The NSW Electoral Commission has declared Tania Brown is Wollongong's new Lord Mayor.
The commission has published the total number of votes for the five mayoral candidates:
- Labor's Tania Brown – 58,936 votes
- The Greens' Jess Whittaker – 37,311 votes
- Independent Ryan Morris – 26,908 votes
- Independent Andrew Anthony – 17,263 votes
- Independent Suzanne de Vive – 5,751 votes
In candidate results posted this afternoon, Labor had eight of 13 seats on Wollongong City Council, including Lord Mayor.
In Ward 1, Labor’s candidates were Richard Martin and Dan Hayes. In Ward 2, David Brown and Thomas Quinn. In Ward 3, Ann Martin, Linda Campbell and Tiana Myers. Tania Brown is Lord Mayor.
The Greens had three candidates elected – one in each ward. Jess Whittaker in Ward 1, Kit Docker in Ward 2 and Deidre Stuart in Ward 3.
Two independents were marked elected: Andrew Anthony in Ward 2 and Ryan Morris in Ward 1.
Want to know more about Wollongong's new Lord Mayor?
Journalist Jeremy Lasek spoke to Tania Brown in her first media interview on the Sunday after voting day. Read more here.
Right at the start of the council election campaign in July, Tania answered questions about her plans for the city, listing her top priorities as: housing, investing in our suburbs (including more footpaths), jobs and investment, and protecting our environment. Read more here.
And last week, Flame editor Genevieve Swart spoke to Tania after a trip through Wollongong Library's newspaper archives revealed a local history of women, politics and the media, tracing the changes from a time of the ‘shrieking sisterhood’ to the age of online trolls. With the first woman stepping into the city's top job, it’s worth asking, ‘How far have we come?’ Read more here.
