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| 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.
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