Council elections 'could fail' due to COVID-19 restrictions; Wagga still aiming for December poll

At a Budget Estimates hearing last week, Greens MLC David Shoebridge asked Mr Schmidt if there was "a real likelihood that the December local council elections could fail in all or part of the state" due to people being unwilling or unable to attend polling booths due to COVID-19 restrictions.

"If I'm unable to open polling places, then elections could fail, if people fail to turn out there is no minimum requirement for the number of people to vote at a particular election but...whether that would be a legitimate election would be a matter for others to consider," Mr Schmidt responded.

Wagga mayor Greg Conkey said the council had not received any updated advice on the December election.

"Others have said that NSW could be in lockdown until Christmas due to the enormous number of cases in Sydney, but we are still a fair way away from that and more and more people are getting vaccinated, which will hopefully have an effect on the lockdown," Cr Conkey said.

"At this stage it's way to early to call it but there have been some concerns expressed and I can understand those concerns.

"It's a statewide election process so we can't have one set of rules for Sydney and another set of rules for rural and regional. It would be a logistic nightmare to have two election processes so I think it's one in, all in."

Local Government Minister Shelley Hancock confirmed in July that the elections across 125 NSW councils that were meant to take place on September 4 had been pushed back to December 4 after having already been delayed 12 months.

Mr Schmidt told the hearing last week that holding council elections through purely postal votes "would be a sensible fallback to have in place" but it would require new legislation and additional funding.

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