This is a bit of a dry subject, but I thought it might be worth providing a bit of an update at this point. The final report from the Independent Local Government Review Panel was released in January.
While it is only one small part of the reform package, most media interest still focuses on the subject of amalgamations, and locally the recommendation to merge Palerang and Queanbeyan Councils. It is worth noting, however, that the panel’s recommendation in the final report has softened somewhat and that the local situation is now simply recommended for review in 2017, after the next state (2015) and local government (2016) elections. The implication is that nothing is likely to happen on this front before 2020, the date of the subsequent local government elections.
As I mentioned in my April 2013 post, the merger between Palerang and Queanbeyan was seen as a way of strengthening the financial and strategic capacity of the two councils. Since then, however, both councils have improved their respective financial situations to the point where this is no longer a major consideration. Infrastructure renewal is the greatest burden on local government, particularly in rural LGAs, where maintaining road and bridge infrastructure with the available financial resources is a constant challenge. Realistically, however, merging councils does not generate or even free up a great deal of additional revenue for these sorts of activities, it simply provides the potential capacity to deliver a broader range of services without a significant financial impact.
Strategic capacity, the ability to successfully plan for and deliver a comprehensive range of services, nonetheless remains a challenge for smaller councils. While neither Palerang nor Queanbeyan are considered small councils, Palerang’s geographical size and diverse demographic present their own problems in this regard. To this end, one of the other Panel recommendations is the formation of Joint Organisations of councils (JOs). At one level, these are Council cooperatives, regional groups of councils that share resources that individual councils may not be able to justify in isolation. A JO, rather than a single, monolithic council, offers the advantages of both smaller councils that can provide effective representation for individual communities, and larger ones that have the capacity to effectively deliver a broad range of services.
There is, however, a unique challenge for any JO, if not for individual councils, in our area. The management of a productive, cross-boarder relationship with the ACT clearly has a major impact on the economies of all adjoining NSW councils. Happily, with the recognition on the part of the ACT government of a need to embrace regional development, we have made progress in this regard through our existing South East Regional Organisation of Councils (SEROC) (check out the Capital Region Living website). The ROCs are more informal structures that the proposed JOs, and the goal will be to transition smoothly from the former to the latter, without losing out to bureaucracy in the process.
Your Council is interested in your views on the proposed reform agenda, and the idea of amalgamation in particular. The present feeling amongst councillors is that amalgamation with such a large (three times the population of Palerang), essentially urban population as Queanbeyan would lead to a loss of representation for many demographic elements within Palerang, for no particular gain. If you feel strongly about this though, we’d very much like to hear from you. I hope that now that the new PLEP has been finalised, we will have the capacity to continue our community forums, and that this will provide us with an opportunity to gauge community opinion on a range of issues, including those presented by the Review Panel’s report.
Copies of all of the Review Panel’s reports and supporting documentation are available from the ILGRP website.