Get Your Thoughts Together

The Local Government Advisory Board has stated that it will issue the call for submissions on Metropolitan local government changes 'in late January, 2014'. Whilst the Board will be issuing an Information Paper to assist people to make submissions, I'd suggest we all start thinking about what we want to say now, rather than waiting. This will be especially important if you're going to be making a submission on behalf of an organisation and need to get agreement from a number of peopl.

Quiet Time

It's been a bit of a quiet time in local government amalgamation land (and, frankly, I needed a bit of a break from it), with the slow progress (not yet complete) of the Local Government Amendment Bill through the WA Parliament - punctuated only by the presentation of a petition by the Dadour Group. Thanks to Adele Farina, MLC, for presenting this petition to the Legislative Council.

The petition refers to the provision in the Amendment Bill to remove, for the time being and for metropolitan local government only, the requirement for the Local Government Advisory Board to call for public submissions for at least six weeks on any proposal presented to it. It's good to see that, rather than wait for the outcome of the Bill, the Local Government Advisory Board has stated that it will abide by the current process for all of the proposals currently before it.

It's a pity that the submission period is likely to be over the Christmas/New Year silly season (a well-tried tactic of governments when consulting on controversial issues), but the onus is now on all of us who oppose specific proposals and/or the process by which they have been arrived at to put down in writing that we do so object and why.

The Board is required to consider all submissions and to have regard to:
- community of interest
- physical and topographical features
- demographic trends
- economic factors
- the history of the area
- transport and communications
- matters affecting the viability of local governments
- the effective delivery of local government services.

So the opportunity is there to make the Board fully (even painfully) aware of the strength of feeling about these largely ill-considered, and sometimes contradictory proposals. The eight points above provide a template for expressing your views.

I can see people having a field day in respect of community of interest (or, rather, lack thereof) for many of the proposed changes.

Dirty Tricks?

Click to enlarge

And I'm not referring to the West Australian's 'downgrading' of City of Vincent Mayor, John Carey, by the lack of an initial upper case letter. Perhaps the sub-editor thought that capital letters are reserved for capital city office-bearers.

And Yolanda Zaw still hasn't caught up with the fact that the revised State Government proposals, as submitted to the Local Government Advisory Board, do not place the whole of the City of Vincent into an enlarged City of Perth - as noted previously in this blog (http://ianrker-vincent.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/premiers-porky-wheres-logic-or-fairness.html), the riverside area of Banks Precinct is excluded.

I recall that not so long ago, Premier Colin Barnett was encouraging the City of Perth and the City of Vincent to work together on amalgamation. Now we have the City of Perth going it alone with surveys of Vincent residents - presumably so that it can massage the results in a way that suits it.

At the very least, I hope that the City of Perth publishes a full report on its survey - including how the survey was set up, the preamble to respondents, questions asked, response rates and any other issues that might have influenced the results. As I know from professional experience with many surveys (not to mention the 'Leading Questions' lesson from 'Yes, Prime Minister'), surveys can be slanted (consciously or subconsciously) to give whatever answer is sought.



Here's a thought, too. Is City of Perth in breach of Section 3.20 of the Local Government Act, which relates to the performing of functions outside its area without the consent of the local government responsible for the area. This section is primarily to do with physical works, but the principle would seem to apply equally to non-physical works such as surveys.

Making Things Happen

Congratulations to the City of Vincent for taking the bold step of engaging placemakers for its four urban village centres. This is a first for Perth and will be much-needed to counterbalance the CBD-focus of the City of Perth if Vincent should be swallowed up in the Col Pot masterplan for local government.

When I helped organise the Mainstreet Conference in 2009 (held in Fremantle and supported by the City of Vincent), I was struck by the importance of place and how easily it can be overlooked in the normal processes of government.

At the state level, there is a lot of talk of activity centres and urban villages - but nothing to make them happen or to enhance and maintain their vitality and viability.

This step is a classic example of what small local governments can do that would be very difficult for larger ones. Vincent can do this for all four of its centres but a larger local government would have to deal with competing demands from across its area.

Intelligence and Functioning

F Scott Fitzgerald wrote, in The Crack Up, a collection of essays, notes and letters, that the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

Alas, we currently have a collection of federal and state politicians who can hold opposed ideas but without retaining the ability to function.

