In his interview on the 7.30 Report on the ABC last night, Local Government Minister, Tony Simpson, for the first time put a figure on the benefits of his proposed local government 'reform'. He said they would amount to $75 million over three years, with ongoing benefits after that.
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What he didn't say was (a) how those benefits were calculated or (b) to what extent those benefits could be achieved by other means such as regional groupings of councils to provide shared services.
He didn't, however, come clean on the cost side, including who pays.
And those costs have to include the costs local governments and communities have already borne as a direct result of the confrontational, arbitrary and inconsistent process so far.
Now if the Minister would provide us with that sort of information we might be able to have a halfway-sensible debate about the pros and cons of the government's proposed forced amalgamations.
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