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Thursday, 9 November, 2023
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Program makes a splash
Education honour
Classic cup day for Cranbourne
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Arson suspected in fire
Cans for school Lynbrook resident Esther Keji has been collecting recycling bottles and cans for the past five months with the generous help from the community. Finally, on 1 November, her pay-off day came as Victoria’s container deposit scheme hit the road. All the money raised from the bottles she’s collected will go towards a foundation that supports children in Uganda. Story page 12
Esther Keji with her bags of recyclables in the backyard. 370864
Picture: STEWART CHAMBERS
Numbers game By Violet Li and Emma Xerri A proposed election reform has floated the idea of more Casey councillors, which advocates say would help manage population growth and mitigate donkey voting. The State-appointed Electoral Representation Advisory Panel (ERAP) is conducting a review of Casey Council’s electoral structure under the Local Government Act 2020. The Act stipulates all metropolitan city councils must have single-councillor ward electoral structures. It also requires each ward
must have an approximately equal number of voters per councillor within plus or minus 10 per cent of the average. Casey Council - which has been governed by administrators rather than councillors since 2020 - currently sits on six wards with a total of 11 councillors. The next councillor elections are scheduled for 2024. In ERAP’s preliminary report, three models have been proposed for the number of councillors and wards. Model One and Two use 11 single-councillor wards with different criteria to define the
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boundaries, while Model Three has 12 singlecouncillor wards and adopts mainly road and rail infrastructure as ward boundaries. Hampton Park resident Garry Page, who stood for council in 2016, has rejected the 11-councillor consideration and endorsed the 12-councillor model in his 34-page submission. He stated for population reasons alone there should be 12 councillors. The City of Casey 2019-20 Representation Review Final Report found 12 councillors were required to represent 223,917 voters with an
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average of 18,660 voters per councillor at the time of the writing, though the recommendation was never adopted due to the dismissal of the councillors in 2020. Now, with 252,670 voters, Mr Page believed downgrading to 11 councillors would represent a step backward with an increase to an average of 22,970 voters. “Therefore, the current population for the City of Casey should actually be 12 councillors for 252,670 electors or an average of 21,056 electors per councillor,” he stated. Continued page 16
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