By Phil Jarratt
As we roll into final polling day on Saturday and wait to see if our horses got up, it’s timely to look at what we can learn from these local government elections, and perhaps discover whether Noosa is an island of sanity (or perhaps the opposite) or merely reflecting broader trends across the state.
For starters, there were 10 per cent fewer candidates across Queensland’s 77 council elections this time than there were in 2020, and record numbers of mayors and councillors who have been re-elected unopposed. In all, 61 positions have been filled without an election (up 33 per cent from 2020), including 15 for mayor, some in major councils like Moreton Bay and Gladstone. Locally, in 2020 there were 20 candidates for councillor in Noosa and 14 in 2024, but only two mayoral candidates in 2020 and four in 2024.
Why the changes? Well, there are three theories:
• Communities are happy with their particular council and don’t see the need to challenge the incumbent.
• People are caught up in cost of living pressures and don’t have time to put their emotional energy into anything else.
• Potential candidates are put off by the relentless negativity and attacks on social media.
While Noosa veterans of previous campaigns have claimed that electoral content on social media has never been more toxic, according to a local government expert consulted by Noosa Today, social media attacks and outright lies are not just a local phenomenon. Elections in Douglas, Redland, Toowoomba and Mt Isa are notorious for acrimonious social media behaviour with supporters posting vicious attacks on candidates and others in the community, which includes council staff being attacked online for implementing council decisions, often through fake accounts. It seems, the expert says, that some in the community have opted out of running for public office because they don’t want to run the gauntlet of social media attacks.
Meanwhile, ABC News online articles have recently drawn attention to the fact that more
than one in 10 so-called independents in Queensland council elections are members of political parties, excluding Brisbane City Council where the LNP, Labor and the Greens run endorsed candidates.
The law now requires candidates to declare when they nominate whether they are members of a political party or have been a member of a party in the previous 12 months, even if they are not endorsed by the party. Across Queensland, only the Greens and the Animal Justice parties are running endorsed candidates in this council election (again, excluding Brisbane which has LNP, Labour, Greens and other endorsed candidates). There are no party-endorsed candidates in Noosa.
Of the approximately 1300 candidates standing at these elections, excluding Brisbane, there are 186 who are members of political parties. As there was not previously a requirement to declare party membership, it is difficult to compare this to previous elections but local government watchers believe that there are more party members standing this time around than ever before – 77 are LNP members, 66 are Labor and the remainder are from minor parties. There are three candidates in Noosa who are members of political parties.
