Wollongong council election uncertainty
BY BEVAN SHIELDS
Illawarra Mercury
30 Mar, 2011

The new State Government could be about to break a key election commitment after it was unable to guarantee local government elections would be held in Wollongong and Shellharbour as promised.

In July last year, Barry O’Farrell stood outside Wollongong City Council’s headquarters and pledged to hold elections a year ahead of schedule in September 2011.

On Monday, Shellharbour City Council administrator David Jesson told the Mercury there were doubts that timeframe would be met.

Chris Hartcher, the likely new local government minister, is now unable to guarantee elections would be held on September 3 as promised.

Mr Hartcher described it as a “target date”.

“But it will be happening then unless there’s a good reason to the contrary,” he said.

full story:
http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/news/local/news/general/wollongong-council-election-uncertainty/2118046.aspx

ABC Counterpoint 21/3/2011

What do we do with Melbourne and Sydney?

It’s a perennial question because centralisation is responsible for the increasingly dysfunctional nature of these two cities, which even by American standards are enormous.

…

Michael Duffy: Do you think, as an expert in government, that there is a potential for significant gains from reform in New South Wales?

Percy Allan: Absolutely. Reform is needed on a range of functions. I think we’re one of the most centralised states in the world, I think too much is now run out of Macquarie Street, and this is true of departments, we have probably the most centralised education system in the world outside the former Soviet Union and parts of France. We’re highly centralised.

I think we actually have to decentralise on a number of fronts. We have to decentralise our population, we need to decentralise our administration so that there’s more empowerment of people at the coalface, with the centre still playing a very important role in setting the overall priorities and setting targets and monitoring the outcome and funding it, but getting out of micromanagement. And we need to decentralise government. I’d love to see the government in New South Wales moved to Newcastle, let the parliament be there. That would be a way of starting the move to decentralising Sydney.

…

Full interview:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/stories/2011/3166873.htm#transcript

See also comment:

There’s been some work done on this at the Abolish the States Collective site http://www.asc.org.au/ including some funding calculations.

The Greens believe that Local Government, as the level of government closest to the people, must be reinvigorated here in NSW. Having decisions made at the grassroots level provides the greatest opportunity for community input. Done well local government provides the most efficient and democratic form of government possible.

Local representatives are familiar with the very streets, shopping centres, houses, roads and footpaths over which they are making important decisions. It makes sense for State government to work in partnership with the local government sector to ensure that local councils have sufficient power and resources to do their job well.
The Greens plan for local government will:

1. Return planning powers to local government

For too long the State government has centralised planning powers in NSW. Increasingly the decisions over the developments that will have the greatest impact on local communities are being made by the Minister for Planning under Part 3A or state-appointed approval bodies called Joint Regional Planning Panels (JRPPs).

The Greens will repeal Part 3A and abolish JRPPs and return the bulk of those decision making powers to local government. The Greens will also put in place an Independent State Planning Commission to determine the genuinely state significant projects that can’t be decided at a local level.

2. Ensure openness in local government.

There has been an increasing practice in local government for many key decisions to be made by elected representatives in “working parties” or “briefing sessions” which are not open to the public and therefore not open to scrutiny.

The Greens will move amendments to the Local Government Act to ensure that minutes are kept of all such informal gatherings of councillors and require them to be publicly available on local councils’ websites. We will also clarify the law to ensure that any decisions made in these informal gatherings are reported to an open council meeting where their merits can be debated and the local community can be involved.

3. Provide financial autonomy to local government

Over the last two decades successive state governments have forced greater responsibility on councils for the regulation of matters including public health, strategic planning, emergency services and the delivery of water and drainage infrastructure. This has come at the same time as there have been serious financial restraints on local government in the form of rate capping.

To deal with these increasing pressures local government must have genuine financial autonomy. This can only come from removing the existing rate capping restrictions on local councils. In order to ensure financial rigour this must come with a clear requirement that local councils have in place long term financial plans. No rate rise can exceed an amount set in Council’s a long term financial plan without ministerial approval. Further should a local council seek to raise rates by more than CPI then this will require additional and thorough community consultation before being implemented.

4. Prevent forced amalgamations

Local government must remain local. This means no forced amalgamations. While the Greens support local governments seeking to achieve economies of scale through regional co-operation in matters such as tendering and waste services, this must not come at the expense of genuine grassroots democracy.

5. Restore Local Democracy

For too long local democracy has been the plaything of State governments. While from time to time it may well be necessary for local councils to be dismissed due to corruption or mismanagement, it must come with a clear statutory requirement for local elections to be held for a new council within 12 months. Under the existing law there is no time limit on the appointment of administrators and administrators have been appointed to councils including Warringah and Wollongong for periods in excess of three years. This is fundamentally undemocratic.

The Greens will also move to abolish elections being held in two member wards which on the current law provide an effective gerrymander for any party or group that receives 50% + 1 of the vote. Two member wards have effectively killed local democracy in places such as Botany Council where the current Labor administration was returned unopposed. It was also the method used to elect the discredited local administrations in councils such as Wollongong and Shellharbour both of which have been dismissed. Local democracy requires a minimum of three member wards to ensure diversity and rigour in the electoral system.

