Reading Between The Lines…

The three newly-advertised 'proposals' from the LGAB for local government so-called reform (see previous post on this blog) suggest that the Board is trying to base its recommendations on local government and community proposals rather than those submitted by the Minister for Local Government - presumably to attempt to distance its recommendations from any criticism of the ministerial proposals. Whether, in fact, it achieves that will depend on the outcome of the legal action currently under way.

This approach, in any case, does raise other important questions.

When faced by two local government proposals that have the same boundaries, how will the LGAB choose which to recommend? This is the case with Belmont and Kalamunda - the critical difference between them is that the Kalamunda proposal would give electors the opportunity to call for a poll on the matter whereas the Belmont one describes it as a 'boundary extension' to the City of Belmont. That is an interesting description when Belmont is (a) only 10% of the area of the proposed new local government and (b) the population of Belmont is only 40% of that of the proposed new entity.

Both Belmont and Kalamunda are included in their entirety, it is difficult to see how this could be described in any other way than as an amalgamation.

The second question raised relates to the definition of what constitutes 'significantly different from the proposals into which the LGAB inquired', for there are many examples of spatial differences between local government proposals - including, for example, the vexed question of Burswood, which is 'claimed' by both the City of Perth and the Town of Victoria Park/City of South Perth proposals. Being a natural sceptic (some would say cynic), I'm inclined to the view that here the LGAB will recommend the Minister's proposal simply to avoid the triggering of the poll provision - the Vic Park/South Perth proposal is described as an amalgamation.

The same applies to the City of Vincent and the City of Perth proposals, with Perth only wanting the asset-rich southern part of Vincent and only Vincent describing the proposal as amalgamation.