1989 in Gawler’s Election History

Thirty-four years before the writing of this post, we have finally reached an election in which I was not yet born. Despite this, I still feel connected to this year after learning how similar it was to today – people were complaining about youth not paying attention to elections back then too, while little corellas were still terrorising residents.

In election-related news, Mayor Gil Harnett, who had been the Mayor for the past 11 years, was stepping down from the position. Instead, he would be running as an Alderman.

The Bunyip, March 30th, 1989.

I realize that the most eye-catching part of this page is not the Mayor’s retirement, but the creature in the Bunyip’s political cartoon, so let’s address that first.

This is the newspaper’s short-lived mascot, B.Y.O. the Bunyip, who had been introduced two weeks prior. He was commenting on two relevant stories here: one about Gawler’s controversial decision to contract out its waste collection services, and another about an unidentified bad smell in the main street.

The Bunyip, March 15th, 1989.

Thirty-four years later, artist George Aldridge is still the Bunyip’s political cartoonist, but tragically it’s been a long time since we’ve seen old B.Y.O. the Bunyip. I’m not sure what a bunyip’s lifespan is like, but it could be that he’s still lying low in the vents under the Gawler Town Hall. I know there are Bunyip journalists reading this, so maybe they can go down and check in on him.

In any case, back to Gil Harnett’s retirement.

The Bunyip, May 3rd, 1989.

Notably, when asked about his time in office, both in this article and the first one, his first reaction is to bring up boundary reform; he had been the Mayor in 1985 when Gawler’s long-running boundary reform proposal finally succeeded, adding (most notably) the Evanston areas to the Council.

The Mayoral Election

The Bunyip, May 3rd 1989.

With Gil Harnett out of the race, two currently serving Council Members ran for the position of Mayor. The first was Alderman Bob Bartlett.

The Bunyip, March 4th, 1987.

Bob Bartlett had been on Council since 1982 as a Ward Councillor. He had been elected on first preferences in Turner Ward in 1985, and was just coming off a truly powerful showing at the 1987 Alderman elections, in which he got 1485 votes in a five-way contest for three spots (where the quota would have only been 660). That’s a full two-and-a-quarter quotas in an election to pick three candidates.

I’ve found a lot of articles around various petitions and community meetings that he organised over the years, usually around rates (like the one in the above photo), so he seems to have been good at community organising which, combined with a populist approach to politics, perhaps accounted for his talent at getting votes.

The other candidate was Councillor David Moore, who had just finished his first term on Council.

The Bunyip, April 19th, 1989.

Here’s the dispute about the Council’s garbage contract again, by the way. My fascination with B.Y.O. the Bunyip was not the only reason I kept that cartoon in the story clipping about the Mayor’s retirement; it was also legitimately a 1989 election issue. It would be a few years yet before Council would come to solve all this by forming NAWMA.

David Moore was elected unopposed in his one previous Council election, so I don’t really have a prior election history to provide you here, but he was also active in the community, including as the president of the Gawler Tourist Association and the president of the Rotary Club of Gawler. He was a retailer in town, owning the local Darrell Lea Chocolate store.

Mayoral Election Results

The Bunyip, May 10th, 1989.

Bob Bartlett’s strong community support continued unabated, winning with the most dominant Mayoral election result we’ve seen yet, 2046 votes to 768. That’s a win with 72% of the vote.

Turnout was 30.46%, though it was higher in the wards that had ward elections running. It looks like ward elections also help the turnout of the Mayoral race as well as vice versa. It’s also worth mentioning that this is an in-person poll and not a vote-by-mail election like our modern ones are; not sure how much that impacts the average turnout.

Does B.Y.O. the Bunyip have anything to say about this election result, perhaps accompanied by a garbage bin and a joke about the town hall? You bet he does.

The Bunyip, May 10th, 1989.

The Councillor Elections

The Bunyip, May 3rd, 1989.

Here are the candidates for the two wards in contention this time around (plus full profiles for the Mayoral candidates).

