Right to fear the death of councils

THE NSW government is hell-bent on pushing for council amalgamations but bigger is not necessarily better and, beyond the borders of Clover Moore’s absurd fiefdom, many residents want to keep things in local hands, not become part of a giant super council.

Sure, a handful of councils in which certain minority groups play ethnic or religious politics, such as Auburn, with its embarrassment for a deputy mayor, Salim Mejaher, need to be placed in administration, but they are the exceptions, not the norm. In other areas, small councils co-operate fairly well with sharing of plant and personnel and ratepayers enjoy a greater sense of local representation. If Macquarie Street hadn’t noticed it, there is a genuine and deep-rooted fear of loss of localism around the world. To many people everything seems out of control — except in their own small area where they can still front the local council or talk to a local councillor at a local meeting and get a hearing. They sense they aren’t being heard in Canberra and they don’t get a look in at their state parliament but they can still find someone to complain to about the garbage or the dog poo on their street. They fear, justifiably, a loss of identity and a greatly diminished voice on the issues that they feel they should still control — their neighbourhood concerns — and they don’t want them subordinated to a super-sized administration run by people who don’t even know the name of the local school or which way the one-way streets run. Don’t get me wrong, Sydney is a global city and should be taken out of the hands of Clover and her Green support base. Just don’t mess with the locals — who would really like their communities to remain accountable locally.