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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-11-13 Daily Xml
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COUNCILS, METROPOLITAN

The Hon. R.B. SUCH (Fisher) (12:22): I move:

That this house requests that the state government initiate an independent review to ascertain the optimal number and size of councils in the metropolitan area.

I say at the outset, I am not anti-council. I think our local government sector is generally a very good one. In fact, I was a councillor many years ago. Under our current law, you are not allowed to be a councillor and an MP, which I think was an unfortunate reduction in opportunity to serve the community. I notice that Clover Moore, the Independent member in the New South Wales parliament, is also a very successful Lord Mayor, and I do not see that either of those roles suffers because she does both things. I notice she was challenged by Meredith Burgman, who, members would know, produces a list of silly comments by silly men, but we will not get into that today.

As I said, I was involved in council, Mitcham council, for several years and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I have said this before, but maybe one day I might even become involved again, but I cannot while I am in here. As I say, this is not an attack on councils. The motion does not say how many councils we should have in the metropolitan area. I should clarify that, obviously, I am not focusing on the country area by definition because that is a different situation from what exists in the metropolitan area in terms of council and local government, their size and so on. If you do not take into account the special features of rural South Australia, then I think you are being very foolish.

In my definition of 'metropolitan Adelaide', I include 19 councils, and I include in that Mount Barker. The list includes: Adelaide Hills council, the Burnside council, the Campbelltown council, Charles Sturt, Walkerville, Holdfast Bay, Marion, Mitcham, Mount Barker (which I mentioned before), Norwood Payneham and St Peters, City of Playford, Port Adelaide Enfield, City of Prospect, Salisbury City Council, Tea Tree Gully, City of Unley, City of West Torrens, Gawler and, of course, the City of Adelaide. I emphasise that I do not know how many councils there should be. I think the current Lord Mayor has suggested three, which was not well received by the Mayor of West Torrens and some others, but I think they raised concerns at that suggestion. Anyway, the point is why we need to look at it and why we need an expert independent panel to do it.

The LGA has not been supportive of anything suggesting a review of the number of councils in the metropolitan area and the state government has been very coy about it, too, because, for some reason, it does not want to be seen to rock the boat. I think in government you sometimes have to take tough decisions. The last time there was any significant attempt to change the number of councils in the metropolitan area, we had some reluctant brides, and we had some councils playing all sorts of fancy footwork to ensure that they were not amalgamated.

Amalgamation is one option, but there are others. Recently, many of the metropolitan councils created a cooperative venture. I think that there already was one involving about eight councils (I think the latest one involves 13) in terms of things such as bulk buying and so on. There are arguments clearly for and against reducing the number of councils. Some people say that you take 'local' out of local government. I think that is a bit of a cliché. I think it is more important that a council interacts with its people, and that is not necessarily determined by the size of the council: it is how the council is organised and operates. You can have a large council that is very effective in communicating with its ratepayers. The fancy term now is 'engagement', because they do not consult any more, they engage, but it still means the same thing, I hope.

The one advantage of having fewer councils and larger councils is that I believe they are less likely to have corruption in them. We do not have evidence of any significant widespread corruption, but the argument that is put is that, if you have a larger council, you are less likely to have anything untoward happening in respect of corruption. That is an argument that is put: people can evaluate it for what it is worth. Some of the councils share services. I indicated earlier that some of them are moving to share more, but there could be a lot of cost saving if councils shared payroll, computer resources, as well as more common tendering for vehicles. Some of them do it, but not all. Things such as sharing rangers on the weekend. Some councils have extensive library facilities, others have minimal, if any, library facilities.

There are opportunities for considerable savings which, as I say, could occur through amalgamation or through a more tightly organised cooperative arrangement between metropolitan councils. However, the bottom line is that councils generally—mayors, elected members and their senior staff—do not really want to give up their own little patch to come in with others. I notice that, at the moment, my own council (Mitcham) is extending its council chambers—more accommodation and so on—yet you can almost throw a stone from the Mitcham council chambers to the one at Unley, and you can almost throw a stone from the Mitcham works depot to the one at Unley. It is no longer called a 'works depot' because, as we know, names change: it is now called an 'infrastructure centre'. These are buzz words which afflict all of us.

