Dadour Poll – flow chart
The Local Government Advisory Board (LGAB) will soon make recommendations to the Minister for Local Government who will either accept or reject those recommendations.
Nonetheless, communities must ensure a fair process of local government reform and be ready to have a say in boundary adjustments that affect their districts.
Be ready, and make sure that at least 50% of your fellow residents and ratepayers vote on any proposal that affects your local government.
Here’s how the process works to vote on a LGAB or Minister Simpson’s proposal:
produced by Alison Sunderland, 2014
I don’t think the latter part of the flow chart is correct. The 50% turnout and majority of votes (top right yellow diamonds) and the binding nature of a compliant poll (top right blue box) only apply to situations where electors call the poll under clause 8 of Schedule 2.1 – not to a poll called by the Minister under clause 7.
Where a poll is called by the Minister, there is no specification of any requirements nor of how the Minister should respond to the results of a poll.
This is important because if the Minister were to agree to call polls in all cases, we would need to get very clear agreement on the terms of such polls – otherwise the Minister could either ignore the results or claim they are unrepresentative. He is already on record as describing the Dadour poll provision as ‘anti-democratic’ – see http://ianrker-vincent.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/dadour-provision-safe-for-now-but.html
Hi Ken.
Why was the Supreme Court hearing cancelled?
Colin
Sent from my iPad
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The hearing scheduled for 1.15pm today (Friday 5th September) did not go ahead because the matters it was to deal with had already been dealt with by agreement between the parties, signed and filed with the Supreme Court on 4th September. Ian Ker was advised by the lawyers that this is a common (and encouraged) practice that helps minimise court time and the costs of an action.
This agreement (Memorandum of Consent) specifies the steps to be taken (including discovery of documents and establishing facts agreed between the parties) as a prelude to judicial review of the application and timelines by which these stages must be completed. As such, it gives us much greater confidence that the case will proceed to the stage of formal judicial review.