Premier's Statistics No Better Than Minister's Arithmetic

According to the Premier, "many" of WA's local government's have "less than 500 residents".

I'm not sure what he meant by 'many', but 16 of WA's 140 local governments have fewer than 500 residents - that's 11.4%. Given the scattered nature of WA's population outside the metropolitan area and country urban centres, it doesn't strike me as unreasonable that there would be some large areas with small populations that are so remote from concentrations of population that they could not effectively be managed from elsewhere.

So how many is 'many'? According to the Oxford Dictionary, 'many' means 'a large number'. Is 16 a large number? Is 11.4% a large proportion?

But the real question is: "why is the Premier using (even if wrongly) statistics from regional WA to support what he and Homer are doing to metropolitan councils?"

And is bigger really better? When he says it is time we 'moved into the 21st century', it is perhaps time for him to move beyond the 20th century when bigger might have been better. The fact is that communications and information technology have cut the feet from under the 'bigger is better' argument, as sharing between organisations is as easy as sharing within a single organisation.