2020 Ipswich City Council election
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Turnout | 78.64% (mayoral election) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Mayor | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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All 9 members on the City Council (including the Mayor) 5 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The 2020 Ipswich City Council election was held on 28 March 2020 to elect a mayor and eight councillors to the City of Ipswich. The election was held as part of the statewide local elections in Queensland, Australia.[1]
Teresa Harding was elected mayor with 62.98% of the vote after preferences, becoming the first non-Labor Party aligned Ipswich mayor in 50 years.[2]
The election saw significant changes to the council's electoral system, and followed its dismissal in August 2018.[3]
2017 mayoral by-election
On 6 June 2017, mayor Paul Pisasale announced his resignation, citing a decline in his health due to multiple sclerosis. The announcement came one day after his office was searched by the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission and police.[4]
Andrew Antoniolli was elected mayor with 54.44% of the vote after preferences.[5]
2018 dismissal
In May 2018, Antoniolli was charged with seven counts of corruption forcing him to stand down and administrators to take over Ipswich City Council.[4][6]
In August 2018, the Queensland Government passed legislation to dismiss all Ipswich councillors and replace them with an administrator.[7] The dismissal officially came into effect on 21 August.[8]
Greg Chemello was appointed as administrator to serve for the rest of the term.[9]
Electoral system
Prior to 2020, Ipswich City Council was composed of a directly elected mayor and 10 single-member wards (or divisions), both using optional preferential voting.[3]
In July 2019, it was announced that the 10 single-member wards would be replaced by four two-member wards, reducing the total amount of councillors to eight.[3] Preferential voting was removed and replaced by plurality block voting (also referred to as first-past-the-post by the Electoral Commission), where voters are only required to mark the same amount of candidates as there are positions to be elected − in the case of Ipswich, two candidates.[10][11]
The electoral system for mayor was unchanged.[3]
