Today was election day in the New South Wales local council elections. We have three levels of government in Australia:
- Federal: Covering all of Australia. At this level we elect the Parliament of Australia and (indirectly) the Prime Minister.
- State: Each state elects a state government, generally a Parliament similar to the Federal one, led by a Premier. The contiguous territories also elect their own territorial governments. I live in New South Wales, so vote in the NSW state elections.
- Council: The states are divided into Local Government Areas (LGAs), usually called “councils”. For example, the state of New South Wales currently has 128 Local Government Areas, 33 of which are within metropolitan Sydney. The smallest covers less than 6 square kilometres, and the largest over 53,000 square kilometres. Voters elect a small group of councillors, who elect the Mayor of the LGA from among them.
I’m in the North Sydney Council area, so today I was voting for councillors for this LGA. My wife went to a yoga class first thing in the morning, and after that we met up at a local high school which was set up as a polling place. It wasn’t very busy, the queue in front of us was literally only two people, so we were in and out after voting in just a couple of minutes. While I was waiting there for my wife to arrive, two men approached and one went in to vote, while the other waited outside. A polling place worker came over and asked the waiting man if he was here to vote, and he said no, he didn’t live here, he was visiting from the USA. This sparked a conversation between the poll worker and the man about the differences between our electoral systems.
After voting, we walked home a long way, via the shops at Waverton to pick up a loaf of bread and so my wife could see the new Bay Brew cafe that has opened up in the premises of the old Waterview Cafe.
At home I worked on a couple of new Darths & Droids strips. I also played a game of Root with my wife. We haven’t played this game for several weeks, so it was good to pull it out again. This time I played the Eyrie (birds) while my wife played the Alliance again, and we used the bot players for the Marquise (cats) and Vagabond. It’s the first time we’ve used the Vagabot, and it was surprisingly effective, racing to the lead mid-game. But my wife managed to haul it in and overtake to win, with everyone else just a few points behind.
For dinner tonight we drove over to Four Frogs crêperie and had galettes. They had a special with Swiss cheese, gorgonzola, bacon, walnuts, and fresh figs, which I tried. It was pretty good! Rather than have a dessert crêpe, I had a second savoury one, with chorizo and mushrooms, which was also nice.
I didn’t do a 5k run today, since I did one yesterday evening, before the board games night started.
New content today: