This is the personal blog of Ian Ker, who was Councillor for the South Ward of the Town of Vincent from 1995 to 2009. I have been a resident of this area since 1985. This blog was originally conceived as a way of letting residents of Vincent know what I have been doing and sharing thoughts on important issues. I can now use it to sound off about things that concern me.

If you want to contact me, my e-mail is still ian_ker@hotmail.com or post a comment on this blog.

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Wednesday, February 5, 2014

If All Else Fails, Fall Back on Semantics

Having failed to get their proposal to remove the Dadour amendment from the Local Government Act through their own party room, Col Pot and Homer Simpson resort to obscure and bizarre interpretation of the language of the amendment.

By describing many of the proposed changes as 'adjustment of boundaries', they intend to remove the right of affected communities to have a say on the proposals.

How petty can you get!

I wonder how the people of Cockburn feel, for example. Two of three proposals affecting them (Fremantle/East Fremantle and Melville) are described as 'decreasing the size of the City of Cockburn' and the third (Kwinana/Cockburn) as 'disestablishing the City of Cockburn'. The fact that this is purely semantics is obvious from the fact that if the disestablishment had been attached to the Fremantle/East Fremantle proposal, the Dadour poll provision would still be in play.

And what about Perth/Vincent - described as 'increasing the size of the City of Perth'? Semantics again - what if we decided to call the new entity something other than Perth?

But to call it a boundary adjustment to the City of Perth is really stretching credulity and surely must be tested in the courts. Vincent is larger than Perth (11.4km2 compared to 8.7km2), has more people (31,500 compared to 19,000 - in 2011) and nearly twice as many electors (19,300 compared to 10,500 in 2009). The City of Perth does have three times the rate revenue (and total revenue), but dollars are not everything.

The sensible thing to do, if the proposal were to go ahead, would be to have a merger of equals by abolishing both existing entities and creating a new entity - even if it were still to be called the City of Perth.

Even more fundamentally, the Government proposal documents are totally inadequate to meet the Local Government Act requirement to "set out clearly…the effects of the proposal on local governments". The proposals are no more than a description of boundary changes and two paragraphs of broad assertions unsupported by any analysis.

Bottom line - the Local Government Advisory Board cannot recommend the WA Government proposals because they do not comply with the requirements of the Act.

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