Wollongong looks set to have its first woman Lord Mayor with Tania Brown holding a comfortable lead over her nearest rival when counting in the local government election closed late on Saturday night.

When counting resumes on Monday, Tania Brown leads with 29,150 (40.01%) of the vote from Jess Whittaker 18,748 (25.74%). Ex-soldier, Austinmer’s Ryan Morris leads the three independent mayoral candidates with 11,772 (16.16%) from Andrew Anthony 9,742 (13.37%) and Suzanne de Vive 3,436 (4.72%). With 72,848 votes counted to date, there’s still a long way to go but Tania Brown has every reason to feel confident at this point in the count.

Speaking on Sunday morning, exhausted but elated after a night of celebrations at the Steelers Club, Ms Brown has effectively declared victory. “We believe we have an insurmountable lead. We are very happy with the result. The Labor team worked hard, and it’s paid off in the end,” she said. 

The lead Labor candidate, who’s been Wollongong’s Deputy Lord Mayor for five years, campaigned strongly across the city on a platform of ‘new leadership’. With the popular Gordon Bradbery deciding not to re-contest, it gave Labor its best chance of winning the Lord Mayor’s role in a long time.

I managed to catch up with the Lord Mayor elect for her first media interview as she was preparing to head out for her first meeting of the day. 

Breaking the glass ceiling

“It’s been 25 years since Wollongong last had a Labor Lord Mayor, so this is significant, and of course, it’s been great to finally break the glass ceiling.”

Tania Brown will be the eighth Lord Mayor since Lord Mayoralty was conferred on the city in 1970. All previous mayors have been men.

So, what sort of Lord Mayor will she be?

“I’m approachable. This is a full-time job and I’m aiming to get to as many events as I can, especially multicultural events. I will be a strong voice for this city.” 

Ms Brown believes the council operation is well run and in the chamber she’s determined to retain the collegiate approach of the previous council. There will, however, be some changes. “I’m happy to look at change but not change for change sake,” she said.

Housing and flooding top priorities

Her priorities for her term as Lord Mayor will address some of the biggest challenges facing the city. Ms Brown lists housing affordability and flood mitigation among the things she wants council to pay greater attention to.

On housing affordability, she will ask staff to identify council-owned sites that could provide new housing opportunities for low-income earners.

On flooding, she admits state and federal support will be required but she believes a Labor Lord Mayor, able to work with state and federal local members and governments, presents “an opportunity”. 

“I want to focus on customer service. My suggestion of a maintenance flying squad to fix things around the city that annoy people has been well received.”

Labor is hoping for seven or eight seats on the 13-member council but counting in the wards has been slow. The final results aren’t expected to be declared until early October.

With a number of retirements and the Liberals failing to nominate, there are expected to be eight new faces on council.

“There will be a lot of education needed,” Ms Brown said.  “There will be big changes and the staff are preparing for it. In the past, councillors have done the company directors’ course and I’ll be recommending the new councillors do the course and the returning councillors do a refresher. After all, we are effectively a board of directors for council.”

Big vote for The Greens 

One of the new faces on council will be Lord Mayoral candidate Jess Whittaker, who has claimed a record first preference vote for the Greens with more than a quarter of the vote.

“We’re stoked," she said. "This is historic for the Greens. More people than ever have voted for us, so this is a massive result.”

The Greens election party on Saturday night was held at the Fairy Meadow Community Centre where there were plenty of cheers as the votes came in from booths across the city.

“We actually won 10 booths in the Lord Mayor’s vote which is fantastic.” 

Those booths, while mainly in the north (Stanwell Park, Austinmer, Thirroul and Bulli) also include Port Kembla, Wollongong, Keiraville and Corrimal. 

“It feels like we’ve put forward a positive vision for Wollongong and people have responded to that.”

She is hoping The Greens will win one extra seat to have three seats on Council with a slim chance of a second seat in Ward One.

Likely to be elected comfortably as a Ward One councillor, Ms Whittaker says she’s most excited about implementing the Greens policy for community gardens across the city.

“Those gardens will create local food and a great opportunity both for community building and addressing problems with the cost-of-living pressures.” 

Counting by Wards

In the northern Ward One, to date only 7854 of the 53,777 votes have been counted and the ALP leads with 2561 votes, closely followed by the Greens with 2284 and ungrouped Independents with 1438.

In the central Ward Two, Tania Brown’s strong personal vote sees Labor well ahead early in the count with 2404 votes, ahead of The Greens' 1818 and 1215 votes for the group headed by Lord Mayoral candidate Andrew Anthony.

In Ward Three, representing Wollongong’s southern suburbs, Labor is again dominant, almost doubling the number of votes of their biggest challenger The Greens. When counting resumes on Monday, the ALP has 4712 votes in total to The Greens 2399.

Shellharbour Mayoral race

In Shellharbour, incumbent Mayor Chris Homer is celebrating a landslide win and with more than 26,000 votes counted he has more than 59% of the vote giving the independent a second term in the top job.

Labor’s Rob Petreski has 30.75% of the vote (7436) and independent Paul Rankin has 2470 votes (10.21%).

In Ward A, the independents' total vote is 64.4% to the ALP’s 35.6%.

In Ward B, Labor has just over half the vote (50.07%) with the independents on 49.93%.

In Ward C, the independent candidates have a total of 52.09% to Labor’s 47.91%

In Ward D, Labor has polled strongest with 49.46% of the vote, grouped independents have 41.72% and a lone ungrouped independent has 8.82%.

Counting will resume in all LGAs on Monday and the Illawarra Flame will provide updates.