Yesterday Graham and I went to the High School to hand out How to Vote leaflets for the Local Council Elections. There have been many changes recently to the distribution of the councils within Queensland reducing the number of Shires quite considerably. This has been quite devastating in our area leaving Tamborine Mountain supporting an enormous shire with us, the smallest in area, shoring up the rest of the shire which is mainly rural.

When we arrived at the venue it was quite overcast with rain threatening but as the day progressed the sun came out and as a result my arms became rather badly sunburned; I hadn't even thought about putting on sunscreen.

There was a steady arrival of voters throughout the 3 hours we were there, so there wasn't much opportunity to take advantage of the chairs we had taken along.

Personally I think the whole process of How to Vote cards to be an absolute waste of paper; I realise they are for the purpose of persuading voters who to vote for, not only the person they want to win, but also who to vote for with their preferences. I think that the process of Preferences should be banned; it should be first passed the post and nothing more. With Preferences you might end up with the very person you wouldn't vote for in a fit, and that seems grossly unfair to me.

Here is what was reported in the Brisbane Courier Mail:

ALMOST one-third of Queenslanders did not vote in yesterday's local government elections, according to the Local Government Association of Queensland.

The polls, run for the first time by the Electoral Commission of Queensland, were the first since the State Government's controversial decision to cut the number of councils across the state from 157 to 73.

LGAQ executive director Greg Hallam said today there had been a poor voter turnout."Almost one-third of Queenslanders haven't cast a vote," Mr Hallam told ABC Radio. "Just 70 per cent of Queenslanders actually cast a vote. It might creep up as more come in, but that's down from 85 per cent at the last elections."