NSW is the only State in Australia that uses an optional preferencing system. This means you don’t have to list every box, so your preference flow stops as soon as your numbers stop.

The plus with this is that your preferences will never boost a candidate you don’t support. Quite simply, if you haven’t numbered a box beside a candidate’s name they can’t get your vote.

The minus is that it tends to secure the position of the two major parties in government because they often recommend putting a 1 beside their candidate and leave all the other boxes blank, as the Liberals and One Nation have done in Camden this time around.  
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Those party recommendations that rusted on voters follow religiously, coupled with the laziness factor, (I can’t be bothered marking more than one box), means that the primary vote in NSW often decides the wining candidate (ABC’s Antony Green explains it beautifully here). It’s why we have so few crossbenchers and Independents in NSW compared to other Australian states. 

OPINION: With polling day for the NSW State election this Saturday let’s step aside from the political party noise for a moment and talk about trust.

Occasionally we are fortunate to get a politician you can really trust, regardless of which party they are from. A perfect example is Liberal politician the late Liz Kernohan. She was clearly a defender of the Camden community ahead of party politics – much to her own detriment as she admitted in her final speech to the NSW parliament.

As State elections swung between Labor and Liberal, the community stayed true to Liz and increased her margin every time because, equally, she stayed true to our electorate. At the end of the day, the party she was aligned to didn’t matter.

Sadly, I can’t say I feel the same about the current Liberal candidate. Which is a concern, because with the Liberal Party’s 18% margin in Camden, Peter Sidgreaves is almost unstoppable when it comes to being the next State MP for Camden.

There are a number of reasons I struggle with the whole idea of him as a local representative who will put our community ahead of party politics.

This was a very well run night that really showed, for the most part, the Chamber in an excellent light. There were only four candidates present as per the invitation. They included Sally Quinnell (ALP); Peter Sidgreaves (Liberal); Andrew Simpson (Independent); and Karen Stewart (Greens). The three other candidates in the race had not put their hats in the ring at the time this was organised, so were not included.
 
Jim Marsden was the moderator. Over the course of the night, each candidate was given five minutes to introduce themselves, followed by 20 minutes of questions from the moderator and finally 20 minutes of questions from the audience.
 
The first hour or so was around chamber business although there was a pause in the usual proceedings when the CEO of Camden Region Economic Taskforce, Adriana Care, used a prepared statement to attack the Greens candidate, Karen Stewart, for an article she wrote about breaches and regulatory failures of the Taskforce.
 
Interestingly, during her speech she accepted that there had been breaches but accused the Greens candidate of attacking CRET for political ends. She also accused Karen Stewart of publicly bullying her while, ironically, publicly bullying Karen Stewart. It was perhaps an ill considered moment in what was an otherwise very professional and well conducted night.
 
Now to the candidates forum, which was impressively handled by moderator Jim Marsden, who also produced the line of the night, suggesting that if he ever gives up law he may have a future in political life or stand-up comedy (they're not that far apart).

Last Friday, February 15, the District Reporter quoted Liberal Candidate Peter Sidgreaves saying he supported more development in the Camden electorate, particularly to the north around Badgery’s Creek airport.

Then on Thursday, February 21, a Liberal Party spokesman claimed Mr Sidgreaves was misquoted by the District Reporter during a 7News report by Sean Berry that said overdevelopment and a lack of supporting infrastructure was slowing emergency services around Macarthur and could cost lives.

I’m not in a position to say which of Mr Sidgreaves statements are true but there is a better way to get a sense of his position on development by looking at his votes around development during his time at Camden Council.

The story his Camden Council votes suggests is that he does have a strong tendency to support new developments, particularly subdivisions of existing blocks to make smaller plots.
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To come to this conclusion I looked at all Council votes around development and subdivisions since the 2016 election.

If you are seeing election signs for local candidates along the road, then those candidates have not only jumped the gun but they have broken State Environment Planning Policies enforced by local councils.

The State Environment Planning Policy 2008 is very clear that you can only start displaying signs five weeks out from an election, which means on or after Saturday, February 16. Something you would think every councillor and especially a mayor running for a State seat would know.

But if you were driving down Narellan Road today you might have seen Camden Mayor, Peter Sidgreaves, already has his signs out. 
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This is particularly unusual because normally Camden Council officers are quite strict when it comes to enforcing election regulations, as the Council needs to be seen as neutral at election time. It will be interesting to see if its enforcement arm takes any action against its own mayor, as it should.

​Regardless, now it appears that Mr Sidgreaves not only got the jump on the rest of local Liberal members to sneak in as Camden’s Liberal candidate without pre-selection, he has also sneaked in his election advertising well ahead of the deadline, which naturally disadvantages other local candidates.

