{"id":12257,"date":"2021-07-26T04:29:53","date_gmt":"2021-07-26T04:29:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/?p=12257"},"modified":"2021-07-26T04:29:53","modified_gmt":"2021-07-26T04:29:53","slug":"local-government-elections-postponed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2021\/07\/26\/local-government-elections-postponed\/","title":{"rendered":"Local government elections postponed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The NSW Government today announced a new date for the Local Government elections has been set for Saturday 4 December 2021.<br \/>\nMinister for Local Government Shelley Hancock said the decision, after extensive consultation with and advice from the NSW Electoral Commission and NSW Health, has been made in response to the COVID-19 situation.<br \/>\n\u201cDue to the COVID-19 pandemic and current Public Health Orders impacting Greater Sydney, we have made the difficult decision to postpone the Local Government elections until later this year,\u201d Mrs Hancock said.<br \/>\n\u201cWe have taken this step to postpone the election to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our communities, voters, polling staff and candidates.\u201d<br \/>\nThe NSW Government has worked with the Electoral Commission and NSW Health to implement a comprehensive plan to allow voters to cast their ballot safely in person, by post or online.<br \/>\niVote (electronic voting) will also be available for the first time in the local council elections and the NSW Government has implemented changes to pre-poll to ensure that voters have 13 days to cast their ballot, reducing congestion on polling day.<br \/>\nThe NSW Government has made available a total of $57 million for the elections in 2021, including $37 million to deliver them in a COVID safe way.<br \/>\nIn this election, 5.2 million voters will cast their ballots as around 5,000 candidates vie for 1,200 councillor positions across 125 local councils.<br \/>\nNominations will open on Monday 25 October 2021 and close on Wednesday 3 November 2021.<br \/>\nProspective candidates can find more information at the Office of Local Government website at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.olg.nsw.gov.au\/\">www.olg.nsw.gov.au<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The NSW Government today announced a new date for the Local Government elections has been set for Saturday 4 December 2021. Minister for Local Government Shelley Hancock said the decision, after extensive consultation with and advice from the NSW Electoral Commission and NSW Health, has been made in response to the COVID-19 situation. \u201cDue to &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2021\/07\/26\/local-government-elections-postponed\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Local government elections postponed&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nswnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}