – most seemed to realise very early on that it would be Jane and Ben.

South Ward was also looking like Kevin Parker and Greg Mohr from very early on, and in East Ward, Dayne Gumley and Stephen Lawrence made it look like a two horse race, although with up to 10 people handing out Ana Pateman’s how-to-votes every day, she took far more votes than expected.

One bizarre incident occurred when former councillor Richard Mutton, who spent thousands of dollars in newspaper ads imploring people to vote “ungrouped, below the line”, strolled down early in the first week to hand out for Ana Pateman, despite the fact he’d written publicly that he wasn’t aligned to any candidate.

It was also difficult not to notice that Ana Pateman’s how-to-vote cards bore a striking resemblance to Greg Matthews’, the former mayor who was first dragged onto Dubbo City Council by his great mate Richard Mutton, on an above the line ticket.

There are no stranger stories than the ones that come out of local politics.

And when at least one candidate had new flyers printed with other candidates listed on the back, the Ward confusion was increased and that probably exacerbated the high informal vote. But back to the contest. Aside from the Wellington Ward, the Central Ward in Dubbo, which I stood for, was the one everyone said was impossible to pick.

My view is the bulk of the Shields Team advertising budget seemed to go towards Central.

It was a contest between myself, Shields Team representative Vicki Etheridge, Greg Matthews and popular local Kris Stevens, as well as my running mate Josh Black and Shields’ No.2, Nikki Catelotti.

Even up to the eve of the election no-one was willing to call the Central Ward but in the end it was quite clear cut.

Pre-poll taught me about the myriad games people play, including myself, in this rarefied bubble – it’s a bit like a shipboard romance, after we all packed up on Friday night many people stood around talking, no-one quite wanted to let go.

One thing it certainly did was enable most of the incoming Dubbo councillors to get to know each other in a way that would ordinarily take months, so that could be a good thing from what was a relentless grind from beginning to end.

Vision, not blinkers

BY far the most common comment I received during Pre-poll and on voting day was about how great it would be for Dubbo to have a lake.

The dragstrip followed as the number two topic of conversation.

I’m convinced we can have both and that a city with Dubbo’s capacity and scale could do these things easily.

That our council has always made these visionary sports almost impossible, and sapped the enthusiasm of residents, is one of the main reasons I stood.

If there’s one thing the past month has taught me, it’s that people want positivity in their lives, and Dubbo-ites deserve a council that helps them, not one that hinders at every turn.

The hardest thing for me during the two weeks: missing the funeral of my best mate’s mum who was like a second mother to me when I was 18-years-old. I’m still in a bit of shock I didn’t get to say goodbye but I couldn’t afford the time to get to Victoria and back – I’ll always regret that.

The most difficult decision: with pundits like Peter Bartley predicting a race to the death in Central Ward, the smart political move for me would have been to preference the Shields’ Team candidate Vicki Etheridge to ensure I got over the line in a tight race. I even had how-to-vote cards drawn up with a ‘2’ in her group, but at the end of the day I just couldn’t do it. Proudly Independent.