Community & Business
10 February, 2025
By-election for new councillor
A BY-ELECTION will be held to appoint a new councillor for Mareeba Shire after the sad passing of Cr Kevin Davies last month.
On Monday, council was asked to choose between holding a by-election, or to offer the position to the candidate who scored 7th in the 2024 Local Government poll, Mladen Bosnic.
Council opted for the by-election and will now seek the approval from Minister for Local Government Ann Leahy that the poll be conducted by postal vote only to save on costs.
In a report to council, chief executive officer Peter Franks advised that due to the closeness of the vote for the unsuccessful candidates in the March 2024 poll, and taking into account the time that had elapsed since last year’s election, council should opt for the by-election.
“The candidate who came 6th (Cr Davies) received 59% of the possible votes (6854 votes), the runner-up (Bosnic) received 45% of the possible votes (5319 votes),” his report stated.
“This means that nearly 60% of the population were supportive of the candidate who came 6th but less than half (45%) supported the candidate who came 7th.
“Three other unsuccessful candidates all received more than 40% of the possible votes, two of whom were within 1% or less.”
Mr Franks also advised that Cr Davies’ passing had created a vacancy on the council within eight weeks of the cutoff point at which a by-election would have been mandatory.
He also advised that the cost of a by-election was unknown, however the last election cost $141,258.
“Given the largest expense is for wages (72%), one would expect a by-election would be cheaper as it requires substantially less staff time, given it is much simpler counting single votes rather than the complexity of counting ballots with six votes on it,” he said in his report.
A postal ballot would also reduce costs as polling stations would not be required to be established, staffed, and resourced. Mr Franks said he did not expect for the State to object to a postal vote, given that only 35.5% of the electors actually voted on election day with the rest pre-polling in person or
by post.
