The 2011 Shellharbour and Wollongong local elections were held on 3 September 2011 to elect the councils of the City of Shellharbour and the City of Wollongong in New South Wales.
Wollongong City Council was sacked in March 2008 amid a corruption inquiry, and the same happened to Shellharbour City Council in July 2008 because of continual failures with the council's code of conduct committee.[1] [2] This meant electors in both councils did not vote at the 2008 local elections.
Both councils also faced a proposed merger, which was later abandoned.
Shellharbour has single ward with seven councillors, while Wollongong has a popularly-elected mayor, along with three wards that have four councillors each.
| Votes | % | Seats | Change | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal | 4 | ||||||
| Labor | 4 | ||||||
| Independent | 2 | ||||||
| Greens | 2 | ||||||
Under the Local Government (Shellharbour and Wollongong Elections) Bill 2011, which passed the New South Wales Parliament on 9 May 2011, councillors were elected to hold office until the 2016 local elections, meaning they skipped the 2012 local elections.[3] [4] However, as a result of delays caused by amalgamation proposals, both councils went to the polls in 2017 instead.
In 2014, Shellharbour councillors began to investigate the costs of a referendum that would allow voters to directly elect their mayor (as was the case before 2008) and increase the number of councillors from seven to nine.[5] Both proposals later passed at a 2017 referendum, with four wards created with two councillors each, plus the mayor.