Mayor of Hume City on why local councils matter in the face of state government failures
Despite being in a state of complete neglect, Victoria’s most disadvantaged public housing estate, known now as “Broady Bronx” has for years lacked funding.
Opinion
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Premier Daniel Andrews is right to acknowledge that Labor’s domination of Melbourne’s north-western suburbs is on the nose.
You need only look at the hammering delivered at last year’s State Election throughout Labor heartland to see how resident fury has turned once solidly safe seats into a sea of marginals. Take the new seat of Greenvale which delivered a 15 per cent two-party-preferred swing to the Liberals, the largest in Victoria. Or Preston where Labor’s 21 per cent margin was cut to just over 4 per cent.
These results come as no surprise.
Picture Somerton Road, a key arterial road in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.
One side of the road, managed by Hume City Council, is tidy, free of debris and mowed every four weeks.
The other side, owned and managed by the State Department of Transport, exists much to my daily frustration, in a near permanent state of disorder, littered with dumped hard waste, overgrown grass and dismally maintained curbs and edges.
At the adjacent Pascoe Vale Road, another state-managed arterial road, the situation is similar with councillors infuriated to recently learn through the media that despite countless requests for action, it had been mowed just once in the past six months.
To add insult to injury, when it was attended to, contractors both left in place and then mowed over the litter accumulated over many years of shoddy workmanship.
Turn your attention now to Victoria’s most disadvantaged public housing estate, Banksia Gardens, known locally as ‘Broady Bronx’.
Despite being in a state of complete neglect, Council’s campaign for redevelopment has yet to attract a cent of funding under the Big Housing Build.
Worse still is the despair of locals who shared with me recently their struggle to have the relevant state authorities address basic issues like the accumulated mould, dumped rubbish or overgrown open spaces.
Moving further up the road is the Broadmeadows railway station which in recent times attracted the attention of the international travel guide Lonely Planet warning travellers to steer clear. The $80 million allocated to its redevelopment was ripped out of the budget by the incoming Coalition government in 2010, to never be seen again. Council and the community have been assured a redevelopment is on the way; albeit, at some point in the 2050s with the delivery of the Suburban Rail Loop’s northern phase. A commuter experience my grandchildren can surely look forward to one day.
Throughout the struggle to have minor maintenance works attended to by higher authorities and larger transformative projects supported, Councils soldier on. We build infrastructure, maintain and enhance thousands of parks and open spaces, deliver responsive and accessible services like maternal and child health and make decisions in line with strict provisions on community consultation, openness and transparency. I shudder to imagine how these services and hundreds of others delivered by Councils each day would be managed by state and federal governments at a stark distance from local communities.
If recent results from a Herald Sun/RedBridge poll revealing frustration with local government, particularly from Millennials, is anything to go by, the local government sector also has its challenges.
More than sixty per cent of young voters are keen to see the number of councils reduced, while 45 per cent of respondents believe local councils should be scrapped entirely.
It is true that a small number of Councils have delved beyond their responsibilities and influence, casting a pall over local government. They have shifted the focus away from the work councils do to improve residents’ lives to mostly rolling coverage of which culture war a council has engaged in.
At Hume City Council, in Melbourne’s booming north-western suburbs, we simply don’t have the time to shift our focus from bread-and-butter issues.
With a population set to grow 60 per cent to 395,000 residents in less than 20 years, we are busy building new roads, reserves, playgrounds, libraries, leisure and childcare centres, community hubs and other community facilities, spending $500 million on new infrastructure alone in the next four years.
There’s an oversimplification from critics that local government solely focuses on ‘roads, rates and rubbish’, which detracts from the reality that Councils deliver a wealth of critical and valued services to our community.
It is rightly said that local government is the closest level of government to the people. Councillors are democratically elected, live locally and are personally invested in the success of their communities. Like all other Victorian mayors, my residents can find my personal mobile phone number and email on the Council website to raise issues directly. At what other level of government is this even possible?
Well-run Councils that place the resident at the centre of everything they do end up delivering the best services, infrastructure and societal outcomes.
In Australia and around the world, decentralisation and local decision making has seen democracy thrive and communities become their best, not top-down bureaucracies where decision making is slow and disconnected from community.
Residents who believe that state or federal government can better manage their local roads, maintain their neighbourhood parks and playgrounds, register their animals or run their local libraries and leisure centres should be careful what they wish for.
Joseph Haweil is Mayor of Hume City.
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