BREAKING: Three new members will join the Adelaide City Council, with only one incumbent returning.
Carmel Noon, Patrick Maher, Alfredo Cabada and Eleanor Freeman will be the newest Adelaide City Councillors.
The Electoral Commission of South Australia (ECSA) has provisionally declared the result after 186 counts, with Noon the first elected, followed by Maher, Cabada and Freeman.
InDaily understands ECSA took great scrutiny with the count, given the history of the seat.
The new councillors will fill four seats that have been vacant since April after a district court judge voided the Central Ward appointments from the 2022 general council elections.
The ruling came after the court found on the balance of probabilities that illegal practices impacted the election, with several instances where ballot papers were handled or not filled in by the lawful voters.
Noon, Maher, Cabada and Freeman were four of the 19 candidates who ran in the supplementary election.
Maher works in the public service and is best known as the strategy director for the Save the Cranker campaign in 2024.
Freeman is an urban planner, and Cabada is a buyer’s agent who also sits on the advisory board of the council subsidiary Adelaide Economic Development Agency.
Noon is the only incumbent to return to her seat, winning the highest number of first preferences again, after having the same track record in the 2022 general council elections.
The judgment specified that Noon did not benefit from the illegal practices the court found to have occurred, and she has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
Noon said being provisionally elected once again is “deeply meaningful”.
“It feels like I have been given back something that was unfairly taken away. The people of Central Ward placed their trust in me in 2022, and I am honoured they have given me the opportunity to continue what we started,” she said.
“The past few months have been difficult for the Council and for our city.
“Since mid-April, residents have witnessed poor behaviour from some councillors, including walk-outs and failures to attend meetings, which has often disrupted the ability of Council to achieve quorum.
“With a full council now in place, I hope those behaviours will dissipate or not be so disruptive. The people of Adelaide – and indeed South Australia – deserve much better from the leaders of their capital city.”
Former Deputy Lord Mayor David Elliott, also not accused of any wrongdoing, recontested his seat, but fell short of the number of votes to return, while former councillors Simon Hou and Jing Li did not recontest.
In a post to social media on Tuesday night, Elliott conceded and said he looked forward to working with the new councillors through his ongoing community advocacy.
“I have no doubt many of the candidates have run for the right reasons and some will make great councillors,” he said on Instagram.
“I wish them the best of luck; they’ll need it.”
Lord Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith congratulated the four provisionally elected councillors.
“These new and returning members bring a valuable mix of urban planning, business and community advocacy experience to council, and I look forward to welcoming them to the chamber in September,” she said.
“I would also like to thank the 15 other candidates for nominating and for their commitment to the democratic process that underpins our local govenrment system.”
Councillors Keiran Snape and Janet Giles have said they were happy to have Noon back in the chamber.
“I am especially excited to have two new young people in Patrick and Eleanor,” Giles said.
“We have increased the number of women on council which is a good thing and I hope the new people will bring more civility to the council meetings.”
Snape said, “it is fantastic to see people, rather than parties, be given the privilege of representing the communities they live in”.
Cabada is the only elected candidate associated with a political party and is a member of the SA division of the Liberals.
Voting in the supplementary election closed on Monday, and received 1991 total valid votes, in an electorate of 13,204 potential voters.
Voting in council elections is not compulsory, and the local government minister last week blamed an “abysmal state of affairs” among Adelaide City Councillors for the low turnout.
A new suite of reforms to improve voter turnout, including requiring voters to be Australian citizens, will go through parliament ahead of the 2026 general council elections.
When the court ruled that illegal practices did impact the 2022 Central Ward election, it found that illegally handled ballot papers were collected from student apartments.
The judgment did not explicitly find that those identified with illegal votes were international students or non-citizens.
Concerns were raised before voting opened that this supplementary election could be tainted by voter fraud, but no such allegations against named persons have been made publicly.
The Adelaide City Council CEO and the Electoral Commissioner told InDaily in July that the council and the Electoral Commission took steps to ensure the supplementary election was carried out legally and democratically.