By Corey Everitt
A Tonimbuk local is the next to announce their intention to run for council this year, calling on locals to stand for “better democracy” in local government and pushing a hard line against councillors who have “forgotten” to be representatives for the local community.
Vern Hughes lives and works in Tonimbuk and pays close attention to politics from all levels. Recently he took to local Facebook groups to announce his intention to run in the next council elections in October this year.
It wasn’t just an announcement, but a call out for other locals in Cardinia and surrounds to put up their hand as well, not necessarily to join him as a party but to just increase participation.
This is because, though Hughes is concerned with the bread and butter issues of roads and rates in the local community, his push in this year’s election is a broader challenge to entrenched structures and culture of local governments that he thinks have become bureaucratic and out of touch.
“Local government seems to me to be the least accountable of any of the three levels of government,” he said.
“A lot of people talk about Federal and State politics, but there is kind of not a lot of attention that goes on to local governments.”
“What happens I think is that it becomes largely unaccountable, not a lot of scrutiny of what local governments do, whether they do their job well or not.”
Mr Hughes backs his criticism further from his extensive work in social policy programs with NGOs, community services, family services, churches, and in the disability and health sectors.
The tendency Mr Hughes says he has noticed is how council’s work grows to become more and more within the unelected and largely faceless side of council officers and managers, instead of elected representatives.
“People who have been in local government for a long time, they tend to just get absorbed into the machinery of the council,” he said.
“They have forgotten that they are meant to be a representative of the local community, they have just forgotten that.
“Instead of thinking their job is to represent the community to the council, they think their job is to represent the council to the community.
“They won’t take the community views about something to the council and say these residents are unhappy about something, what are you going to do about it.”
Mr Hughes thinks it comes from the overall natural processes of local governments and elections need to be used as they are purposed for; for the voter to check the inertia and disconnect from the public.
“I don’t think Cardinia is worse or better than others, it’s just pretty typical,” he said.
“Really the paid officers should be there to assist, implement, but over time what happens is the officers become the permanent people there, the councillors come and go.
“The councillors are always at a disadvantage in terms of knowledge of how everything works, knowledge of the council culture and finances and how things get done.
“Over time, the officers naturally come to think that it’s their show, the councillors have to fight hard to remind them that no, they are the elected people and these are just the staff.”
Mr Hughes describes Cardinia as “bloated, excessively bureaucratic” where the shire’s needs for infrastructure and the overall development of the growth corridor suffers.
“The number of hoops to jump through to get things done, it’s far too many, everything should be streamlined,” he said.
“Even though there is a huge amount of infrastructure work going on everywhere, there is still this huge lag between population and available services and infrastructure.
“The lag is not being whittled down, it’s getting bigger.”
He said you get a situation where you’re “not really prioritising anything”, where the council is stuck in “chasing money” so they can have “a finger in every pie, spreading themselves thin”.
He doesn’t want to do this alone; he would like to help others who have similar sentiments for better democracy to also stand.
There is no intention to run it as a party or a full ticket, but simply for Mr Hughes to help others start out. He has run in elections before, including as an independent in the 2018 State Election. He only just lost to the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party for a seat in the upper house.
“I’ve always been interested in trying to get some reform in that direction and this is just a way to encourage people to stand,” he said.
“I’m interested in standing myself; I’m also interested in encouraging and trying [to] help some other people who want to put themselves forward.
“Just a loose grouping of people trying to get a better democracy.”
Regardless of his prospects of being elected, he hopes his efforts will generate a worthwhile discussion this election season.
“It will be a more contested election than we’re used to with a few serious candidates in each ward who have got their own agenda.
“What I would certainly like to see is most of the incumbents lose and replaced with people who want to do things differently.
“I just think that would be healthy to have a good turnover and I think it’s probably fairly likely.”
