Council elections

The Federal election is, well, whenever, but it's months away, and already we know the players and have some sort of feel for what the issues might be.  The Council elections are less than a week away, and at least in our part of the world, we know very little!   There's a field of 13 candidates (for 3 positions) in our ward, there are just a few signs around, we've had a small number of letter-box drops but not many .... what's going on? 

There was a local forum, but it wasn't very well-publicised and apparently not all the candidates turned up.

The two sitting councillors standing for re-election have letterboxed us with some useful information.   A couple of the other candidates have distributed flyers.  However, overall, given the size of the field, I would have expected a lot more.  

It all reinforces the feeling that some of the candidates are "stooges" who have no hope but plan to direct their preferences to others (assuming they get any votes....), and so just aren't going to any trouble.  Perhaps some of these candidates were relying on the election being by post (as it was last time), allowing them to include some information in the mailout (paid for by the council).   The election this time is in the traditional format, so there's been no such mailout.   

 I don't know what the deposit payable by candidates in council elections is (which is forfeited unless they get a certain percentage of the votes), but it seems to me that there's a case for it to be increased.