Former premier predicts rural and regional councils may merge
FORCED local government mergers are off the table for a generation but former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett predicts financial pressures may force struggling councils together.
FORCED local government mergers are off the table for a generation but former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett predicts financial pressures may force struggling councils together.
It’s been more than a year since Premier Gladys Berejiklian put a halt to former Premier Mike Baird’s plan to cut the number of local councils in NSW following widespread community uproar and legal action, as well as the loss of the safe seat of Orange.
Mr Kennett, the architect of his own plan which slashed the number of Victorian councils in the 1990s, is still a fan of amalgamation but says “there is no way either political party in NSW is going to attempt it” given the history of the issue.
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“Certainly not in the foreseeable future,” he says. “The sadness was, the whole thing was done in a way that was doomed to fail.”
He said “vested interests” would always oppose such a plan, so it couldn’t be dragged out.
“You’ve got to do the whole state in one hit. You can only really do it after an election and if you have, as we did, control of both houses.”
Mr Kennett cut Victoria’s 211 local government authorities to 78 in 1994. In Brisbane, following mergers that took place as early as 1925, the City of Brisbane became one large entity, covering almost half of the population of the city.
Mr Kennett said in the “not too distant future” rural and regional councils may need to consider mergers to be able to pay for their infrastructure needs.
“All of us as ratepayers want to be part of an efficient, effective professional municipalities. You are more likely to get that if the municipality is large enough, with enough ratepayers to look at economies of scale.”
The state government says it’s too early to tell how the mergers that did go ahead have fared so far, but the financial results will be made public in coming months.
The issue is still so contentious some mayors involved in the mergers don’t want to discuss the issue.
Bayside Council Mayor Bill Saravinovski, whose council is made up of a merger between Rockdale and Botany said: “Merging two culturally different councils is a challenging process but my focus is that our councillors serve the people of Bayside.”
Inner West Council Mayor Darcy Byrne said the government left the newly merged council with quite a mess to clean up but it was now “getting there’’.
“They gave us lemons, now we have to make lemonade,” he said.
“The government’s purported efficiency savings were nonsense and services had been badly disrupted. Turning that around takes time but we are starting to get real results.”
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