THE mayor and deputy mayor of Kingston Council have both lost their bids for re-election, with eight new faces set to serve on council for the next four years.
The Victorian Electoral Commission announced the winners of the Kingston Council election last Thursday, 7 November. Multiple incumbents have lost their spots to first-time councillors. Kingston’s most recent mayor, Jenna Davey-Burns, was among those to lose her spot. She was narrowly defeated by Georgia Erevnidis. Erevnidis was the Freedom Party candidate for Carrum at the 2022 state election. The Freedom Party is a small party which ran on an anti-lockdown platform – it won no seats, but remains registered with the VEC. The party is registered to Morgan Jonas, a right-wing advocate who has been an advertised speaker at an event hosted by the My Place fringe group.
Jane Agirtan, also a vocal critic of the state government and the “radical left”, defeated the 2023/2024 deputy mayor Tracey Davies to win Chicquita Ward. In a statement on Facebook Agirtan thanked fellow Chicquita Ward candidate Wandzia French, who picked up 11 percent of first preference votes. She told her social media followers she is “excited to have a like-minded independent team of five elected to council.”
In an article posted on her website, Agirtan endorsed the candidacies of Wandzia French, Brendan Lenarcic, Louise Black, Georgia Erevnidis, Sarah O’Donnell, and Caroline White. The latter three were all elected to council. David Eden, first elected to Kingston Council in 2012, lost Yammerbook Ward to Sarah O’Donnell. Georgina Oxley, Hadi Saab, and Chris Hill each won their bids for re-election. The other winners were Chris Howe, Tony Athanasopoulos, Tess Law, and Kirrallee Ashworth-Collett.
Kingston Council CEO Peter Bean said “I want to welcome our new councillors and congratulate those who have been re-elected to council. I’m looking forward to working with all of them to achieve great things for Kingston over the next 4 years.” The councillors will be sworn in on Wednesday, 13 November.
First published in the Chelsea Mordialloc Mentone News – 13 November 2024