February 10th 2020

with the upcoming local government elections I've thought why do we have to have local government representatives.

considering the last few months we have had an administrator and life has gone on and decisions have been made, I have thought, what decisions do a local council elected representative make. based on what has been reported previously in the press, it appears most of the previous councillors were making decisions to feather their own nest. that's why an administrator was put in to replace them.

based on the small amount of advertising material that the candidates are putting out, I don't see how voting for one candidate as opposed to the other is going to make any great amount of difference. the reason being that all that has been promised by most candidates are motherhood statements. like I will represent you. or I will ensure that your rates are used for the best possible purpose.

without knowing how each of these candidates will vote on a particular issue I don't feel I have enough information to make an informed decision as to which person I should have representing me in local government.

however I still have another alternative. I can vote for none of the candidates. I can vote informal (a silly word that means you effectively don't vote for anyone). that means getting my name ticked off as having attended to vote and not putting any numbers in any of the boxes or just writing any sort of garbage on the voting slip. I could even possibly write what I want counsellors to do, on the voting slip. of course it would have no effect.

but neither does voting for a particular candidate. considering that I have no idea what the candidate will do on a particular issue.

my preference is to have representative democracy replaced with direct democracy. direct democracy is where you vote on issues and there are no political representatives. our present representative democracy is that you vote for a person who represents you. but even though we have a world where people can communicate more so, than ever has been the case, we don't have an official way of recording what public aggregate wishes are. I want a way of being able to record my specific wishes

it's not that we don't have the technology to be able to do it, it's just the unwillingness to do it. perhaps also the fact that those that are already in representative politics, the politicians, want to retain their current positions.

I, and I'm sure most people, also don't no, why we vote for a Mayor. what does the mayor do different to other councillors? do they only chair meetings? do they have the deciding vote? considering there's only one Mayor for the whole of Logan does that mean they have effectively, more power? in which case why do we need the individual counsellors.

of course counsellors and the Mayor all have to be paid. we as ratepayers are effectively paying them. if we didn't have all these counsellors we wouldn't have to pay for them. I haven't seen any candidates that say they want to abolish counsellors and therefore use the money that's paid to them to reduce rates.

if YOU want that to happen, don't vote for any of them. by voting for anybody all you're doing is encouraging them, and having to pay them. what do you get for what you pay?