If you look at it in a comparative sense between councils in the Adelaide metropolitan area and the Brisbane City Council, because that is often used in a comparative sense with Adelaide, you come up with some very interesting statistics. This table, for some reason, omits the City of Adelaide, which is unfortunate because it is a very important council and it is a very significant one in terms of its operating budget.

If you compare the 19 councils that I have listed, minus Adelaide—as I say, Adelaide should be included but I do not have its actual figures in this table here—with Brisbane, the total operating budget for metropolitan Adelaide is around $850 million (rounded off) and for Brisbane it is $2.2 billion. The figure for basic allowances paid in metropolitan Adelaide is about $3.9 million; in Brisbane it is $3.4 million. The number of councillors in Adelaide (including the mayor and deputy mayor) is 264; in Brisbane it is 27. Brisbane's councillors are full-time paid people; similar to us in a way.

Metropolitan Adelaide's population, according to the ABS, is 1.1 million (rounded off); Brisbane's is 956,000. The total number of employees in metropolitan Adelaide is in excess of 8,000, according to the LGA website; in Brisbane it is 6,913—and, of course, the Brisbane City Council provides some services which are not provided in Adelaide, so you have to take that into account.

Brisbane City Council runs the buses, provides the water and also deals with sewerage, whereas the councils here do not. If you add in subsidies from the South Australian government in relation to buses, it is $3.1 million direct to councils, but, in addition to that, the TransAdelaide bus and the subsidies to bus companies would be well in excess of that. In addition, according to the information in the Auditor-General's Report, the operating budget for water and sewerage in the Adelaide metropolitan area is about $603 million.

Even if those figures are approximations, it demonstrates that in metropolitan Adelaide we have many, many times the number of councillors and mayors and deputy mayors compared to Brisbane. I think it is worth exploring whether being on council now is beyond the scope of a volunteer part-time person, particularly in a busy council. They do a fantastic job and they do not get paid what we get paid, but I think it is getting to a point where you have to question whether being on council as a volunteer is beyond the reasonable demand to be put on an individual in the community, and whether we should be moving to something more akin to the Brisbane system, where they have full-time paid councillors with a staffed office.

If you compare those figures for metropolitan Adelaide and Brisbane you will find that in many respects we could probably do things differently down here—and I will come back to my earlier point. Some people would say that having 264 elected members in metropolitan Adelaide on councils is a good thing because you can interact more frequently with them, but in speaking with people in Brisbane, they say that their system works well with 27 elected members, whom they can go and see in the local shopping centre, or wherever.

People in local government often say, 'You are suggesting that we'—that is, local government—'reform ourselves, change, have fewer councils'—I am not saying that, because it may be that the status quo is the best number, I do not know, that is why I want an independent expert panel to have a look—'what about your own backyard? What about state government and federal government?' Well, I do not believe that they should be immune either.

A long time ago the federal Labor government under Gough Whitlam was looking at more regional governments. That seems to have gone off the boil lately, off the agenda, but maybe it is time in Australia that we had a look at that issue again, because I think in many ways many of the things that we do arising out of this parliament are largely irrelevant.

Many aspects of state government have now been superseded, replaced or outsourced, and one has to ask whether or not it is time to redefine the boundaries of state and local government. Local government will tell you that there has been a lot of cost shifting with the state and federal governments pushing things onto them. So, if one looks at the whole issue of the number, role and function of councils in the metropolitan area, it might be opportune to look at how that should interface with state and federal government and see whether there is an opportunity to improve the whole package, not just one part of it.

Local government is obviously not keen to hear any suggestions of fewer councils, because elected members and senior staff want to protect their patch; they want to keep their little castles and, in some cases, their big castles. The fundamental issue is: what is best for the people of South Australia and, in this case, the people in the metropolitan area? We should ask ourselves the same question, and we should be prepared to say whether or not we have the best format in regard to governance as it comes out of the parliamentary system. I guess that will be part of the debate relating to what happens with the Legislative Council. I do not believe that the Legislative Council will be abolished; I do not think the public will support it, but they will support reform.

For some reason, the government is very cagey about anything to do with local government. I do not know whether it is scared of them or whether the LGA has it in a headlock, but it seems to be very scared of local government. The government is scared to rock the boat, and councils continue on their merry way, not necessarily doing bad things, but maybe not doing things as well and as efficiently as they could, or should.

