Albury Council Voting System

The voting system for Albury Council elections is complicated and most Councillors have spoken out against it but what efforts have been made to change it?  Perhaps it really suits most sitting Councillors and so they don’t try too hard.

So a quick explanation of how it works.  Anyone can stand for election subject to certain conditions mostly relating to criminal or civil misbehaviour and there is no other test.  Individual candidates are described as ungrouped and are shown at the far right of the ballot paper below the line.  A candidate who forms a group with at least 5 candidates is entitled to have a group voting square above the line provided at least one other candidate requests a group voting square.

A vote is valid if at least one square is numbered above the line or at least 5 squares are numbered below the line.  Past voting patterns show that 70% of voters cast their vote above the line which means that candidates without a group voting square are at a significant disadvantage.  A good example of how this produces strange results can be seen from the 2008 election when Cr Angus with only 39 votes was elected on the surplus votes of Cr Gould.

A candidate can choose to advise people voting for him or her that he/she would like them to vote for other candidates in a particular order – he/she is allocating preferences.  This favours sitting Councillors who can agree to swap preferences and so help each other.  If a candidate gets more votes than are needed to be elected the surplus votes go to the person to whom he/she has allocated preferences.  If a Councillor has surplus votes but has not allocated preferences, the extra votes are “dead” and do not continue in the count.

A fairer voting system would be preferential voting for individual candidates with no group voting.  Electors would be required to vote for at least 5 candidates.

Council, in conjunction with like-minded councils should lobby the Minister for Local Government to have the system changed before the 2016 elections.  It will be one of the things I will try to do if elected to Council.  It should save candidates and ratepayers some money.

Albury Art Gallery

Since the NSW Government funding fell through everyone has had an opinion and I am one of them.  I could not agree with the Mayor's comment that it would go ahead anyway and new borrowings can't be ruled out.  Our Council's debt is rising and our rates are increasing and will do so for another couple of years at least so more borrowing doesn't seem the way to go.

There are also comments about the relative merits of swimming pools and art galleries for example.  It doesn't have to be one or the other.  Each has something to offer the community.  Everyone talks about the value of tourism to the city so let's have a look at some facts.

The Bendigo Art Gallery recently ran the "Grace Kelly Exhibition" because they had the facilities to attract a world class exhibition.  It attracted over 135,000 people over 3 months and injected about $17 million into the local economy - not a bad result I would say.  We could do the same if we had the right facilities but how do we get there?  The Federal Government has agreed to put in $3.5 million and our Council has also agreed to make a contribution but the NSW government will not put in the last bit of funding.  So why don't we look to art lovers, philanthropists and other benefactors for a contribution?

Let's use our imagination and find people who would love to make a contribution to Albury.

National Science Week

What a great week!  The Astronomical Society of Albury in partnership with Charles Sturt University ran a great Science Fair.  We started last Sunday with a health sciences expo and continued throughout the week.  Monday saw us give about 40 students from Wewak school a free film show in the Cosmodome and then we had three days of "hands-on" science for regional students with almost 700 participating.

The highlight this year was the 2011 Physics Nobel Prize winnner Dr Brian Schmidt who gave 2 lectures and had a private afternoon tea with 6 lucky HSC students.  Thursday saw the Operations Scientist of Parkes Radio Telescope take us back to the time of the Apollo 11 moon landing and the search for some missing footage of the events of the time.

Then 90 amateur astronomers gathered at Wymah Valley Hooliday Resort for several talks, socialising and the occasional bit of "viewing". 

Keep your eyes and ears open for another great event next year but if you would like some astronomy or science for a school or other group in the meantime, give me a call.

David

The Manager of the Dish comes to Albury

JOHN SARKISSIAN OF THE “DISH” WILL BE IN TOWN

Along with Uluru, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, the Parkes Radio telescope is an iconic image recognisable immediately by most Australians.  In National Science week we are privileged to have an Operations Scientist in Albury to give a free public lecture.

John Sarkissian is an Operations Scientist at the CSIRO Parkes Radio Observatory. His main responsibilities are the operation and systems development at the radio telescope, and the support of visiting astronomers with their observations. In addition, he is involved in pulsar research - an  exciting field of radio astronomy.

John is a member of the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (PPTA) team which is endeavouring to use precision pulsar timing to make the first direct detection of gravitational waves. He is also a member of the small, informal team searching for the missing Apollo 11 slow-scan TV tapes. From 1998-1999, John acted as a technical advisor for the feature film, "The DISH". He came to Parkes in 1996 to support the Galileo Mission to Jupiter. He managed the Galileo spacecraft tracking operations at the observatory and performed 1/3 of the daily tracking duties.

John has received NASA Group Achievement Awards for his work on "The Parkes Radio Telescope X-band Upgrade Task Team" in 2004 and the "Huygens Probe Earth Detection Team" in 2005.

John has also received official NASA commendations for his Galileo support in 1997 and for the search for the missing Apollo 11 SSTV tapes in 2010.

John’s talk will take us back to the time of one of the most memorable events in the history of “space science” and will allow those who did not see the landing to relive the event via video taken at the time including some tapes of the event that were missing for many years.  He will talk about the Dish’s role in the Apollo 11 moon landing and the search for missing video tapes of the historical events that happened at the time.

And just last week he coordinated the Australian end of the Mars rover Curiosity’ landing on the planet

John’s public lecture will be given at 7pm on Thursday 17^th August at the CD Blake Lecture Theatre on the CSU Campus at Thurgoona.  Come along and relive a bit of history or hear about one of mankind’s most exciting adventures – the first moon landing.

DAVID THURLEY

PRESIDENT

ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF ALBURY WODONGA

Phone   02 6040 3704

or            04 1869 0142

dsthurl@bigpond.net.au

Nobel Prize Winner Comes to Albury this Wednesday

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER DR BRIAN SCHMIDT TO SPEAK IN ALBURY

Does time seem to fly these days?  Is everything going faster and faster?  In 1998 two teams of scientists traced back the expansion of the universe over billions of years.  They thought that the acceleration would be slowing but what they found caused a major rethink of what was the accepted science at the time. They discovered that the Universe is accelerating at a faster and faster rate.  This led them to the discovery that that more than 70% of the cosmos is contained in a form of matter called Dark Energy. 

At the moment Dark Energy and Dark Matter are words used to describe something that Is not properly understood and are the subject of intensive research as scientists try to understand our Universe.

The three scientists who made this groundbreaking discovery, Saul Perlmutter, Adam Riess and Brian Schmidt were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 2011.

Australian scientist Dr Brian Schmidt from the Australian National University’s Mt Stromlo observatory will describe this discovery and how scientists have traced the history of the universe back more than 13 billion years, almost to the time of the Big Bang.  What will be the ultimate fate of the Universe?

Dr Schmidt is a fellow of several science academies and is leading Mt Stromlo’s effort to build the SkyMapper telescope to compile a digital map of the southern skies.

Brian is married with two children and lives at Sutton in the ACT.  He is an amateur winemaker and loves to cook.  His first visit to Albury was in 1985 and on that occasion he came as French horn player. 

Come and hear Dr Schmidt speak in National Science Week as part of the 6^th Border Stargaze hosted by the Astronomical Society of Albury Wodonga and Charles Sturt University.  His lecture will commence at 7pm at the Albury Entertainment Centre and is open to all.

Check out the following links

www.csu.edu.au/about/events

www.asaw.org.au

David Thurley

President

Astronomical Society of Albury Wodonga

Phone   02 6040 3704

or            04 1869 0142

dsthurl@bigpond.net.au