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REGARDLESS of what happens during the rest of this week’s Operation Spicer hearings – and no matter what conclusions Commissioner Megan Latham comes to in her eventual report, the winds of change are already blowing hard and wintry across the conservative landscape.
Premier Mike Baird has justified the decision not to run Liberal candidates in Charlestown and Newcastle as an atonement to the region. Cynics say it’s because they’d be on a hiding to nothing.
I say the reason is even more fundamental. They had no candidates. John Church and Jaimie Abbott, who contested Shortland and Newcastle at last year’s federal election, were the first names mentioned in dispatches this time around, but both have apparently decided that this is a better time to be concentrating on their respective public relations businesses than to be taking one for the party by standing on a suicide mission in the state seats.
This means – barring an extremely unexpected event – that Newcastle councillor Tim Crakanthorp will be the next member for Newcastle, with Lake Macquarie mayor Jodie Harrison the next member for Charlestown.
Jeff McCloy’s resignation as Newcastle lord mayor means the deck chairs will be reshuffled at the council also.
The Local Government Act says a byelection can be dispensed with if there are less than 18months to the next election. Even though the act says the government has three to four months to announce a byelection, it is unlikely that Newcastle will make this cut-off.
Assuming a byelection proceeds, Cr Nuatali Nelmes is a likely ALP candidate. On past form, Liberal Brad Luke may want to put himself forward as a conservative alternative, and Greens stalwart Michael Osborne would also be a prospective candidate.
If a sitting Newcastle councillor is elected lord mayor, then the council would be one position short and, after a long afternoon of reading legislation and asking questions, I’m fairly sure, but not certain, that it stays one short until the September 2016 poll.
But as with a general election, a lord mayoral byelection would be open to all ratepayers, and the circumstances make a Melbourne Cup field of starters a strong possibility, with the chance that an outside candidate could prevail.
Initially it looked as though the musical chairs in the two state seats and the lord mayoral position would generate a cascading series of byelections for other council positions, but the ‘‘Get Clover amendments’’ – introduced in 2012 supposedly to stop Clover Moore being Sydney’s lord mayor and a state MP – have allowances for sitting councillors who move to Macquarie Street.
My reading of the act is that Cr Harrison and Cr Crakanthorp can both keep their council seats until the end of the council term, which is September 2016.
And provided they are elected in the first place, they will face the state voters again in March next year, when the state poll is held.
In the meantime, McCloy says he is persisting with his High Court challenge to the laws stopping property developer donations, a process he says has already resulted in an expedited (or quicker) hearing.
If this legal process succeeds – and the Herald understands that constitutional lawyers have given the McCloy team an encouraging assessment of his chances – then the chances of any permanent stain on his record would logically lengthen.
McCloy says there is no guarantee the outcome will be known this year, but whatever happens, it will be one High Court case where the outcome will be keenly awaited.
In the meantime, the Election Funding, Expenditure and Disclosures Act makes for interesting reading, especially for those who have admitted to taking McCloy’s cash.
The NSW Electoral Commission has confirmed that the penalty for knowingly accepting an unlawful donation is the payment of ‘‘double that amount’’ to the state.
The commission says the standard of proof is to the ‘‘civil standard’’, which is to the balance of probabilities, rather than beyond reasonable doubt.
Given the amount of developer funding across a range of Hunter and Central Coast seats, the size of the potential repayments could be sizeable indeed.