By Callum Ludwig
Jim Child has retained his position as O’Shannassy Ward Councillor at Yarra Ranges Council following the 2024 local government elections.
This will take him to his fourth consecutive term and 16 years at Yarra Ranges Council by the next election period.
Cr Child said he is quite pleased about his reelection and receiving over 3000 more first preference votes to the next candidate.
“When you think of what happened through the election, I’ve been challenged by six candidates and out of those six candidates were three candidates endorsed by a political body, and my first question is, why the interest by political parties to stand candidates in O’Shannassy,” he said.
“I think the electorate probably sent a message back to those parties; ‘You didn’t move on Jim Child’.”
Cr Child refers to the Greens-endorsed candidate Wil Mikelsons, Animal Justice Party-endorsed candidate Chloe Bond and Victorian Socialists-endorsed candidate Dylan Little, whose name and image were removed from the Victorian Socialists official website weeks out from the election. When asked why by the Star Mail, the Victorian Socialists did not respond.
Cr Child said he was very pleased to see the successful candidates elected and after meeting each one of them, he thinks they’ll have a very good council going forward.
“I look at Melba Ward and young Mitch (Mazzarella) being elected there at 19 years of age, to really take the step to stand for local government and then to be elected is truly wonderful for a young person like that and I think that we’ve got strong youth representation on this council for the next four years,” he said.
“The other point which is probably a disappointing part is that Fiona McAllister is our lone woman councillor again, I do have concerns about that, that we should have a stronger representation of women on our council,”
“Yet we had a number of women stand and if you look at O’Shannassy, we had three women stand but it gets back to the will of the voters and who they want to vote for and I think that that’s what we have to respect.”
Cr Child received 4360 first preference votes (45.36 per cent of total first preference votes) with the second-best being two-time candidate Karen Duke with 1116 (11.61 per cent). After preferences were distributed, Cr Child ended up with 4838 votes (50.34 per cent), ahead of Ms Duke (1793, 18.66 per cent), Mr Mikelsons (1520, 15.82 per cent) and Ms Bond (1460, 15.19 per cent)
Cr Child said particularly with the lack of female representation on the Council, it’s important councillors continue to be considerate of all who they represent in the next term.
“We have to, I think it’s entrenched in our council, especially in the past council that we have to respect that diversity, who we represent, who we work with and our fellow councillors,” he said.
“If you look at the previous council with three women councillors, those three women played an important part with their insight into council and the local government area and it was so important to have their contribution,”
“On a positive note with Cr McAllister, she is so up to speed with the issues within Yarra Ranges, I will always value her input and I think that we’re very fortunate that she was returned, and returned unopposed for Ryrie, which may tell you something too.”
O’Shannassy Ward had the lowest turnout of enrolled voters with 10,015 total votes (79.99 per cent of the total enrolment). 404 (4.03 per cent of the total votes) were informal votes and couldn’t be counted towards the result.
With three new councillors coming on board, Cr Child said they will be keen to help them get comfortable and productive as quickly as possible.
“We want to get our new Councillors through that process as quickly as possible and bring them up to speed so they play a very important and positive role with the new Council, we don’t want people to go on a journey for the next 12 months just learning,” he said.
“It’s about getting in there, getting your knowledge base involved in the Council’s decisions and representing your constituents, we don’t want to be bogged down with a non-productive Council,”
“We can contribute too, going forward in regards to the next Federal election coming up, there’s a valuable piece of work that we’ve got to do leading up to that as well, because our local government representatives, through our advocacy policy, will be playing a very important part when it comes time to engage with those politicians and what they are proposing to put forward in the Yarra Ranges.”
Cr Child reiterated some of his key goals from before the election are on his agenda in his fourth term;
Continuing to oversee the start of the construction of the Warburton Mountain Bike Destination, pushing through the Yarra Junction Place Plan and Urban Design Framework, monitoring and being involved in the Parking Management Framework including the paid parking pilot in Warburton and sustainably managing the expected increase in tourism to the Upper Yarra.
