Council Merger a Political Game?

The recent debate about the merging of councils is another demonstration of political arrogance. Currently there are about 37 councils around Sydney. Each of them is responsible for dealing with local issues from approving development of properties to keeping the streets safe from fallen branches. The talks of merging councils were along the line of operational efficiency and economy of scale. However, as a person who has appreciated what my local council (Randwick) had done for the area, I seriously doubt the motivation behind this is purely operational.

I don’t want to point finger to anyone but it was already pointed out by academics that merging councils could not achieve economy of scale so that particular argument is already proved to be bogus. However, as a common local resident, I could see all the detrimental problems that could be caused by such merger.

First of all, local councils operate within the local setting. Thus they are more familiar with what is happening locally and what the local concerns are, and more importantly where do those concerns come from. Just think about this, residents of Leichhardt, an inner west suburb would have different concerns as compared to residents of say Coogee, a beach side suburb. The reasons behind these concerns would be completely different even if it looks like they are the same e.g. a development proposal application for expanding a house or building an apartment block. With a mega council that focuses on “efficiency” and economy of scale overseeing these diversely different areas, I doubt any in depth investigation would be carried out to sort out the rationale behind these seemingly similar concerns. What would result is that a “one-size fits all” solution to be applied to similar issues that would in the end resolve nothing and left everyone unhappy.

Another potential issue that I can see with the merger of local councils is that there would be a lack of understanding of the local situation. For example, if the new headquarter of the mega council was located in the city people would be commuting to the city to work. Unless these people needed to travel from the relevant suburb to work, they would not have a sufficient understand of local situations to carry out informed decisions. For instance, a mayor who lives only in the inner city suburb would not be able to understand traffic situations in the roads around the Prince of Wales Hospital in Randwick during the peak hours unless he / she makes an effort to go there. Even so, without a day in day out experience of the local situation, there surely would be gaps in local knowledge about these situations. Under such circumstance could we still rely on the mega council to make correct and informed decisions?

Also no matter how the structure of the new mega council is sculpted one question remains – who is going to make decisions of local issues? How many layers of bureaucracy is required to have an application or complaint being dealt with? Also with so many areas involved, how are jobs being prioritised using standards that are fair and equal to residents of all areas? I wonder whether all these logistic issues were considered before someone throwing out such merger proposal in the name of economy of scale. Personally I think helping residents is not just about saving money but what you can really offer. If you lose sight of this there is no point of being in a government service, which I think we already have enough half-hearted politicians in the State and Federal levels. Also we have already throughout the years witnessed the detrimental effect of decisions made purely out of the aim save money. What we need is better financial management for certain councils not merge them to save money.

If the purpose of the merger is for economy of scales, there bound to be restructuring and lay offs in the mega council to trim “duplicate functions” that currently reside in individual councils. That could leave us with less people doing the same job because a number of roles were considered as “duplicate” locally. How would that be more efficient then? People who propose that might argue that this would not happen but to be honest, have we seen any merger in history that did not result in restructuring and layoffs?

Further, one of my biggest concerns is about the responsibility of these mayors after the merger. When a mega council is created, it will cover suburbs of greatly diverse cultures and people. However, to get re-elected, extensive local approval is completely out of the window as people who want to be elected only need to focus in certain areas, e.g. wealthier suburbs like Potts Point and Darlighurst. This lack of need for local approval as a scrutinising mechanism of performance for councils would only contribute to further dis-engagement of the mega council with certain localities. I personally do not think that this is a healthy way to go to manage local areas and suburbs.

One of the arguments about merging the councils is to reduce the chance of corruption. This argument lacks weight in my opinion as corruption happens if it needs to happen, no matter what your structure is. The only way to avoid corruption is to have tougher sentences and more comprehensive administrative mechanisms to avoid them. Also education is key to reduce mechanism. Corruption is an evil that I personally do not think could be eliminated by any structural management. It would be naïve and unrealistic to put this as an argument for the formation of a mega council.

I personally genuinely hope that this merger would fall apart. However, if the call is in those politicians’ hands, I doubt that this kind of consultation would end up in a non-merger. I sincerely hope that some responsible local mayors would have enough weight to stop this kind of crazy ideas to become a reality.