Tasmania has now made voting in local government elections compulsory, leaving Western Australia and South Australia as the last two jurisdictions in Australia with voluntary voting still in place.

Andy Asquith, local government expert at Curtin University told Oliver Peterson on Perth Live that WA and SA should follow in Tasmania’s footsteps in order to align themselves with state and federal elections.

“But more importantly, local government elections are poor in relevance to other elections, the turn out is ultimately not what it should be and the way to rectify that is to make voting compulsory and I think that’s what we should do,” he told Oly.

“We need to talk up local governments – local governments are rarely talked about and we need to get people engaged and have an ongoing conversation. We need a public education program and one in schools as well.”

Press PLAY to hear the full discussion