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25-03-2024
QUEENSLAND/ MELBOURNE: Outside an Australian community centre, local election candidates make last-ditch efforts to win over people who are filing into the makeshift polling station.
Most voters are too pre-occupied trying to dodge the flyer-thrusting politicians to notice a clue that this is not your ordinary campaign for a seat on the City of Gold Coast council.
Incumbent councilor Ryan Bayldon-Lumsden is seeking re-election but concealed beneath his beige trousers is the outline of an electronic ankle bracelet, a device which allows police to track his movements.
The 31-year-old is charged with murdering his stepfather, Robert Lumsden, at the family’s home in August last year.
Further details about the proceedings can’t be reported at the moment for legal reasons, but his lawyers have indicated at a pre-trial hearing that he will plead not guilty and because a Queensland Supreme Court judge granted him bail, he is able to campaign ahead of Saturday’s election becoming perhaps the only Australian in recent history fighting both a political battle and a murder charge simultaneously.
Deciding to stand for public office again has been called “selfish”, “strange”, “entitled” and “unbelievable” but when approached by media outside the polling booth at Runaway Bay, Bayldon-Lumsden is defiant.
“I believe democracy is the most important thing, and voters always get it right,” he says.
“So if voters want me, they’ll choose to re-elect me. And if voters don’t want me, they’ll vote for someone else” but few think it is that simple.
After being charged, Bayldon-Lumsden was suspended from the council, while still receiving his full salary of A$160,000 (£82,700; $105,000) a year.
Critics say this means almost 50,000 people in his area have not had a voice on the local council.
“We’ve had issues from parks simply not being mowed, right through to major development applications going through our community, without actually having someone sitting at the table to represent us,” says one of his rival candidates Joe Wilkinson.
If Bayldon-Lumsden were to be re-elected, it’s far from clear if or when he would be able to resume office.
Deciding whether to suspend him again – and leave residents without a councilor once more would fall on the Queensland Minister for Local Government, Meaghan Scanlon.
She would need to “consider the public interest factors involved in this matter and decide whether to exercise intervention powers”, her department says, though no decision will be made until after the election.
This week Ms Scanlon said she wanted to be “really clear” that neither she, the state’s premier, nor their offices “have had any conversations with that councilor or their legal team” following his suspension. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
