Survey delivers damning verdict on Victoria’s local councils

Dan Andrews has refused to say if he agrees with the results of a poll showing most Victorians think local councils should be scrapped.

A third of Victorians polled believe their council has the wrong priorities.

Daniel Andrews has refused to weigh in on growing calls for local councils to be abolished.

The Herald Sun on Tuesday revealed that a damning new poll had shown the majority of Victorians want councils scrapped.

Most Victorians want local councils abolished or are unsure if they should exist, with millennials among the biggest supporters of a shake-up.

Exclusive polling by leading firm RedBridge, commissioned by the Herald Sun, also shows that 57 per cent are in support of council mergers and believe there should be bigger local government bodies to cut costs and share resources.

Meanwhile, a third of residents think their councils have the wrong priorities.

But on Tuesday, the Premier said “I don’t comment on polling”.

“I’m not here to make announcements about local government,” Mr Andrews said.

“I think local government staff work hard.”

Asked if he had confidence that Victorian councils were keeping within their responsibilities and providing for ratepayers, Mr Andrews said: “It isn’t a matter for me to be a commentator on local government”.

“There are local government elections every four years,” he added.

“Ratepayers and residents can pass their on judgment on their ward councillor or the council as they see fit. That’s the beauty of our democratic system.

“I’m not here today to announce that there will be any more (councils) or any less.”

Ratepayers Victoria vice-president Dean Hurlston said the damning results were no surprise.

“(They) demonstrate that all Victorians are growing ­increasingly tired of councils,” he said.

“What councils need to win community confidence is to do the basics better and more ­efficiently.

“We would agree that amalgamations would be a great thing for Victoria, providing those amalgamations resulted in more efficient councils.”

The survey of 1189 Victorians late last year found about 45 per cent of respondents answered yes when asked if they thought councils should be scrapped, while 18.5 per cent were unsure.

In a separate question, about 46 per cent of respondents said they supported or strongly supported the state government taking control of the services currently provided by local councils.

Only 24 per cent of people were against that happening.

The polling will also reignite debate about amalgamation of local governments across Melbourne’s smaller council boundaries.

Critics of the current system say that Victoria has too many councils and smaller boundaries lead to a patchwork of ­inconsistent policies across suburban communities.

But the issue is also considered to be a political headache, with the Kennett government’s decision to cut 210 councils into the 79 existing today sparking a lengthy public battle.

RedBridge found 57 per cent of Victorians supported the idea of reducing the ­number of local government areas and giving them larger boundaries.

A mere one in five people were against the change.

RedBridge’s data also showed support for changing councils was most popular among Millennials – people aged 18 to 39.

More than 60 per cent of them want to see the number of councils reduced by mergers. They were also the biggest cohort wanting to abolish local government completely.

RedBridge director Kos ­Samaras said councils had to battle a perception among younger voters that they were contributing to the housing ­affordability crisis.

“Pushing back on medium density development and so on,” he said. “That’s the feedback we get, but you could see that buried in the data as well.

“Suburban local government authorities have a marketing issue.

Almost half of respondents would be in support of the state government taking control of services provided by councils.

“There’s a lack of knowledge within the electorate in terms of what they actually do. They (young voters) don’t know, for example, that local governments do fix roads.”

Municipal Association of Victoria president David Clark said the peak body for the state’s councils was not supportive of mergers.

“There’s a whole range of back-of-house improvements to be made, not so much in Melbourne but in the smaller rural areas,” he said.

“If there was an investment made, that’s where savings could be found. Amalgamation doesn’t change the services of councils, it just changes some of the admin at the top.”

When asked about abolishing councils, Mr Clark said local government was much better placed to deal with local issues.

“The state government ­delivers services at scale across the state, it is efficient for police and hospitals,” Mr Clark said.

“Local governments deliver in place.

“People miss that the solutions in local governments are different because the locations are different.

“A lot of the services that we do deliver, because we deliver for that purpose, they’re not as easy as you think.”