Camden and Macarthur commuters will be slugged an additional $6.42 a day in tolls to commute to Sydney thanks to deals to make the West Connect link viable. That’s more than $1200 a year in extra costs (or double that if the toll is charged both ways) for locals who already have massive mortgages and fork out more for petrol than most Sydneysiders. And it's not like many of us have a choice. Our transport infrastructure is in such a shoddy state that for many in Macarthur, cars are the only viable option.

Pity professional drivers, as trucks will pay three times this amount.
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What makes the toll slug more galling is that the Liberals have just reneged on additional parking for Campbelltown station as our population grows. At the other end of Macarthur the brand new station at Leppington barely has enough parking now. The Federal and State Liberals are not even sure if rail can make it as far as Badgerys Creek airport when it opens. It’s like they want us on the roads.

​“Do you think I’m corrupt?”

That’s what Camden State MP Chris Patterson asked me a little over two years ago a few minutes after we sat down to chat at a table just inside the door of the Backyard Café. It was not long after I started this blog and so he felt it was worth a catch-up.

My notes from that fairly  genial meeting indicate we chatted about many other things, disagreed on some (the rise of independents as an electoral force and that the Liberals had actually performed below expectations in the 2016 election), agreed on others (the importance of maintaining the character of Camden township). But afterwards that question about corruption stuck in my mind. I couldn’t understand why it had even come up.

As I said to Chris then, I had no evidence and certainly wouldn’t go around making allegations about corruption without hard proof. The fact is, I doubt there is a single politician in the world that baseless gossip hasn’t labeled corrupt at some time but it isn't worth an inch of column space without solid gold evidence.

Since then, while there has certainly been no evidence of corruption, it is clear that Chris Patterson has been an arms length participant in the political games of Camden Council and played an important role in the politics of local Liberal branches.

But following the single nomination of Peter Sidgreaves for preselection as the Liberal candidate for the State seat of Camden, held with a 23% margin, that question around corruption is not one I could so easily dismiss today.

This Council meeting focusing on the Orbital submission by Camden Council was proof that you could have disagreements without getting in to political mud slinging. It was a relatively large crowd of around 35-40 people made up of Camden and Wollondilly residents and one of the largest groups of Council officers to have attended a meeting. 

Cr Eva Campbell and Cr Ashleigh Cagney were absent from this meeting and, because of pecuniary interests around the Orbital, Cr Rob Mills had to leave during this discussion. 

The admin of the Outer Sydney Orbital Macarthur Action Group Facebook page, Andrew Simpson, made a heartfelt public address, which he kindly provided. You can read his full address here (pdf). 

In the final result, the majority of remaining councillors supported the Council's submission, which also included an additional amendment by the Mayor, Cr Lara Symkowiak, to carve out a separate section that related to the importance of rural land for Camden. 

Cr Cindy Cagney and Cr Paul Farrow did not support the submission for different reasons. Cr Cagney was completely opposed to the Orbital going ahead while Cr Farrow asked for an amendment to call on the NSW Government to restart the process again, only this time with greater community involvement. 

Along the way we found out that not one State Government Minister had bothered to reply to the Council's request for them to come and talk to the community. I have included a full run down of the discussion, including the answer to the question that provided that information, below based on my notes. 

This should have been simple. Two votes for notices of motion that were clearly going to pass unanimously. But, no, thanks to political parties in our Council this went off the rails, fast. The mayor led the debate into the mud and it got messier from there. This is why I opposed political parties taking over our Council - suddenly political games become more important than getting down to business that genuinely matters to this community. 

You can make up your own mind who was playing politics. To make it as dispassionate as possible I have reproduced as closely as I can what was said direct from my notes. It rambles a bit in places, but I've left it that way because our community needs to know exactly how our representatives are behaving
 
This post focuses on item 5 and item 6, which both relate to the Orbital proposed by the New South Wales government. 
 
It is important to note that Cr Rob Mills had to leave the room for both notices of motion because he had a pecuniary interest in the outcome of the Orbital as the corridor passes through land he owns.

Numbers may not tell us the nuance of each Camden Council debate but over the course of a year they are very useful for detecting trends and alignments. So, at the end of each year I like to go over the votes to get a sense of whether what I thought I saw in the Council Chambers actually matches the statistics.
 
It also helps us look past the spin. One thing I often see from the Council and certainly by councillors come election time is how quickly they take credit as individuals for something voted on by all of the councillors. In the great majority of cases the things voters like most – such as new parks, the good financial management of Council affairs and donations to arts and sporting groups – were supported unanimously.
 
It is worth noting that in terms of the financial affairs of the Council, these are almost entirely the responsibility of Council officers, not councillors. So, if a councillor starts talking about how good they or their party are with Council finances, take it with a grain of salt. Council officers often make those decisions, councillors just vote to support them. In almost every case, financial items pass through unanimously with little comment. The one exception was back in 2016, when the ALP councillors and Eva Campbell questioned the amount of money set aside for the new netball courts and Macaria Art Gallery, saying it was too little.  A few months later an additional $1.2m had to be found.