What Col Really Means ………

It's good to see disagreement between Barnett and Scaffidi, especially when it's over the City of Perth's claims for greater powers.

What Col really means, though, is that it's fine for State Government to take rights and powers away from local government - threats over planning and development decisions and removal of the democratic right to a poll on amalgamations, to name just a couple - but don't think that we're going to give anything back, even to the capital city.

Ah, well. The spat is amusing but the City of Perth Act is a deadly serious matter, especially for those of us who live in Vincent and want to stay living in Vincent.

And if we can't convince sufficient members of the WA Parliament that Vincent is worth saving (although the Upper House looks likely to reject the Bill at the moment), I hope we can at least persuade them to remove the egregious gerrymander or vote weighting that Col has threatened.

If the Act is passed complete with gerrymander, the WA Parliament will have forfeited any claim to supporting democracy and will be tarred with the Barnett/Simpson brush that denied most in Perth a vote on the future of their local governments.