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Our Scheme

The Community Government Scheme explains how the Council runs. This includes the area of governance , how elections are held and the role of elected members within the council and the functions and powers of the council .

The following is a link to the Northern Territory Legislation Database where the most up to date Numbulwar Numburindi Community Government Scheme can be downloaded as a PDF of RTF document.
Click here or read on for an overview of the Scheme.

Area

The community government area to which this scheme applies comprises all that parcel of land in Arnhem Land north of Limmen Bight in the Northern Territory of Australia containing an area of 450 square kilometres.

Common Seal
The common seal of the council shall contain the words Numbulwar Numburindi Community Government Council and "Common Seal.

Members of Council

The Council consists of 22 members. These are 20 ordinary members, a President and Vice President to represent them in Council matters. For a list of the current elected members please - .

The Community will elect a President and Vice President
You need to be over the age of eighteen, have lived in the community for more than two years and be elected by the community to be a member of Council.
There is an Executive Committee which consists of six members of Council. The Council may give any decisions they wish to the Executive Committee.

Elections

Before Voting
The clerk keeps a list of everyone who lives in the community. Only people who are over eighteen and have lived in the community for two years can be on the list. A person must be on the list in order to vote.

Council decides when to have an election, but there must be at least one election every three years in April.
The clerk then puts up a poster telling everyone when the election will be held. The clerk has to give at least 28 days notice of the coming election.

The community area has five clan groups, these are;

• Nungarrgarlu Ngalmi
• Nungayinbala Murrungun
• Nundhirribala Mangurra
• Nungumadjbarr Wurramara
• Numamurdirdi Wagilag
  

Election Day!
The clerk can ask people to help with the election, they are called Polling Officials.

The containers where all the voting tokens go must be checked and locked tight so that no one can try and cheat.
From 8.00am in the morning to 1.00pm in the afternoon, the polling booth is open so people can vote. Everyone who wants to vote comes along and tells the clerk or official their name and language group. Their name is then crossed off the election list.
The voter is given a voting token which they have the opportunity to place into their candidate’s voting container.

Counting the Vote
After the polling place closes the clerk starts to count the votes. Its very important that the clerk have someone else present to make sure no one cheats, so each candidate may send a scrutineer to make sure everything is done properly.

Once the counting has finished the clerk must sign a document stating:

• Names of officials
• Names of scrutineers
• Number of votes
• Number of invalid votes (those that people couldn’t understand)
• Number of postal votes
  

The clerk then puts up a notice saying who won the election.

Meetings
The Council should meet once a month, at a time which they agreed upon in the last meeting.

The meetings are open, which means that people may attend the meeting if they want to.
The President of the Council may call a special meeting. The President must give at least 2 days notice before calling a special meeting.
At any meeting the Council must keep a record of what happened. These are called the Minutes of the Meeting.

In order to make decisions a certain number of members must be present – this is called a quorum. A majority of the members in office is needed to make a decision.

What the Council Does
The Council does a lot in the community. Some of these things are:

• Garbage collection
• Maintaining Houses
• Maintenance of Roads
• Operation of local shop & fuel bowser
• Managing Health & Welfare Programs