Council elections have now been postponed a second time. Delayed the first time due to COVID for 12 months till September 2021 and now again till 4 December 2021. The caretaker period won’t commence till November so it will be business as usual for the next few months. This means that the current Northern Beaches Councillors will have an additional two meetings, 28 September and 26 October 2021. The election of the Mayor will be held at the September meeting and they will serve for the extended three months.

The NSW Electoral Commission is working on processes and policies to enable a COVID safe election. Visiting polling booths should be the exception as iVote (electronic voting) will be available for the first time in the local council elections and the NSW Government has implemented changes to pre-poll to ensure that voters have 13 days to cast their ballot, reducing congestion on polling day. There are approximately 350,000 voters on the Northern Beaches and even with spreading out the election over three weeks with pre polling and postal votes Northern Beaches council should be encouraging minimising the need for crowded polling booths and supporting electronic voting.

So far, in the Manly Ward we will be spoilt for choice with each of the three Political parties plus local independent groups fielding candidates,

• Liberal – Georgia Ryburn
• Labor – Sam Pigram
• Greens – Pam Dawes
• Good For Manly – Candy Bingham
• Your Northern Beaches - Sarah Gratton
• Manly 1st - John Kelly.

Google them or check out their Facebook pages, all would be excellent representatives for our local Manly community.

Manly Community Forum intends to invite them to a candidate forum in October or November. If you are interested, please submit any questions or issues you would like them to address in this session to secretary@manlycommmunityforum.com We will publish some of the themes arising in our October newsletter.