Get Your Thoughts Together

The Local Government Advisory Board has stated that it will issue the call for submissions on Metropolitan local government changes 'in late January, 2014'. Whilst the Board will be issuing an Information Paper to assist people to make submissions, I'd suggest we all start thinking about what we want to say now, rather than waiting. This will be especially important if you're going to be making a submission on behalf of an organisation and need to get agreement from a number of peopl.

Quiet Time

It's been a bit of a quiet time in local government amalgamation land (and, frankly, I needed a bit of a break from it), with the slow progress (not yet complete) of the Local Government Amendment Bill through the WA Parliament - punctuated only by the presentation of a petition by the Dadour Group. Thanks to Adele Farina, MLC, for presenting this petition to the Legislative Council.

The petition refers to the provision in the Amendment Bill to remove, for the time being and for metropolitan local government only, the requirement for the Local Government Advisory Board to call for public submissions for at least six weeks on any proposal presented to it. It's good to see that, rather than wait for the outcome of the Bill, the Local Government Advisory Board has stated that it will abide by the current process for all of the proposals currently before it.

It's a pity that the submission period is likely to be over the Christmas/New Year silly season (a well-tried tactic of governments when consulting on controversial issues), but the onus is now on all of us who oppose specific proposals and/or the process by which they have been arrived at to put down in writing that we do so object and why.

The Board is required to consider all submissions and to have regard to:
- community of interest
- physical and topographical features
- demographic trends
- economic factors
- the history of the area
- transport and communications
- matters affecting the viability of local governments
- the effective delivery of local government services.

So the opportunity is there to make the Board fully (even painfully) aware of the strength of feeling about these largely ill-considered, and sometimes contradictory proposals. The eight points above provide a template for expressing your views.

I can see people having a field day in respect of community of interest (or, rather, lack thereof) for many of the proposed changes.

Dirty Tricks?

Click to enlarge

And I'm not referring to the West Australian's 'downgrading' of City of Vincent Mayor, John Carey, by the lack of an initial upper case letter. Perhaps the sub-editor thought that capital letters are reserved for capital city office-bearers.

And Yolanda Zaw still hasn't caught up with the fact that the revised State Government proposals, as submitted to the Local Government Advisory Board, do not place the whole of the City of Vincent into an enlarged City of Perth - as noted previously in this blog (http://ianrker-vincent.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/premiers-porky-wheres-logic-or-fairness.html), the riverside area of Banks Precinct is excluded.

I recall that not so long ago, Premier Colin Barnett was encouraging the City of Perth and the City of Vincent to work together on amalgamation. Now we have the City of Perth going it alone with surveys of Vincent residents - presumably so that it can massage the results in a way that suits it.

At the very least, I hope that the City of Perth publishes a full report on its survey - including how the survey was set up, the preamble to respondents, questions asked, response rates and any other issues that might have influenced the results. As I know from professional experience with many surveys (not to mention the 'Leading Questions' lesson from 'Yes, Prime Minister'), surveys can be slanted (consciously or subconsciously) to give whatever answer is sought.



Here's a thought, too. Is City of Perth in breach of Section 3.20 of the Local Government Act, which relates to the performing of functions outside its area without the consent of the local government responsible for the area. This section is primarily to do with physical works, but the principle would seem to apply equally to non-physical works such as surveys.

Making Things Happen

Congratulations to the City of Vincent for taking the bold step of engaging placemakers for its four urban village centres. This is a first for Perth and will be much-needed to counterbalance the CBD-focus of the City of Perth if Vincent should be swallowed up in the Col Pot masterplan for local government.

When I helped organise the Mainstreet Conference in 2009 (held in Fremantle and supported by the City of Vincent), I was struck by the importance of place and how easily it can be overlooked in the normal processes of government.

At the state level, there is a lot of talk of activity centres and urban villages - but nothing to make them happen or to enhance and maintain their vitality and viability.

