According to records, this issue has been debated since 1994. And unfortunately, the debate still continues. However, I believe the wider Parramatta community should be invited to participate in this debate about democracy.

It is commonplace to hear people generally ask every year … “what happened to that Lord Mayor?” “Why isn’t he/she there any more?” “Who’s the Lord Mayor now?” So why can’t the people vote for their own Lord Mayor?

Under the current election system based on the Local Government Act 1993, by default, the leader of the Council is elected every year by the elected Councillors. This means that in every Council 4 year term, there could be up to 4 different mayors and deputy mayors elected. It is my personal opinion that it was deliberately designed that way on the anticipation that it will reduce any excessive abuse of power.

In practice, the effect of having potentially different mayors every year means that the Council staff may have to shift slightly or greatly their priorities to suit the new civic leader. This intrinsically can have negatively effects.

So will a popularly elected mayor solve that problem? Yes and no. Yes because it can introduce stability in terms of priority setting. But no because you could have the problem of having a civic leader of one political persuasion, but the majority of the elected Councillors could be of a different political persuasion. In that scenario, the Council could be in a deadlock, and there is nothing in the Local Government Act 1993 that elegantly deals with such a deadlock.

A popularly elected mayor also introduces a new problem, that it could potentially restrict the field of mayoral candidates to only the major political parties. Sadly, it ought to be said that the best ideas do not always come from the major political parties. In fact, on the rare occasion, a minor party or even an independent could be best to serve as mayor. But this minor party or independent mayoral candidate is unlikely to overcome the problem of the earlier scenario, that he/she faces an opposite political persuasion while in the Council Chamber.

All that said, democracy is always imperfect and continuously evolving in order to respond to the ever changing realities on almost a daily basis. As such, there should always be public dialogue and discussion as to whether we could collectively advance an improved democratic system that serves the people for the better.