I think it is opportune to look at this issue. I do not think that we should be frightened of any issue. It does not matter whether it is local, state or federal government: I think we should put all the issues on the table and, in this case, have an independent expert group look at the possibility of the number and composition of councils in the metropolitan area. Up until now, the LGA has avoided the issue and focused on financial aspects, because it does not want to buy into this issue of whether or not there should be a change. It may be that the status quo is the best arrangement, but I do not know; that is why I am calling for this investigation.

Mr GRIFFITHS (Goyder) (12:37): Given my role in local government prior coming into this place, I feel that it is reasonably appropriate that I make some comments on the member for Fisher's motion. Some history is attached to it also. I know that, in the 1970s, there was a royal commission about the structure of local government as it was intended to be then. I have read some of the reports from that, admittedly many years ago, so I cannot remember any specific details about it; but I do know that submissions were invited, public meetings were held and a detailed report was prepared which I do not think was actually acted upon. It might have been in some minor way, but there were recommendations that extended from that royal commission about the amalgamation of councils within the metropolitan area and regional South Australia.

The next time that I was aware that the number of councils within our state came to the fore was in the 1990s, when the Ministerial Advisory Group (MAG) report came down, and many members in this chamber today who were in any way involved in local government at that time will recall what occurred there. I think there were 118 councils at the time of that MAG report being submitted and, eventually, through amalgamations, incentives were supported and, through voluntary movements, we got down to the 68 councils that we now have.

In considering the ideal number of councils, it is important to think about what they are there to do. They are there to be representative of the community, to provide the best possible range of services and to provide those services and infrastructure at the best possible cost, and to reduce the financial impost upon the people who pay their bills: the property owners and the taxpayers of the state.

I recognise that the member for Fisher's motion is not suggesting any figure that should be realised of the current 19 councils in metropolitan Adelaide. He is, though, suggesting that a review be undertaken. It is interesting that, only in the past week or so, we have had the announcement of seven councils forming the Eastern Alliance—I think it is called—through which concerted discussions at all levels (not through an amalgamation process) will ensure that efficiencies are created, that bulk purchasing powers are realised, and that a common thought on important issues will give increased bargaining power when it comes to representing that part of metropolitan Adelaide as one voice.

It will create some interesting debates because, no matter how well informed we want to be, whenever a group of people come together and have diversity of opinion, it is hard to form a view that everyone will be comfortable with. So, the formation of this eastern alliance has potential problems but also enormous benefits.

It is interesting that the member for Fisher's motion has noted the 19 councils. My recollection is that the population ranges in those council areas vary from a little under 10,000—Walkerville might have 7,500 or 8,000, and I apologise if I am wrong—but the larger council areas have 120,000 or 130,000, as in the case of the Onkaparinga council. That shows an enormous diversity in the area they are responsible for and the roles that they themselves are able to undertake.

While there might be comments from both sides of the house about the change that local government has undertaken in the last generation, as someone who has worked within that industry, it is obvious to me that the social responsibilities being demanded by the communities in many cases were accepted willingly by local government, in most cases, with the frustration that it would not have the resources, but importantly, local government has accepted that challenge. They work closely with the state and federal governments to try to resource those social responsibilities.

We need to ensure that we have the right structure in place. We cannot assume that boundaries that have existed for decades, or even longer periods in many cases, would always remain the correct boundaries. We need to forget about lines on maps; we need to ensure that service provision is the key. I think everyone here would agree with the fact that the key issues are: the people on the ground, the services they receive, and the cost. The motion itself is not a bad one; it is only trying to move the debate forward, and I think that is where debate is a progressive step because it makes all of us think about the role we play.

The Local Government Association has been a very active, well-informed and spirited voice for local government as an industry for the past 30 to 40 years. On every occasion that I have had interaction with local government, I found it to be well led. They have been outspoken and they have tried to ensure that local government is informed and expresses opinions on important issues. I know that local government accepts the challenge of many roles and let's hope that, as part of the consideration of what future they themselves might hold, one of those is to consider how they can best structure themselves. We do need some level of review. The parliament considers issues all the time; it is important that local government also takes that up.

The member for Fisher is not talking necessarily about amalgamation; he is talking about the opportunity to share services or the opportunity to ensure that discussions take place and that the best possible options are presumed and acted upon at all times. So, it is reasonable to say that his motion is good.

