A regional West Australian council is being ordered to prove why they shouldn't be suspended, in the second dramatic country council revelation in the past 24 hours.
I’m ideologically predisposed to favour local government over state government so I’m immediately suspicious with any attempt to overrule a local council.
I really need to sit down and go through this Coolgardie situation. My understanding of the bare bones is that the mining industry was screaming out for for more accommodation for miners. Coolgardie council responded by releasing some land for mining companies to build on and built their own “village”. The building project was mismanaged and over budget and hasn’t returned the revenue expected. Council tried to cover the shortfall by heavily increasing rates on miners which was overruled by the state govt. They have now been accused of doing nothing to get themselves out of this mess.
At a glance it looks to me like an underresourced council doing its best and overeaching and when it fell apart made a hard decision to tax higher to regain financial stability. It looks a lot like Perth wants to amalgamate Coolgardie into Kalgoorlie-Boulder and this is pretext.
But as I say, I need to be guarded with my judgement because of my ideological predisposition.
Oh wow yeah! I hadn’t read about the backstory for Coolgardie.
Theres definitely cross-over between our predispositions. Mine is to always increase democratic representation where able, and never decrease. My problem with the Barnett government’s plan was there was a clear decrease in democratic representation proposed, for vague promuses of efficiencies. If its more efficient to have less councils, then ipso-facto its even more efficient to have one council. By this argument the most efficient forms of governance is surely oligarchy/dictatorship.
Except this isn’t whats borne out with those systems, and theres plenty of evidence of those systems around the world.
Those forms of government are only, arguably, efficient for delivering on the needs of an inner-circle/primary population. So the whole efficiency argument rests on a premise that goes against the fundamental theoretical structures (Liberal Democracy) that Australia is built on.
So without a requisite increase in democratoc representation in some other effective way, the case for council mergers is highly problematic for me.
I’m ideologically predisposed to favour local government over state government so I’m immediately suspicious with any attempt to overrule a local council.
I really need to sit down and go through this Coolgardie situation. My understanding of the bare bones is that the mining industry was screaming out for for more accommodation for miners. Coolgardie council responded by releasing some land for mining companies to build on and built their own “village”. The building project was mismanaged and over budget and hasn’t returned the revenue expected. Council tried to cover the shortfall by heavily increasing rates on miners which was overruled by the state govt. They have now been accused of doing nothing to get themselves out of this mess.
At a glance it looks to me like an underresourced council doing its best and overeaching and when it fell apart made a hard decision to tax higher to regain financial stability. It looks a lot like Perth wants to amalgamate Coolgardie into Kalgoorlie-Boulder and this is pretext.
But as I say, I need to be guarded with my judgement because of my ideological predisposition.
Oh wow yeah! I hadn’t read about the backstory for Coolgardie.
Theres definitely cross-over between our predispositions. Mine is to always increase democratic representation where able, and never decrease. My problem with the Barnett government’s plan was there was a clear decrease in democratic representation proposed, for vague promuses of efficiencies. If its more efficient to have less councils, then ipso-facto its even more efficient to have one council. By this argument the most efficient forms of governance is surely oligarchy/dictatorship.
Except this isn’t whats borne out with those systems, and theres plenty of evidence of those systems around the world.
Those forms of government are only, arguably, efficient for delivering on the needs of an inner-circle/primary population. So the whole efficiency argument rests on a premise that goes against the fundamental theoretical structures (Liberal Democracy) that Australia is built on.
So without a requisite increase in democratoc representation in some other effective way, the case for council mergers is highly problematic for me.