Reid Ward

34.39% turnout.

Willaston Ward

37.13% turnout. The highest turnout across the Council. Incumbent Bernie Stack did not run for re-election.

The Automatic Winners

A lucky nine Council members skated through without any election this time around.

Winners (Aldermen): Gil Harnett (incumbent Mayor), Tony Piccolo (incumbent Alderman), Betty Jacob (incumbent Ward Councillor)

• Three incumbents but from across the entire Elected Member spectrum.

Winners (Carleton Ward): Kelvin Goldstone (new), John Thorpe (new)

• An incumbent-free field, as David Moore ran for Mayor and Betty Jacob ran for Alderman.

Winners (Martin Ward): Bronte Brodie (new), John Moore (new)

• No incumbents again: this time because both Danny Bombardieri and Peter Graham retired.

Winners (Turner Ward): Mark Boon (incumbent), Mike Johnson (incumbent)

• No surprises here.

The By-election

The Bunyip, March 28th, 1990.

New Councillor Kelvin Goldstone would have to leave after only a year when his job took him to Tasmania. He would return to Council in 2018: a 28-year gap between Council terms. That’s a new record so far – I’ll have to see if anyone ever beats it.

Two newcomers ran for the open position.

The Bunyip, April 19th, 1990.

The winner was Dianne Field, who would proceed to stay on Council for 13 years and eventually become Deputy Mayor.

Turnout was 9.8%, and Dianne Field received 134 votes to Dean Pedler’s 79. There was also one informal vote – I’m not sure if they were protesting, or if they were just so bad at drawing an X next to someone’s name that they missed the ballot completely.

Election Aftermath

The Bunyip, May 31st, 1989.

Here we see Tony Piccolo start his time as Deputy Mayor, which would lead to a brief stint as Acting Mayor in 1993 after the death of Bob Bartlett.

We also get a full list of every committee and representative position available at the time. Some are the same now – I’m currently the Council representative for both the Gawler Neighbourhood House (now Gawler Community House) and Gawler High School (now Gawler & District B-12 College), but I haven’t even heard of some of the others.

There was also some talk after the election about the lack of young people interested in participating in the elections, so I guess some things never change.

The Bunyip, May 18th, 1989.

According to Cit, the young people were off doing more important things than voting, like “watching Neighbours on TV or playing with their computer games”. Well, 34 years later the video games are still here but Neighbours has sadly just ended. I have heard that it’s getting rebooted, though, so young people will still have the chance to watch it instead of vote.

The 18-year-olds of this election would now be in their early 50s and are now much more consistent voters, so I suppose time sorted them out, as it does to every generation.

The Future Councillor Cameo Hour

There are a few future Councillors who were still many years away from running for Council but nonetheless have been continually showing up as I browse old Bunyips. The primary culprits are these two: Brian Thom and John Ragless, who both worked for the same financial consulting service and took up regular ad space in the Bunyip.

John Ragless would be on Council from 1997-2003, and was eight years away from running for Council at this point. Brian Thom would be on Council from 2000-2014; he would be on Council in eleven years.

Here’s another one I spotted:

Merilyn Nicolson would be a while out from her Gawler Council term – she joined Council in 2014, so twenty-four years after this article.

Little Corellas at it again

Here’s a classic complaint that Council gets from residents every year to this very day: the corellas are back in town!

The Bunyip, February 8th, 1989.

Typically they just visit for a while, make a lot of noise, cause some damage to trees through their combined weight, and then migrate out again.

In this instance, though, it would only be a couple of weeks before the corellas would create a much larger problem.

The Bunyip, February 22nd, 1989.

Squirrelled away in the corner is a notice about a Councillor resigning, but that one’s not too concerning for this blog because it was two months before the election and so didn’t create an extra by-election.

Here’s a shot I took of the corellas up to their old tricks just this April:

At least they are perched on trees this time, rather than power cables.

I’ll see you next time when we cover the 1987 elections.