One look at the WA shenanigans over the attempts to remove democratic provisions in the forced local government saga, shows that both Barnett and Simpson hold opposed ideas on democracy and local government.

At the federal level, Tony Abbott and Chris Pyne clearly hold opposed ideas on truth and government, in bare-faced denial even when faced with documented evidence of what they have said.

The pity of it is that none of these gentlemen (and I use the term with more than a hint of sarcasm) retains the ability to function - and that costs all of us dearly.

Lies and Fans

Found in the on-line comments on a Guardian article on Abbott/Pyne and Gonski. Might I suggest that Colin Barnett's clock would make a good back-up ceiling fan.

A man died and went to Heaven. As he stood in front of the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him. He asked, "What are all those clocks?"

St Peter answered, "Those are Lie-Clocks. Everyone who has ever been on earth has a Lie-Clock. Every time you lie, the hands on your clock move."

"Oh," said the man. "Whose clock is that?"

"That’s Mother Teresa’s," replied St. Peter. "The hands have never moved, indicating that she never told a lie."

"Incredible," said the man. "And whose clock is that one?"

St Peter responded, "That’s Abraham Lincoln’s clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abraham told only two lies in his entire life."

"Where’s Tony Abbott’s clock?" asked the man.

St Peter replied, "We are using it it as a ceiling fan."

Let The Chaos Continue

Subiaco Post, 30th November 2013.

The Subiaco situation highlights and exemplifies the chaos surrounding the local government amalgamation 'process' - if it can be called such.

There are now so many proposals that have been submitted to the Local Government Advisory Board (19 from local councils and 15 from the WA Government) and many Councils are affected by more than one of these (conflicting) proposals.

Add to this the fact that, like Subiaco and Vincent, many communities would prefer their Council to remain as it is but their Councils have been forced into making 'second-best' proposals because they were told that no change was not in play and the original proposals were totally unacceptable.

And then there are the Councils that chose not to participate, on the basis that their communities did not want any form of change - at least, nothing resembling what was initially proposed by Col Pot and Homer Simpson.

Many Councils and communities have been disenfranchised not only by the ludicrous nature of the initial proposals but by the fact that the rules appear to have been changed (made up) as the Government went along.

What So Many Are Saying…

Subiaco Post, 30th November, 2013

Whether it's Cambridge, Vincent or Subiaco, smaller Councils get the vote from ratepayers on accessibility.

Larger councils like Stirling or Perth (the latter not large in population but large on level of budget and activity) are more often seen as remote and difficult to approach.

Take Council Meetings, for example. At Vincent you can just turn up to the Council meeting and be heard - and not only on matters that are on the agenda that night. At City of Perth, only questions, not comments, can be made, they must relate to an item on the agenda and it is 'preferred' that they be submitted in advance on a standard form. Questions received prior to the meeting are read aloud by the Chief Executive Officer - just to make sure you don't slip in a comment or two or get 'off-topic'.

Now, it's understandable that larger Councils, having more business to deal with, need to be more formalised and restrictive in terms of how residents and ratepayers can approach them, but this does make them less responsive to emerging concerns and individual interests.

Whatever the efficiency arguments - and I have to disagree with Martin Chambers about dictatorships being the benchmark for efficiency (although I suspect he said it tongue-in-cheek) - larger local governments are less good for community democracy. 

On the subject of dictatorships, most of them are in practice highly inefficient - but it goes 'unnoticed' because no one dares speak up. This seems to be the way that Col Pot is taking his forced local government amalgamation agenda, by attempting to remove the requirement for the Local Government Advisory Board to ask for submissions on amalgamation proposals.

A Win For Democracy and Common Sense

The light is dawning on non-metropolitan members of the WA Parliament that the fixes being introduced by Col Pot and sidekick Homer Simpson are symptomatic of a megalomania that would ultimately engulf country local governments as well.

So - congratulations to the Nationals for refusing to support the Government's proposed stacking and control of the Local Government Advisory Board. Now they need to see that the same dangers to country local governments arise from the whole process of forced metropolitan local government amalgamations.

