I start by declaring I will vote 'no' to any and all constitutional proposals involving recognition of local government. In fact, I favour removing local government completely and placing responsibility for management of local issues with outposts of state governments. Failing that, I believe the best solution is for all law making powers to be removed from local government so that they concentrate on (lower) rates, roads and rubbish, basic services to residents, in other words.

I hold this view because I see more and more interference by local councils in the daily lives of citizens, duplicating in many cases work already undertaken by state and federal governments; a reduction in delivery of basic services; and increasing levels of ideologically-based initiatives from local councillors. Added to this, local council elections are too often farcical. We are choosing between people we've never heard of, many of whom hide the political affiliations they hold. Finally, if you want to find corruption in Australian governance, local councils are the place to look first.

'Senior Victorian' has type-cast local government's role in public service as an appendage of state government and a focus of no more than the 3 R's: Roads, Rates and Rubbish.

That's quaint old fashioned thinking, but it's an outlook that is a missfit with new millenium strategic thinking of working with global networks to produce the best public policy, locally.

Where may this lead us? Empowering communities to deliver needed local infrastructure is smart economically and politically. Being recognised as the service provider of choice for direct federal funded programs makes also sence. It's cost effective, but that's not all.

Council delivery of programs strengthens democracy. Big local and regional decisions should be delegated locally but within a clear national coherant framework. State and federal snail pace reforms with blame game would end.

Local councils are reaching out to their residents through smart social networking and other interactive engagement strategies. This means that the people have the opportunity to shape local priorities, not only through their local representatives, but directly. E-government is coming.

Local government also leads Australia in terms of the most rigorous codes of conduct that apply to elected councillors and staff. The federal government still has nothing yet in place and it seems the MPs want exemption under FOI laws for their actual expenditure on expenses, in stark contrast to the published data on Councillors benefits.

But perhaps the biggest case for local government empowerment and the case for state governments being phased out, is productivity. A massive annual productivity dividend of over 90 billion a year is possible without the tangle of state and federal laws and regulations from 9 different legislatures.

Cut our law makers down to just one national parliament and boost local government. The result would be a harmonised national economy with steamlined laws and most public services available from your local council offices. That's where we need to be heading and a YES vote in 2013 will put us on that pathway.

I fully supported Local Government in Queensland until Amalgamation. Since Amalgamation many communities are going downhill because of it.
Yes, to Local Government if we dissolve Amalgamation otherwise a huge NO !

Crickey, if the lack of comments on this subject is any indication of our electorate at all then it really doesn't matter which outfit governs this land. Don't people care or have they given up ?

We are grossly over-governed and I would not support giving constitutional recognition of local government. It is also about time we the people stood up to those bullying councils that illegally fine and tax us when they have no constitutional authority to do so. The day we are able to rid ourselves of those buffoons who sit on councils the better.

In order to be relevant, Local Councils should provide some tangible value to their ratepayers. This value is most clearly visible in areas such as management of parklands, oversight of development plans with the emphasis on amenities, oversight of roads with an emphasis on safety, and the efficient management of waste, including rubbish removal.

To dismiss these as "quaint old fashioned thinking", as Quick response has, is a measure of the problem. The very last thing that the Local Council needs to be, is Party-political. And the next-to-last thing it needs is "new millenium strategic thinking of working with global networks to produce the best public policy, locally". Which is simply bureaucratese for "spending other people's money on meaningless gibberish".

There is no doubt whatsoever that we are over-governed. Also, that the tensions between the policy requirements of Federal and State Governments and those of Local Government create massive waste. But further empowering a bunch of retired oldies with time on their hands (the make-up of a typical Council, in my experience) is not an answer. Nor, by the same token, is re-creating the State/Federal frictions at a Local level by removing the States. Such a situation would on the one hand serve to distance the service provision from the customer, and on the other, massively multiply the touch-points between the Council and the Federal, to the benefit of neither and the detriment of both.

Yes, it is a sub-optimal at present. But giving local Government additional powers is most definitely not the answer.