By Briar Sinclair
A MELBOURNE magistrate will hand down a decision in Hobsons Bay’s biggest legal case of the year next Thursday, 15 September.
The last witness statements were tendered to the Municipal Electoral Tribunal in an ongoing case between Hobsons Bay councillor Mary Ann Lindsay and Laverton resident Noel Allsop.
Mr Allsop, who ran against Cr Lindsay in the Altona North Ward in last year’s elections, alleges she duped residents into voting for her.
He claims she misled residents because she did not disclose her Australian Labor Party (ALP) membership in a candidate statement in the Victorian Electoral Commission’s postal voting pack sent out to every voter living in the ward.
The tribunal heard the testimony of Cr Lindsay’s partner and fellow Hobsons Bay councillor Carl Marsich, who said the ALP endorsed candidates in the first council election in 1996 and again in 1999.
He said the ALP stopped endorsing candidates in 2001 and no ALP members were endorsed in last year’s election.
His testimony followed earlier statements that councillors who were ALP members in Hobsons Bay were not required to caucus because they were not endorsed candidates.
Cr Marsich said councillors held a number of meetings to discuss the budget and rate increase for the 200506 financial year.
He said councillors who ran under the Community Labor in the November election – himself, Bill Baarini and Renee Caruana – wanted a rate increase capped at the current CPI in line with their election promise.
But Cr Marsich said the independent councillors, including Cr Lindsay, pushed for the rate increase.
He said there was no division because after “a fair bit of debate” the councillors had “reached a consensus” over the issue.
Mr Allsop’s legal team subpoenaed Lyle Allan, who presented a relevant paper to a Monash University post graduate conference in October last year, to give evidence.
Mr Allan, a life member of the ALP, insists the practice of running dummy candidates in an election “is an old one” and that “all parties have done it”.
But he says without the admission from a socalled dummy candidate, proof is “almost impossible”.
Instead, Mr Allan has devised a set of criteria for voters to determine if candidates are “dummies”.
He says telltale signs include the candidate’s statement appearing to be professionally written, the candidate having a minority agenda or the candidate making vague statements and having few policies.
Ms Lindsay’s defence team argued the criteria were not scientific and were developed to justify each situation where Mr Allan claimed a person stood in an election as a dummy candidate.