The onus is in the Government to demonstrate that changes to local government are in the community interest - if they were able to do that, then the changes would get support or, at the very least, too little opposition to meet the veto requirements currently in the Local Government Act. The fact that the Government has not been able to demonstrate the value of its proposed changes (not to mention the fact that its proposed changes keep changing) suggests either the benefits are not there (as experience elsewhere would suggest) or that the Government does not believe the benefits are there and is pursuing its agenda for purely ideological reasons known only to the Premier.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-29/council-amalgamations/5126124?&section=news

More Ministerial Confusion

ABC News website, 28th November 2013

The residents of Cockburn are rightly up in arms about the huge changes made to the Government's initial proposals for local government, which would have seen Kwinana and Cockburn combined. Despite saying, when the original proposals were released, that only minor changes would be considered, the Government has now released proposals showing Cockburn dismembered, with three parts going separate ways.

This is by no means the only time that the Government has said one thing and done another (starting with Col Pot's original election promise not to force amalgamations on local governments) - and even now the Local Government Minister, Tony Simpson (who does more every day, it seems, to justify the nickname Homer), can't agree with himself. On the one hand he says that a final decision on the mergers has not been made. At the same time he says: "the Government has put in a submission to the advisory board, we haven't put in a final map, only a decision".

Does anyone in this Government listen to him/herself, let alone listen to other Ministers or the Premier? Of course, when so much that is said by them is nonsense, there might well be something to be said for not listening - if it wasn't all so serious.

One thing we do know is that none of them is listening to the communities that elected them.

What Colin Barnett Did………

Fremantle Herald, 23rd November 2013

I don't want to buy into the Fremantle/East Fremantle issues, but Michael Willicombe raises a key point when he says that what Col Pot did was to create a starting point so ridiculous that any improvement would seem like a win (to those gullible…).

As I have mentioned many times here, including in the most recent post, it might seem like a win to have gone from a proposal to split Vincent to one where all (except the riverside residents of Banks Precinct) disappear into the City of Perth, but the outcome is not guaranteed to allow the continuation of those things we value about Vincent.

Why, one might well ask, is the City of Perth proposing to make a traffic sewer of Newcastle Street that would sever the current Vincent from Northbridge and the city?

No prizes for stating the obvious answer.

City of Perth Showing Its True Colours

The City of Perth (http://www.perth.wa.gov.au/sites/default/files/events/Council_agenda_131119.pdf, pp122-129) is considering providing yet more east-west traffic capacity on Newcastle Street, which already has problems at intersections with north-south arterials. The proposal would require changes (= reduction) to footpath widths, loss of trees and restriction of right turns to turn back the clock ten years. As the City of Perth's report says, this would be returning the cross-section of the street to what existed ten years ago and operating the kerbside lanes as clearways.

More information on this at http://sustainabletransportcoalitionofwa.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/turning-back-years-but-why.html.

At present, the City of Perth cannot make this retrograde step off its own bat, as Newcastle Street is the boundary with the City of Vincent. I don't believe that Vincent Council would ever agree to this.

But come the Barnett revolution, if it succeeds, the City of Perth will control at least this part of Vincent and will be able to appease its big business masters by relocating traffic from the business strip of St George's Terrace onto the small businesses and residents of Newcastle Street.

Is this what any of us wants for any part of Vincent? I sincerely doubt that it is - but if all or part of Vincent disappears into Perth, this is what we'll get.

Why So Coy?

No prizes for guessing why the Government doesn't want to draw attention to the detail of the interest in and media coverage of the proposed changes to local government in Perth.

And to say that "some of the claims made in response to the proposals captured by the attention of Local Government Minister Tony Simpson" tells us what, exactly? One would hope that he is paying attention, but it would be more helpful to know what his responses to them are. In the two weeks since the proposals were released, Homer has issued no media releases on the subject and his occasional utterances have confused rather than clarified. As already reported here, just days after the Government of which he is a part released 'final' proposals for the dramatic reshaping of metropolitan local government, he stated that he thought there was 'a good case for a substantial variation from the proposal for the City of Stirling to lose Inglewood and Dianella'.

LNP Governments Can't Take Criticism

Queensland Premier Campbell Newman has much in common with his federal and WA counterparts, Tony Abbott and Colin Barnett. This is becoming a defining feature of conservative governments in Australia.

Campbell Newman uses his parliamentary majority to replace a parliamentary committee that expressed some critical views with one that is stacked with his supporters.