6. Reform the Code of Conduct

Recent practice has proven that the local government Code of Conduct under which complaints are made against individual councillors has become overly politicised. Too often vexatious complaints are pressed on individual councillors with the support of a majority of councillors for essentially political reasons. This must be reformed.

The Greens support an urgent parliamentary review of the Code of Conduct with terms of reference requiring it to consider providing for an independent initial assessment of any complaint by a person other than the General manager. This will allow vexatious, or politically-motivated complaints, to be dealt with in a summary fashion, saving local government time, money and resources in the process.

The Greens will work with all parties in the next Parliament to achieve these reforms. Local government deserves nothing less than the full support of the NSW Parliament.

To achieve its potential the local government sector requires greater democracy, real financial autonomy and more local accountability. This package of detailed reforms will achieve this for local government.

10 March 2011

Bruce,

Thank you for your email and the opportunity to talk about empowering citizens.

Please find below an extract from a speech I made in the NSW Parliament that reflects my values in relation to community engagement. I am a firm believer harnessing the collective knowledge and skills of our community.

The reference for the full speech is NSW Parliament/Hansard/26October/3.43pm

“I … urge the House to examine the model that I have chosen to deliver the program, which has been directly driven by locals who do the real hard yards in my neighbourhood’s most important social institutions. The year 2007 was Time magazine’s Year of You. YouTube, MySpace and Facebook hit the mainstream and government needed to address the question of how the wisdom of crowds can make for better public policy and service delivery.

Coincidentally, with the rise of the Internet, participatory democracy or deliberative democracy and deliberative budgeting were gaining notice internationally. Participatory democracy basically means handing over some resources and policy choices to direct community decision-making. When I was the chair of the Public Accounts Committee we undertook an inquiry into the engagement process used in the State Plan. I headed to Porto Alegre, Brazil, which was at that time at the centre of deliberative government. It seemed obvious to me at the time that Web 2.0 collaboration tools also could deliver deliberative action effectively.

The Brazilians believe participatory budgeting or deliberation is inextricably linked to socialism but that, in most respects, it is a methodology not an ideology. Getting citizens properly involved in how their government is run works in Brazil because the government gives people some cash to play with—old-school many-to-many collaboration. It is not exclusive to any ideology and it is fascinating to watch now as the United Kingdom Coalition Government endorses it as part of its Big Society program.

Last year I decided to combine what I had learned in Brazil with what I had been discussing with some of my friends in the United Kingdom and put this theory into action. I set up a crowd-funding platform – www.paulmcleay.com.au – to allocate the first round of Community Building Partnership money. I received more than 50 applications. Their projects went online with a picture of their program and 100 words describing it. I then said to the people living in my electorate, “Do not let me decide who gets the money; you decide”. Every person who lives in my electorate got five votes which they could allocate to the projects that they supported.

Therefore, the onus was not on me to make the decision; the onus was on my electorate to decide. The scheme also engaged the applicants who had asked for money. I said to them, “Do not convince me, go and convince your friends and neighbours”. Instead of encouraging them to write a letter to their local member of Parliament or ask their patrons to exercise some political pressure, this engendered a real activism in the aspiring applicants. It gave them the choice to go out and justify their programs to their neighbours in order to get the support and the votes they needed.

After I visited the groups and helped them write their proposals and post them online I discovered that there were other challenges—not everyone has access to a computer. To address that problem we issued forms that could be filled out manually. It encouraged community groups to go out and get as many people as they could to support their projects. Within three short voting weeks more than 20,000 votes had been cast. It was a magnificent success. The people living in my electorate got to choose which projects they supported—everything from stage constructions and hall refurbishments to outdoor classrooms, shop fit-outs, station upgrades and toilets in local community groups—and the amount of money allocated was distributed in direct correlation to the votes that the projects received.

The very small group of Engadine Rotary had 31 members who got very active. They received 4,500 votes and $69,000 in funding as a result. I set the threshold at 200 votes. Those who received over 200 votes for a playground construction received $3,800. It was a fantastic result. Everyone loved the scheme and enjoyed it so much that I introduced it again this year. This year it involved a similar process. There were tens of thousands of votes, people got online and people got active. Those who were the most active were rewarded.

While the early exponents of participatory budgeting were Latin American socialists, this movement is heading mainstream, particularly in the United Kingdom. In Britain, where progressive left-wingers such as Charles Leadbeater got it started, the Conservatives are getting on board as well with the Big Society Network now a vocal champion for “Your Local Budget”, which introduced participatory budgeting to local authorities. They are working with the government in the United Kingdom to support up to 10 local authorities to implement participatory budgeting. While the Blair Government kicked off a number of important initiatives, including the office of the Third Sector, the new government is building on these civil society measures, including a Big Society Bank, which will help finance social enterprises, charities and voluntary groups.

Participation is beyond party politics. It is accessible, it is available 24 hours a day and it is online. When we empower local solutions and encourage participation we strengthen the institutions and bonds of civil society. Traditional approaches empower bureaucrats and entrench hierarchy, making government more and more isolated from the governed. Local budgets turn that trend on its head and put power back into the hands of citizens. In the end, governments can only be enablers. We should not treat people like children by making decisions for them and telling them how to live. We need to put power back into the hands of communities and let everyone discover how much we can achieve when we renew our faith not only in our neighbourhoods but also in each other.”

Paul McLeay MP
Member for Heathcote