Pre-empting the Parliament

Colin Barnett is acting as though the removal of the current provisions of the Local Government Act that give residents the right to demand a poll on proposed amalgamations were a fait accompli. In fact, this move has to be approved by both houses of the WA Parliament and this has not yet happened.

It might well be the case that he has the numbers in both Houses of Parliament, but the debate at least needs to be had in the Parliament so that those of us in the great unwashed can clearly see the arrogance and hypocrisy of this Government.

It seems, for example, that the emperor only has the numbers in the Upper House if country councils are somehow exempted from the type of amalgamations to be forced on the metropolitan area. How likely is this, however, when Barnett is quoted as saying: "…local governments had been given the chance to merge voluntarily, but had chosen instead to persist with a situation in which some councils govern as few as 500 people" (http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/perths-local-councils-to-be-slashed-in-half-20130730-2qwht.html).

There are no metropolitan local governments with 'as few as 500 people', so he is clearly flagging forced amalgamations for country local governments as well.

So how will Brendan Grylls justify supporting forced amalgamations to his constituents?

I know, from personal experience of living in country WA and from talking with elected members from country councils when I was a councillor for the then Town of Vincent, that there are many good reasons why the configuration of country local governments should be different from metropolitan ones - even beyond the obvious ones of physical size and population density.

Colin Barnett appears to have a much more simplistic approach that ignores the realities of life.

I call on Brendan Grylls not to support a double-standard for local government. I call on him to reject forced amalgamations of local governments, whether they be metropolitan or country and the best way of doing this is by ensuring that residents continue to have the right to call a poll on any proposed amalgamations.

Even in the metropolitan area, Eleni Evangel, the recently-elected MLA for Perth, has come out in support of retaining the City of Vincent in its current form (http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/wa/18263711/fury-at-barnett-over-poll-pledge) - a much stronger position, ironically, than that of the Vincent Council, which seems to have rolled over and accepted the inevitability of its demise by supporting reincorporation into the City of Perth.

I wish Eleni Evangel all the best in this campaign. As a new Member of Parliament, she will be subjected to all sorts of pressure to conform to the emperor's wishes. I sincerely hope she is able to resist this pressure and reflect what I believe are the views of most of her constituents who live in the City of Vincent.