This step is a classic example of what small local governments can do that would be very difficult for larger ones. Vincent can do this for all four of its centres but a larger local government would have to deal with competing demands from across its area.

Intelligence and Functioning

F Scott Fitzgerald wrote, in The Crack Up, a collection of essays, notes and letters, that the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

Alas, we currently have a collection of federal and state politicians who can hold opposed ideas but without retaining the ability to function.

One look at the WA shenanigans over the attempts to remove democratic provisions in the forced local government saga, shows that both Barnett and Simpson hold opposed ideas on democracy and local government.

At the federal level, Tony Abbott and Chris Pyne clearly hold opposed ideas on truth and government, in bare-faced denial even when faced with documented evidence of what they have said.

The pity of it is that none of these gentlemen (and I use the term with more than a hint of sarcasm) retains the ability to function - and that costs all of us dearly.

Lies and Fans

Found in the on-line comments on a Guardian article on Abbott/Pyne and Gonski. Might I suggest that Colin Barnett's clock would make a good back-up ceiling fan.

A man died and went to Heaven. As he stood in front of the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him. He asked, "What are all those clocks?"

St Peter answered, "Those are Lie-Clocks. Everyone who has ever been on earth has a Lie-Clock. Every time you lie, the hands on your clock move."

"Oh," said the man. "Whose clock is that?"

"That’s Mother Teresa’s," replied St. Peter. "The hands have never moved, indicating that she never told a lie."

"Incredible," said the man. "And whose clock is that one?"

St Peter responded, "That’s Abraham Lincoln’s clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abraham told only two lies in his entire life."

"Where’s Tony Abbott’s clock?" asked the man.

St Peter replied, "We are using it it as a ceiling fan."

Let The Chaos Continue

Subiaco Post, 30th November 2013.

The Subiaco situation highlights and exemplifies the chaos surrounding the local government amalgamation 'process' - if it can be called such.

There are now so many proposals that have been submitted to the Local Government Advisory Board (19 from local councils and 15 from the WA Government) and many Councils are affected by more than one of these (conflicting) proposals.

Add to this the fact that, like Subiaco and Vincent, many communities would prefer their Council to remain as it is but their Councils have been forced into making 'second-best' proposals because they were told that no change was not in play and the original proposals were totally unacceptable.

And then there are the Councils that chose not to participate, on the basis that their communities did not want any form of change - at least, nothing resembling what was initially proposed by Col Pot and Homer Simpson.

Many Councils and communities have been disenfranchised not only by the ludicrous nature of the initial proposals but by the fact that the rules appear to have been changed (made up) as the Government went along.

What So Many Are Saying…

Subiaco Post, 30th November, 2013

Whether it's Cambridge, Vincent or Subiaco, smaller Councils get the vote from ratepayers on accessibility.

Larger councils like Stirling or Perth (the latter not large in population but large on level of budget and activity) are more often seen as remote and difficult to approach.

Take Council Meetings, for example. At Vincent you can just turn up to the Council meeting and be heard - and not only on matters that are on the agenda that night. At City of Perth, only questions, not comments, can be made, they must relate to an item on the agenda and it is 'preferred' that they be submitted in advance on a standard form. Questions received prior to the meeting are read aloud by the Chief Executive Officer - just to make sure you don't slip in a comment or two or get 'off-topic'.

Now, it's understandable that larger Councils, having more business to deal with, need to be more formalised and restrictive in terms of how residents and ratepayers can approach them, but this does make them less responsive to emerging concerns and individual interests.

Whatever the efficiency arguments - and I have to disagree with Martin Chambers about dictatorships being the benchmark for efficiency (although I suspect he said it tongue-in-cheek) - larger local governments are less good for community democracy. 

On the subject of dictatorships, most of them are in practice highly inefficient - but it goes 'unnoticed' because no one dares speak up. This seems to be the way that Col Pot is taking his forced local government amalgamation agenda, by attempting to remove the requirement for the Local Government Advisory Board to ask for submissions on amalgamation proposals.