Campaspe among five shires to go unsubdivided

Campaspe Shire’s format of five wards — two with with three council members and three single-councillor wards — will be scrapped for the elections in eight months’ time.

Since Campaspe Shire was formed, Rochester has only had three representatives on the local government authority — Frank Oliver from 2008, when the Rochester ward was created; Leigh Wilson from 2014-2020; and Cr Paul Jarman for the past three years.

Mr Oliver polled 51 per cent of the vote in 2008, beating Anthony Murphy (34 per cent) and Garry Newman (15 per cent).

In 2012, Mr Wilson polled 85 per cent of the vote to beat Mr Newman and was unopposed in 2016, before stepping away from council duties in 2020.

In 2020, Cr Jarman polled 55 per cent of the vote to comfortably defeat Paul Harrison (22 per cent) and Steve Huntley (23 per cent).

Cr Jarman was first voted on to council as an Echuca ward councillor, with a touch over 12 per cent of the vote, in 2012.

In 2016 he narrowly lost his seat on council despite increasing his percentage of the vote to 16 per cent. Daniel Mackrell, Kristen Munro and Annie Vickers were voted on to council that year.

The new changes to the council boundaries mean the single-councillor representation of Rochester, Waranga and Western wards is now lost to council.

Only three options were presented to councils by the VEC during the re-structure: single member wards, an unsubdivided council and uniform multi-member wards.

In choosing the unsubdivided option, Campaspe joined the neighbouring Strathbogie and Gannawarra shire councils in adopting the anti-ward format.

Thirty of the 39 councils which took part in the re-structure, including Bendigo and Greater Shepparton, chose the single member ward option. Only four went to multi-member wards.

Campaspe Shire was established with seven councillors in March 1997, three years after then Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett announced the 210 LGAs would be reduced to 78 “super shires”.

Since then there have been only a tweak or two made to the council, new wards introduced and two more councillors added.

This is the most significant change since the super shires were introduced.

Current Campaspe Shire councillors Tony Marwood, Mayor Robert Amos and Christine Weller (Echuca); Kyabram-Deakin Ward’s Colleen Gates, Daniel Mackrell and John Zobec; Rochester Ward’s Paul Jarman; Waranga’s Adrian Weston and Western Ward’s Leanne Penreath will go to the polls under the new format in October.

All have been involved in recent elections, but will need to lift their profile in other areas of the shire to maintain their roles on council.

Cr Amos and Cr Weller, the two councillors to have filled mayoral roles in recent years, will hold the whip hand.

Cr Marwood won his place on council at the polls in 2020, leading the pack with 21.99 per cent of the vote, ahead of Cr Amos (20 per cent) and Cr Weller, who collected 18.43 per cent of the vote in a field of seven.

Four candidates stood in Kyabram-Deakin ward at the same election — Cr Gates (32.07 per cent of the vote), Cr Zobec (20.78 per cent) and Cr Mackrell (30.23 per cent), tipping out incumbent Vicki Neele (16.92 per cent).

Mrs Neele had only been voted on to council in 2016.

Cr Zobec won a 2015 by-election to start his local government career.

In 2012 he was unsuccessful in his bid to join council, attracting just 8.28 per cent of the vote in a field of six candidates. Carol Howell, Neil Pankhurst and Robert Danieli were the Kyabram-Deakin ward councillors at that stage.

Leanne Pentreath and Adrian Weston took the Western and Waranga single-councillor ward roles uncontested in 2020, as they did in 2016.

Cr Pentreath earned her stripes at the February 2016 by-election when she collected 30.61 per cent of the vote to beat six other candidates with a 10 per cent margin.

Campaspe Shire, like 25 other Victorian councils, currently operates with the nine-councillor format, while 34 councils have seven-member representation.