Ignoring Dadour - At Your Peril

The City of Vincent flier for its Town Hall Meeting on Sunday March 9th at 1pm says a lot of good and relevant things about the need to keep Vincent together and for any amalgamations to be a 'merger of equals'. It does not, however, reflect the Council's own stated position "that the City of Vincent remain as its own local government entity" (5th November, 2013), which is also the position favoured by the vast majority of those who voted in the poll last October.

Unfortunately, it fails to mention one of the most critical consequences of the State Government's describing the changes as 'boundary adjustment' rather than amalgamation - that is that it removes the right of the electors of Vincent to call for a binding poll on whatever proposal the Local Government Advisory Board recommends (the so-called 'Dadour amendment').

This would be the only effective opportunity most people would have to reject any proposal and to say (as the vast majority did in the poll last October) that Vincent should remain as it is.

Liberal MLC and former Minister, Simon O'Brien, recently called attention to this in the Legislative Council, when he also said it 'would be interesting' to see if this approach would stand up in court.

This is an issue that has almost been ignored by most of the media, with attention being focussed on the detail of proposed changes rather than the democratic principles that are being trampled in the dust by this ideologue of a Premier for whom the ends apparently justify the means.

We can only hope that the transparently anti-democratic nature of his chosen means will quickly spell the end for this Premier and his minion Minister for Local Government - before the rest of us are left having to pick up the pieces of shattered communities.