Colin Barnett wants to change the rules midway through his grand plans for metropolitan local government so that people will not have the opportunity to express their views.

At least Campbell Newman was honest enough to been seen to be responding to criticism (even if in an anti-democratic way). Colin Barnett, however, is so gutless that he attempts to stifle that criticism before it can be voiced. He's stacked the Local Government Advisory Board (just like Campbell Newman with his committee) and is in the process of making sure the LGAB won't call for public submissions on the government's local government proposals.

And as for Tony Abbott, his is the typical brain-damaged boxer's style that might work in Opposition but is disastrous in government. In opposition, this manifests as 'playing the (wo)man'; in government, it seems to be 'say nothing unless you can play the (wo)man to deflect the blows'.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/22/campbell-newman-government-sacks-parliamentary-committee

Unwanted, Unasked For, Unwelcome and No Democratic Vote

Not to mention lots of money for management consultants.

And if the State Government (aka the WA taxpayer) pays the costs, 25% will come from rural and regional WA people who can in no way expect any of the so-far nebulous and undocumented 'benefits'.

Subiaco Post 16th November 2013

The Headline Says It All

"Lack of clarity of vision."

"There is a reason even the biggest companies don't pick off more than one acquisition at a time."

Click to enlarge

Does Michael Sutherland Understand the Local Government Amendment Bill?

Guardian Express, 19th November 2013.

The Guardian Express item, here, quotes Mt Lawley MLA, Michael Sutherland, as saying: "residents could still influence the final boundaries by submitting individual responses to the LGAB".

Does he not understand that the Local Government Amendment Bill currently before the Legislative Assembly would remove the requirement for the Local Government Advisory Board to seek submissions for at least six weeks?

Is he so naive as to think that the LGAB will process any of the proposals until it knows whether the Bill will become law?

If he really believes that the community should have the right to comment on boundary proposals, he should be asking his fellow MPs to vote against at least that part of the Bill. I know that as Speaker of the Legislative Assembly he would be in a difficult position were he to comment publicly on the Bill, but I hope he is privately lobbying for the removal of this anti-democratic provision.

More Policy On The Run

Just days after the Government of which he is a part released 'final' proposals for the dramatic reshaping of metropolitan local government, Tony Simpson, Minister for Local Government, has stated he thinks there is a good case for a substantial variation from the proposal for the City of Stirling to lose Inglewood and Dianella.

What on earth is going on here? This is by no means the first time that Barnett or Simpson have been at odds with each other or with Cabinet on issues of local government boundaries. 

There used to be a convention of Cabinet solidarity, by which Ministers did not criticise decisions of Cabinet. What is Simpson doing if not criticising a Cabinet decision? 

Perhaps it's simply that Homer isn't up to the job and didn't actually understand what Cabinet was discussing and the decision it made.

Guardian Express, 19th November 2013

Does The Premier Understand Conflict of Interest?

I have previously asked the rhetorical questions "Does the Premier Understand Fairness?" and "Does the Premier Understand Due Process?" in this blog.

I am now forced to ask whether he understands the concept of conflict of interest. Hot on the heels of his asking us to trust him about negotiating a sale of the Kwinana grain terminal to Len Buckridge at the same time as the people of WA are being sued by Buckridge for $1billion, he is set to reward Chevron for buying into his Elizabeth Quay development by giving concessions for its own developments in the North West.

Now it might be that both deals are above board and in the interests of the people of WA (and pigs might fly), but he can hardly blame us for thinking that his giving away A-class reserve land with no environmental offsets must be a pay-off for something else.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/19829212/barnett-defends-quay-land-sale

Rewriting (Unwriting?) History

How long, I wonder, before the Liberal (now there's a misnomer if ever there was one) governments of Tony Abbott and Colin Barnett do something similar here. They already have a track record of concealing information (on the boats, for example), policy without information (forced local government amalgamations in WA) and changing the rules to reduce dissent (House of Representatives standing order changes and the current Local Government Amendment Bill in WA).

Yet another area where the right-wing parties are living in the past - and don't know how the internet works. All the deleted material is almost certainly available elsewhere on the internet (as a number of comments to this article state - including giving details of how they can be accessed). All they succeed in doing is making themselves look stupid - so what's new?