City of Perth councillor and Perth Racing director Brent Fleeton will head overseas, triggering an extraordinary election to fill his local government seat.
City of Perth councillor and Perth Racing director Brent Fleeton will head overseas, triggering an extraordinary election to fill his local government seat.
Mr Fleeton will wrap up his Perth-based roles in late August and will relocate to the Middle East to take up a new opportunity.
The details of his new role remains undisclosed.
Mr Fleeton sits on the board of Perth Racing and is a director at communications firm GT Communications, having been with the company since 2022.
He was elected as city councillor for a four-year term in October 2021.
A City of Perth spokesperson said the council would need to endorse the method and conduct of the extraordinary election.
“As Brent Fleeton is in the third year of his term, this means that the new ‘backfill provisions’, recently included in the Local Government Act 1995 (the Act), do not apply," the spokesperson told Business News.
"The City of Perth will now be required to hold an extraordinary election, which must be no later than four months after the vacancy occurs.
"The city is liaising with the electoral commission to seek the commissioner’s agreement to be responsible for the extraordinary election.
"If the commissioner agrees, council will then be requested to formally appoint the electoral commissioner to conduct the election as a postal election.”
Mr Fleeton was considered a frontrunner as the Liberal candidate for the seat of Nedlands for the 2025 state election but missed out on a recommendation from party members.
Army veteran and entrepreneur Jonathan Huston was endorsed as the preferred candidate in April.
