Pity The Poor Ranger

Have pity on the oft-maligned local government ranger, whose already-difficult job is about to become many times more complex. 

Existing local laws will continue to apply after the local government changes come into effect until 'the new local government reviews its local laws and replaces them with local laws that will cover the whole district'.

Anyone who has experience of local government knows that making local laws is not a simple process - and in the meantime the rangers will have to enforce multiple local laws. 

Take Fremantle, for example, where rangers will have to enforce the local laws of Fremantle, East Fremantle, Melville and Cockburn. Or South Park (South Perth, Victoria Park, Canning and a small piece of Belmont). Or Subiaco (Subiaco, Cambridge, Stirling, Nedlands).

And then there are the areas that will have no local Council to enforce any local laws at all.

Don't be surprised, therefore, if the Council of the 'continuing' local government (where the 'boundary adjustment' fiction is applied), which has total control of the new local government from July to October 2015 and majority control for the next two years, chooses to make its local laws apply to the whole new entity.

Still, it's interesting (in the sense of the ancient Chinese curse, 'may you live in interesting times') to wonder how many other such problems are awaiting the unwary Councils and communities that are now, belatedly, coming to the conclusion that the changes might not be such a good thing for them.

I am reminded of the words of Bob Dylan's song, I Pity The Poor Immigrant, for we shall soon be unwilling immigrants in new 'communities' that many of us want no part of.

I pity the poor immigrant

Who tramples through the mud

Who fills his mouth with laughing

And who builds his town with blood

Whose visions in the final end

Must shatter like the glass

I pity the poor immigrant

When his gladness comes to pass