We, as an opposition, have not considered this issue. I confirm the fact that my comments are based upon my own thoughts on this matter, and my opinion is not a party held view. It is important that we express our views on this because local government affects the state. The Outback Areas Community Development Trust has responsibility for the vast land mass of the state and it is funded to some degree and operated as a local government entity. However, for the settled areas of South Australia—certainly for the Adelaide metropolitan area—local government provides an important role, and it is part of the responsibility of the parliament to ensure that the structure under which it operates is the best one.

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (12:44): I also rise to contribute to this debate. I agree with the sentiments of the member for Fisher; I think it is worthy and that it will not cause any degree of angst in the local government sector. If we did have an independent review, I do not think that would do any harm—and I stress the word 'independent'. I think it is critical that, if this were to take place, it would have to be conducted by people well outside both the state government and the local government sector.

My colleague the member for Goyder has made a number of comments that I could have made myself. I think they were very balanced. The question of just how many councils you have in the metropolitan area is one that rightly and properly should be discussed. Last week I was in Perth with the Public Works Committee where we visited a metropolitan council that had lost $20 million in the collapse of Lehman Brothers and it was interesting that they said that it was not going to affect them. Heavens to Betsy! I was very grateful that I was a South Australian, because we did not have any exposure whatsoever—and I think that says a lot about the good management and organisational structures within the local government sector in South Australia.

As has been mentioned, the issues of resources, duplication and things like stormwater are all part and parcel of local government. Of course, if you refer to planning you can see what the Rann Labor government did with Adelaide City Council on the issue; there was an agreement one minute and then it changed its mind the next. I believe councils obviously feel uncomfortable about where things are going.

My colleagues also mentioned the great disparity in sizes of councils in the metropolitan area—as mentioned, I believe Onkaparinga is about 120,000 while Walkerville is a lot smaller, I think under 10,000. Over and above that, there is the issue of what is urban metropolitan and what is country. We have a number of councils in and around the Adelaide metropolitan area—Onkaparinga being one—that contain what is very much an urban metropolitan area as well as what is very much a rural area.

The Adelaide Hills Council is another one, it comes right down and joins Campbelltown and others in the foothills; and Mount Barker is in the Adelaide phone book. The list goes on, so where is the line drawn between what is urban or metropolitan and what is country? That is a debate we need to have, and I think the member for Fisher's motion regarding an independent review could look at all those things and would be well worthwhile. I am sure the local government community would view it with interest and that the Local Government Association would be supportive of it.

Whether it be state, local or federal government, it is no good hiding your head in the sand and saying 'We're doing everything properly, we don't need to change anything,' because that is just not right. We currently have an extremely strong president of the Local Government Association in Mayor Baluch from Port Augusta, who takes these things on board and thinks through them sensibly, so there is that aspect of it. Looking into the future, 40 or 50 years down the track, you wonder where the metropolitan area of Adelaide (which now spreads, I think, for about 90 kilometres) will start and finish. Brisbane is a great example where one size seems to fit all, but that is not necessarily in the best interests of Adelaide. It works in Brisbane, and has done for a long time, but it may not work down here.

Of course, sideline events always go on in local government. The minister in another place recently talked about putting in place an independent panel on remuneration. That still has not happened, and they are still hassling about how much they should be paid and how much mayors should be paid. Of course, this goes beyond the city of Adelaide and the metropolitan area; it comes up fairly regularly even in my own electorate. Indeed, the other day I received a letter from a constituent of one council who suggested that the mayor and councillors should not get paid anything. I do not think that went down all that well but it is in my office, it will not be circulated. However, the reality is that there are councils where councillors do very little and councils where councillors do a great deal; equally there are some mayors who seek to do more than others. That is just the way it is, and the way it has been for a long time.

In moving this motion, it is obvious that the member for Fisher has given the matter a great deal of thought. My colleague the member for Goyder has spoken to it, and I have appreciated the opportunity to say a few words. My support of the motion is based on the fact that we need to plan for the future. Let someone outside have a look at it. Do not let the Attorney-General get his sticky fingers into it, because he is all for making the mayors and councils political. We do not want him anywhere near it. If indeed it comes to pass, I totally support an independent review, and I think it is just good politics that we should be discussing it in here. I would appreciate some comments from the government side, although we probably will not get them; however, it is my view.

Debate adjourned on motion of Ms Chapman.

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