The Forum > Article Comments > It's time to take local government seriously > Comments
It's time to take local government seriously : Comments
By Jieh-Yung Lo, published 3/3/2010Local governments deserve full constitutional recognition coupled with fair treatment and fair funding mechanisms.
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I am continually amazed by calls for constitutional recognition of local government. All such calls have the same fatal assumption – the only constitution in Australia is the Commonwealth’s. What the calls ignore, is that, in at least one state, Tasmania, local government does have constitutional recognition.
Posted by John W, Wednesday, 3 March 2010 12:46:02 PM
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Help, get the axe. We have to cut the hands of these idiots off, at the elbow. It's the only way to stop them reaching further into our wallets & lives, like the dangerous cancer they are.
Climate change policy for gods sake. These people can't even run a car pool, or more importantly, a garbage service, let alone save the world. Ruddy has just got burned, even with all those resources, trying that. Pink bats anyone. The little dear wants more funding, what for his lunch, at the weekly meeting. If they didn't have bureaucrats to put words in their mouths, they wouldn't have to waste time on those either. If they just got back to what they should do, roads rubbish & body wastes, they could get rid of 65% of expenditure, & 70% of the staff, who do nothing but impose some new hair brained scheme on the long suffering rate payers. When I bought my property, the rates were $128 PA. They stayed around there for years, now they are in the thousands. They are going up at such a rate now, that I recently calculated, if this rate of increase continues, they will exceed my gross income by 2023. I suppose that's their global warming plan. If we have no money we can't warm anything, us or the plannet. Our state government is an utter waste of space, but they are a paragon of virtue compared to the idiots in the council. Then we have academics wanting to dismember the states, in favour of expanded councils. God help us. I heard recently they wanted another dozen planners. It appears the councillors had run out of damn fool ideas, but they knew local government planners specialised in such things. Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 3 March 2010 5:17:00 PM
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Constitutions and democracy are incompatible.
Our beloved councilors? The bloated, corruptible, vanity ridden, minipoliticians? Take them to the tip and bury them; seriously. Posted by skeptic, Thursday, 4 March 2010 9:38:52 AM
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Excellent, well-written article by Cr Jieh-Yung. Shame he offers pearls to swine. In darkened rooms with keyboards blazing, the abject cowards who post the irrational, raging, bullying, uncivil and prejudicial invective here don't deserve the comforts of the democracy they take for granted. We need more thoughtful and diligent councillors who care about their communities and want to do the right thing by them.
Posted by clickcraftsman, Thursday, 4 March 2010 10:36:28 AM
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Here is the story of Hazel, the 88 year old grandmother who has been the Mayor of Mississauga, Ontario in Canada for thirty years, having won eleven consecutive elections. It is one of the few debt free cities in Canada with $700 million in reserves!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY79KbCptTo&feature=player_embedded Forget all of that stuff about the Constitution and so on and work out how this senior citizen can meet ratepayers' needs and still have money in the bank. Clone Hazel now! Posted by Cornflower, Saturday, 6 March 2010 2:46:30 AM
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Cr Jieh-Yung Lo makes plausible sense about the benefits of local government but unfortunately the reality is not as uncomplicated as he professes.
I reside in supposedly the most rapidly expanding local authority in Australia where the Council has an annual budget of $1.5 billion, but the city continues to fall further and further behind in elementary infrastructure. The city has no strategic master plan and developers are encouraged to breach the planning scheme through local priority plans for the sake of economic stability. The Council operates an active free market economy modus operandi that, wherever possible, converts public utilities, pathways or parks into revenue streams. This short-sighted or fool-hardy methodology simply pushes the day of reckoning a little further down the track and in the meantime the quality of living diminishes. There is little chance of improvement due to the very poor caliber of uninformed elected representative. Councillors in this city receive $130,000 P/A plus car, plus the kitchen sink including overseas junkets but creative and visionary representation is a pipe dream. Once elected the Councillors have close to a million dollar discretionary funds available to them for essential services in their Council Division. All too often the funds are remitted to large sporting groups or those that provide gestures of political support that can influence polling day results. In other words once elected they almost become untouchable and assured of reelection. Some people call this democracy others call it cronyism and corrupted process. The city tourism theme is VeryGC. Can anyone guess where I live? Posted by Don Imagine, Monday, 8 March 2010 9:57:59 PM
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