AUSTRALIAN LETTER Mammoth Ballot Paper In Sydney Council Poll

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28153, 17 December 1956, Page 10

AUSTRALIAN LETTER Mammoth Ballot Paper In Sydney Council Poll

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

(Rec. 8 p.m.) SYDNEY, December 15. About 100,000 voters and 750 electoral officers have just tangled with the largest and most unwieldy election in this city’s history. On a two feet square ballot paper, the voters marked their preferences to return 20 aidermen and a Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayor was chosen from five candidates. The council ballot paper, a formidable list of 100 names, had six full teams, each of 15 candidates, one group of five, two pairs, and one independent. Officially, the voting system does not recognise political parties. However, it allows candidates, if they so wish, to group together. The parties with full teams were the Communists, Democratic Labour, Australian Labour Party, Lang Labour, Citizen’s Reform, and Liberal.

On the mammoth ballot paper, voters were expected to show (by a preferential marking of the names of the candidates) their views on such things as the city’s administration, boundaries, and general development. The electors had to vote by numbers —not by crosses. It was compulsory for them to mark their preferences from one to 15 if their vote was to be valid. They could continue awarding preferences right up to 100—if they had the time and the inclination.

If the ballot paper showed fewer than 15 preferences it was invalid. But if a mistake was made during the numbering up to 15, the vote was good up to the “break," and the preferences up to that point counted.

The election of 20 candidates to the council is a complex process which occupied 50 counting officers for more than a week. After eight days of figure work, the last aiderman was declared elected.

Needless to say, the task of correctly filling in the ballot paper proved too much for many voters. In the latest figures published, 9,500 of a total of 93.000 votes cast were informal. Hundreds of blank ballot papers were among this record number of informal votes. Electoral officers said many of the blank papers were lodged by electors who baulked at the task of selecting from 100 candidates.

A senior electoral officer said that the number of papers lodged as informal deliberately by people who were not interested in the election ran into thousands. Some people ran a pencil mark across their papers, and others scrawled across them such remarks as “not interested,’’ “phooey,” “boloney,” “unconstitutional.”

On election day, hundreds of voters complained of the size of the papers. These were so cumbersome that officials had to use rulers and sticks to jam them into the ballot boxes. More than 550 boxes —twice as many as usual —were needed to cope with the papers. The Labour Party retained control of the Sydney City Council with an over-all majority of two. Labour will also have the additional vote of the Lord Mayor, Aiderman H. F. Jensen, who takes over from Aiderman Pat Hills in this £5.000 a year job.

Aged 43. Aiderman Jensen is the father of four children —the eldest aged 20. He said he hoped to be a “nine to five" man at the Town Hall in his three years of office. He is an electrical contractor.

Also on the council is Canon H. M. Arrowsmith, the first clergyman to be elected to the City Council. He was the last of the 20 aidermen selected from the 100 candidates under the proportional representation system.

The £5O million Mary Kathleen uranium project in north-west Queensland is developing at a very fast rate,

and ore is flowing steadily to the stockpile.

In this new mining centre, a British mining company is spending £lO million in the mine, town, treatment plant, and other facilities. It has a £4O million contract with the British Atomic Energy Commission to supply uranium from January, 1959, when the treatment plant is due to operate. By that time a stockpile of 500,000 tons of ore and a model community of more than 1000 people will be ready in this mineral-rich area, 50 miles east of Mt. Isa.

Workers began to build the Mary Kathleen township only last March. Today the township comprises 100 houses. These are specially designed long, low dwellings. Each has 1000 glass and metal louvres for ventilation. Work will start soon on the £8 million treatment plant, and a rock and cement dam to hold 3000 million gallons is being rushed to completion before the wet season begins this month.

Mary is now attracting labour from all parts of Australia. Austrian, Italian, Polish, Danish, German. and Latvian new Australians are among the growing work force. The life of the mine is estimated by mining experts at about 20 years. The mine manager is Mr Gordon Anderson, a New Zealander with experience at Mt. Isa and the Big Bell mine in Western Australia.

The Government’s rain-makers have confessed that they cannot make rain. The Brisbane City Council had invited them to produce rain over drought-stricken Brisbane. The invitation was contained in a letter to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, asking its experts to fly to Brisbane to conduct rain-making experiments. A spokesman at the Melbourne headquarters of the organisation said: “We cannot produce rain to order.” He added that it was highly unlikely that Brisbane’s invitation would be accepted.

“We have been trying to make rain for the last eight years, and have no scientific proof that we have ever yet brought about rain that would not have fallen in any case,” said the spokesman. “We have to have rainy conditions when the best we can do is to give nature a nudge.”