I live in far north NSW in Byron Shire. The shire is so small in terms of rate payers compared to city local governments that it cannot even afford to maintain its own roads. It would make great sense to amalgamate with Tweed, Ballina and maybe Lismore. The combined would cover a large area but still won't come close to a typical local government in Sydney or Melbourne in terms of rate payers. Each of these separate governments have their own overheads which are likely to be duplicate and would surely save a lot of money.

Of course many of the Byronians seem to care more for their independence than they do for their roads (which are deplorable in parts) and need constant repair.

If it ain't broke don't fix it!
Why should a council that has and maintains a budget surplus position be compelled to amalgamate with one swimming in debt due to some very poor decisions, such as to investing heavily in in worthless derivatives instead of tried and true government guaranteed bonds.

We were in the former position before we were forced to amalgamate with other less well run debt laden councils; the upshot being we the gullible public were forced to carry a load that had nothing whatsoever to do with us, with a consequent doubling of rates and a tripling of mayoral and counselor salaries!

That said, it might be a good move as a precursor to state government elimination, you know, the middleman profit taker tier of government that cost us 70 billions per before so much as a single service is delivered! And consequently making us the most over governed country in the world bar one!

If you're looking for real efficiency gains, then let's get rid of state governments and replace them with enlarged more efficient councils!? We simply don't need both!
Phrosty.

Look at who pushes for council amalgamations and the real hidden agenda! Bureaucrats and politicians. Ratepayers and citizens largely oppose them. With larger and fewer councils, there are less elected representatives for the areas and populations. Bureaucrats then have to make more decisions and can run them more as they see fit. Including building bigger self serving bureaucratic empires. Also, for government departments and politicians having to liaise with councils, is easier if not as many. Re claims that savings will be made with "economies of scale", usually little examination is done of diseconomies of scale which can often more than cancel these. Note that costs of most services and facilities provided by municipalities is related mainly to the areas and populations serviced. Not the size of council areas.

The Labor side of politics, which those working in salaried government overall largely support seems generally more in favour of amalgamations than the coalition. Former Victorian Liberal Premier Jeff Kennett in early '90's succumbed to spin about how amalgamations would save millions of dollars. In fact it cost millions to create what often overall did not work as well as what was there before. Also Coalition partners the National Party as a result of supporting forced amalgamations had a lot of financial members not renew or even cancel their membership. After it became widely obvious that amalgamations were a costly disaster, official spin tried to claim we have to have "pain before gain."

Re supposed savings in administration costs with larger councils, five Shires in Northern Victoria were amalgamated to form Moira Shire. Before amalgamation they had 46 administrative staff in total. After two years of mismanagement by the government's hand picked stooge commissioners implementing amalgamations, when the new elected council started cleaning up the mess, there were 60 in administration. In the amalgamation process lots of staff had been given costly redundancies. Including many "workers on the ground"