Perth Voice Interactive

AFTER a quiet kick-off to Bayswater’s first ever popular mayoral campaign, a contender has stepped up to take on incumbent mayor Filomina Piffaretti.

Until now Bayswater’s mayor has been appointed by councillors who vote in a colleague via a secret ballot after the election.

State government reforms are pushing all major metro councils to allow the public to vote for the mayor directly.

When Stirling had its first popular mayoral vote in 2019 it was a packed race with six candidates stepping up for the top job.

But it’s been crickets at Bayswater. Former mayor Dan Bull has decided not to run for mayor and will just re-run for his west ward seat, and other whispered names haven’t eventuated.

Stepping up

With nominations closing on September 7 we’ve only heard of one other candidate stepping up: Bedford resident Georgina Ker, who decided to stand after it appeared no one else would contest the mayoral seat.

“I think having that competition, that race, is really important for democracy,” Ms Ker told the Voice.

“When Stirling first went to direct mayoral elections they had half a dozen candidates. I’ve talked with a few councillors about their intentions and it seemed nobody was going to put their hand up.”

Ms Ker hasn’t run for council before. She has the option of contesting a ward seat as well, as a backup in case the mayoral campaign is unsuccessful, but she’s decided not to run.

She lives in west ward, and while candidates can run in any ward, Ms Ker said, “I’m not a believer in running in a ward where I don’t live.

“I believe that [ward] is really well represented by Dan Bull, who’s standing again, and I don’t want to run against Dan, I think he’s doing a great job.”

Ms Ker works in university admission, has studied business administration, and local government was a big part of her life growing up: Her dad Ian Ker was on Vincent council for 14 years and is still active in Fremantle’s public life.

Ms Ker said she was keen on prioritising active transport (at age 11 she wrote a school assignment “is Perth too dependent on cars?”), doing more for young people, and “urgent corrective action” to improve the city’s tree canopy.

She says a majority of council has voted to weaken tree protection in the past two years, including switching verge tree planting to an ‘opt-in’ basis instead of the previous ‘opt-out’ basis.

“Since the last election two years ago, there’s been a really clear factional divide, which I think is a bit of a worry since a lot of people don’t even know it’s going on,” Ms Ker said.

Divides

She said a fresh face as mayor might help put those divides in the past.

Ms Ker drew a distinction between supporting Cr Bull and being in a ‘faction’ though, saying the difference was she’d be happy to vote against him when opinions differed. 

We contacted Cr Piffaretti to get her take on the factionalism issue, but didn’t hear back ahead of deadline. She’s previously said that in her view there was a fair amount of variance in votes, and sharply contested a suggestions the council was “divided” (“Fame and favourites,” Voice, May 27, 2023).

Cr Piffaretti, in her pitch to become the city’s first full term popularly-elected mayor, says she’s got a strong record getting “common-sense decisions” through council and brought in record levels of state and federal funding commitments. 

Cr Piffaretti’s candidate statement says she has big plans for the next four years including safer suburbs, more support for seniors and better maintenance of public assets.

by DAVID BELL