Thursday, 27 August 2026

 Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (12:41): (2555) My question is to the Minister for Local Government. Victorians believe in the democratic system, not a system where Labor keeps expensive monitors to interfere with councils unnecessarily and where Labor interferes with elections in order to have control of the council, council money and planning decisions, but corruption is in Labor’s DNA. My constituents are horrified by evidence of vote tampering in the recent Kingston council Melaleuca Ward by-election. The Victorian Electoral Commission has been investigating claims of fraud and vote tampering. Constituents have spoken of witnessing firsthand the vote discrepancies and changes made, with additional photocopied votes. It does not matter how nice the person is; if the councillor has not been legitimately elected, she should never have been sworn in. The story exposes a much bigger problem about what and how many other Victorian council meetings are interfered with by the state Labor government and how many elections have been tampered with. Minister, when will this Labor government stop its tampering and corruption and let Victorians independently and democratically elect their councillors?