March 30, 2016
South Burnett Deputy Mayor Keith Campbell – the likely new mayor to head the South Burnett Regional Council – is as much in the dark about the election results as the rest of us.
Cr Campbell said he believed the original schedule was for the poll to be declared on March 30 but that had obviously not happened.
The cut-off for the return of all postal votes to the Electoral Commission of Queensland was at 6:00pm on March 29.
Cr Campbell said he spoke to the Returning Officer at 5:00pm on Wednesday, and was told that preferences were still being counted.
Any candidate who achieves 50 per cent of votes plus one will be elected.
By this measure, Terry Fleischfresser (Division 4) and Ros Heit (Division 6) will both be elected.
However, preferences are being counted in the other Divisions and in the Mayoral poll until one candidate emerges in each with the required 50 per cent + one margin.
At 10:00pm on Wednesday, Cr Campbell was still the leading Mayoral candidate with 30.23 per cent of votes, followed by Cr Damien Tessmann (23.11pc), Sheena Lindholm (22.74pc), Mike Brown (20.88pc) and Grant Newson (3.03pc). Informal votes were 3.39pc.
Preferences would be distributed first from Mr Newson’s ballot papers; votes where no preference was marked would be set aside as “exhausted”.
The count would then move to the next lowest candidate, and so on until one candidate achieves the necessary margin.
In Division 1, Roz Frohloff was close to the required 50pc. Gavin Jones and Danita Potter were leading in Divisions 2 and 3.
Cr Campbell said training for councillors had been scheduled for Friday (April 1) so he hoped the results would be clear by the end of Thursday.
South Burnett Regional Council’s commencement meeting is scheduled to be held next Thursday (April 7).
At this meeting, a Deputy Mayor will be appointed and times set for future Council meetings.
Cr Campbell emphasised that Wayne Kratzmann was still South Burnett Mayor at the moment.
He said it was too early to be discussing who should become Deputy Mayor.
“I am not the Mayor at the moment. Should I become Mayor I would speak to each of the councillors to see what their views are in regards to the position of Deputy because I would like it to be a consensus view,” he said.
“But at the moment I would say to everyone, it’s simply a case of being patient and waiting to see the election results.”
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Is the commencement meeting on April 7 open to the public and what time does it start?
Yes, the meeting is open to the public. We expect it to open at 9:00am.