Thank you Mr Morris Iemma. Yes, thank you. It is not often that I get to publicly praise a Labor Party member for his/her action, but in this case, Mr Iemma must be thanked. Since 1999, one of the reasons why I wanted to be elected onto Council was because I wanted Councillors' votes to be recorded so that the public could see how each individual Councillor voted on each and every issue. Sadly, since 1999, there was no majority political will to introduce the recording of such votes. That is, until now.

In late 2008, thanks to then Labor Premier Morris Iemma, all NSW local councils are now forced to record how each Councillor voted for development applications.

Under my request, the staff of Parramatta City Council has since been examining the different equipment and processes to introduce electronic voting to help with the recording of votes of Councillors.

Last night, on 25 February 2009, Councillors and staff "trialed" a few systems to see how it would work in Council. The Bosch and IML systems (see above images) were two of the systems being reviewed.

I hope that in 2009, Parramatta City Council will ensure that electronic voting systems will be introduced as a permanent feature of our Council's accountability and transparency.