Suburban Scrawl

"854AA No jurisdiction to make local laws and subordinate local laws prohibiting placement of election signs or posters
(1) A local government has no jurisdiction to make a local law or subordinate local law prohibiting, in its area, the placement of election signs or posters for an election under this Act, the City of Brisbane Act 1924, the Electoral Act 1992 or the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 (Cwlth).
(2) A local law or subordinate local law, to the extent it is contrary to subsection (1), is of no effect.
(3) In this section—election signs or posters means signs or posters that are able, or are intended—
(a) to influence a person about voting at an election; or
(b) to affect the result of an election."
- Local Government Act 1993

Once again, an election is happening, and I find myself in irritation at the issue of election signage.

Today, my irritation is directed at Cr Ray Hackwood, no longer an official Gold Coast City Councillor but running now for Division 12 in Logan City Council. A number of signs for Cr Hackwood have been erected on public land in the last few days, including at the intersection of Brigade Drive and River Hills Road in Eagleby, and in Main Street in Beenleigh. Cr Hackwood knows as well as I do that these signs are illegal by his own Gold Coast City Council laws.

The Queensland Local Government Act states the Local Governments do not have jurisdiction to mess with election signage. Gold Coast City Council has fudged this area for some time by insisting that they do not have "laws" in relation to election signage, but "regulations". The standard advice is that the Gold Coast City Council argument would not stand up in court, but everyone circles around the flame and it has not gone to court.

Under the existing Gold Coast City Council arrangements, practically all election signage is illegal. From my discussions, the placement of signage on public land is clearly illegal and this is not an issue with which I have a problem. The contention is over private land, which I and most people contend should be free for private citizens to display signs as they please. In the case of Cr Hackwood, while his council staff harass people over signage on private land, he brazenly breaks the laws on public land.

Signage laws, in effect, primarily entrench the position of those in power. Signage restrictions advantage incumbents, who start with name and face recognition advantages from the start. Yet come election time, the people who make the laws happily break their own laws, while at the same time wielding the laws against dissenters.

In Cr Hackwood's case, a group of dissenters being quite effectively punished are his foes in the Save Our Showground (SOS) activist group. The weekly SOS protest on Sunday mornings out the front of the Beenleigh Showground has been severely neutered by friends of Cr Hackwood enforcing Gold Coast City Council bylaws to the letter. I am neither here nor there on the activities of SOS, but the hypocrisy of Cr Hackwood is astounding.

I will make this clear. Council laws in relation to signage need to be fair, simple and equitably enforced. At the moment they are a poor game of chess, played most skilfully by those that know the rules and choose to break them. If council does not want a free for all, signage on public property should be banned, while no attempt should be made to touch signage on private property. Simple, effective and clear.

In the mean time, I will not be reporting Cr Hackwood's signage to the (decidedly friendly, it turns out) enforcement chap. While annoyed, I am resisting personally the pathetic signage games that dominate elections. I have never stolen a piece of signage or reported any signage to the authorities. I would prefer to keep it this way - clean and honest - and it would dearly help if Councillors put in place simple, fair laws and followed them.

The final word on my local Councillor belongs to a friend of mine, who dispassionately comments:

"For him, the law itself isn't a limiting structure, it's simply a tool that can be wielded. Which is the common view of the corrupt, really, which is why it's so hard for liberals to oppose them."

# posted by Stuart Anthony Fenech : 20:50