The problem with the "march of immigration and urbanisation" is that peak oil will soon throw this into reverse and then Queensland will be an even more difficult position to cope with the consequences.
Bad decision!!

The story is in the Stanthorpe Border Post newspaper this morning that the Stanthorpe Shire should secede from the Qld government to form a new State, after the decision to almalgamate Warwick and Stanthorpe shires. A local barrister who has practised in Washington, Tasmania and Queensland says although it is an act of desperation, it is definitely possible for Stanthorpe to secede and lists sections of the Constitution which prove it.
Although he admits the idea may sound ridiculous at first, he believes people will consider it.
The Mayor says the attempt would make Stanthorpe the laughing stock of the country. Perhaps he is the sort of fellow who will worry about what other people think, not consider what is best for the community.
While I haven’t had time to consider the viability of the proposal, I recognise that the history, geography, community and industries of the two regions are totally different.

As the owner of a tourist business - this district has over 60 wineries - I hope the proposal gains momentum as it will make all those other people in Australia ask “Where is Stanthorpe? What is there?” and may increase tourism to the region.
The old story – any publicity is good publicity.
My family have had a connection with the region since my Grandfather was born in Stanthorpe in 1876.

Ah, you're not far from me then CountryGirl.

It will be mighty interesting to see how the secession drama unfolds, though I suspect it will act as more of a delaying tactic.

Though that seems eminently reasonable, given the way the State has been handling these reforms...

Most of my thoughts on this process are in yesterday's amalgamation thread.

I do not agree that forced amalgamations are a good thing. If anything, the Queensland State Government's handling of the matter has all the hallmarks of bad public policy. And I suspect that Queenslanders will be paying the consequences of it for many years to come.

The State Government has comprehensively failed to consult Queenslanders - or, I believe, to be truly honest with them - at any step in the process.

First it removed the democratic right of Queenslanders to have a vote on any merger before it announced the reform moves. Then it called for public submissions but read almost none of them. And now it threatens to sack any Council that holds a referendum on the matter to get the views of its residents.

While the Government claims that its motive is to create Councils which are more financially sustainable over the long term - using a very dubious assessment scale from Queensland Treasury - many Councils will actually be financially worse off after the merger than they are right now.

In my own region, for example, one "Moderate", two "Weak" and one "Distressed" council (which has no debts but simply a short term cashflow problem) will wind up as one "Weak" Super Shire in need of extra State assistance.

And one of our local towns which is 50km from the new Shire capital will - instead - be included in an adjoining Super Shire where the capital is 150km away.

I also disagree with the author that the only real complaints are coming from Mayors and Councillors. This is a simplistic line the State Government has been peddling to cash in on the general loathing Australians have for our politicians.

I can assure you that in our own region the concern stretches right across all levels of the community. It's very real, very deep and - on initial data available to us - well-founded. The same applies through the rest of the State as well.

Well, I guess labor won't be recruiting from these new "SUPER" councils. However, with the larger councils, in SEQ, with whole of shire, [city?] elections, they will now have a handy place to park some of their dead head operatives. They should be able to get about 3 elected in each of these new entities.

What a nice retirement plan for them. They can sit for years, bludging on the rate payers.

Makes a change from having them in parliament, bludging on all of us, I suppose.

At least its not happening to me. My shire has had its heart ripped out to contribute to one of the super shires. We have lost over 60% of our people, but thats OK they have given us a bankrupt shire to replace our loss.

I can hear a car outside. It just might be Beattie. Excuse me, while I gow out & bury my wallet, he's probably after the last few cents

generally, i like to read ozzies whinging about the results of letting pollies rule them. "schadenfreude", is the german word that covers it well. or to put in another view:

"serves you right!"

but 'hasbeen' did me a favor recently, coming up with a perfect example of a principle i have, and was asserting. so, old mate, here's my suggestion for getting loose from beattie, and howard too: secede from oz. i bet a lot of people in your council would recognize you as 'duke of hazzard' if you just promised not to tax them. or start wars. or lock anyone up before they've done anything. it could grow big, and you in on the ground floor. no copyright, go for it!

As a resident of Maroochy shire I am in favour of the merger with Caloundra. We already share water treatment and both Mayors are respected sensible men.

But to include Noosa is just crazy. Who wants shire that is largely un-sewered with most of it with no water supply. A shire that pumps sewage into a creek and calls it water treatment. A shire with no garbage collection until a couple of years ago, a shire that dumps its recycling in landfill.

Noosa is a cess pit. High rise buildings on both sides of Hastings street a beach that stinks with sand pumped in. Lake Weyba full of carp because the native fish have all died due to canal developments.

Kids geting e-coli infections because the North Shore dunes are public lavatories.

Give me a break Bob Abbott take your exclusive smelly shire and fade off into the distance.

Hi all. I am getting curious about the larger councils issue. Seems to me that it could involve more time travelling with more impact on the environment, global warming etc.

I would like Paul
Reynolds to assure me that this legislation is not about removing control of high value environmental, envirotourism or heritage areas from communities trying to protect these values against ratrace "developers".
The spectacular example of Byron Bay of late comes to mind.
Are we talking about ordered, planned progress or the handing over of communities and locales to barbaric, ignorant, greedy environmental rapists and the captive politicians who do their dirty work.
Reynolds' tone does not encourage confidence as to this this contributor.
Any disclosures, Paul?

The argument in favour of forced amalgamations has been comprehesively demolished by Professor Brian Dollery (http://www.une.edu.au/ebl/staff/bdollery.php) of the University of New England who appeared on ABC Radio National's Bush Telegraph of 31 July (http://www.abc.net.au/rural/telegraph/content/2006/s1992827.htm, http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/current/audioonly/bth_20070731.mp3) and in an article "Counting the Merger Costs" printed in the Courier Mail on the same day:

He noted that the Local Government 'Reform' Commission handed down its conclusion just two months after submissions were closed on 25 May.

"In other words, we are expected to believe that in a mere two months it was able to consider tens of thousands of pages of submissions, carefully weigh in the evidence and deliver sound policy advice. ...

"It is hardly surprising that the final report is seriously deficient in several respects."

These include:

* No evaluation of the costs of alternative courses of action,

* No attempt to determine the costs attached to amalgamation and the implemetation of structural reform (admitted on page 38, chapter 3 of the report).

* No account taken of experiences of amalgamation in Victoria, South Australia or Victoria, nor evidence from Canada, nor the 2007 Lyons report into British local Government.

He concludes :

"Evidence-free policy-making of this kind is alarming. State Government politicians should ask themslelves a simple question before embarking on a potentially destructive forced amalgamatioin program.

"Why do financial problems persist in other Australian states that have already copulsorily amalgamted local councils if mallgamation is indeed a silver bullet for all the ills of local government?"

For further information, visit http://www.une.edu.au/clg http://www.localdemocracy.com.au http://www.keepnoosaspecial.com.au http://candobetter.org/NoForcedAmalgamations

The following was posted to my web site on 31 July:

http://candobetter.org/node/119

Resident of former rural Victorian Grenville
Shire urges Queenslanders to fight amalgamation

The people of Queensland should resist amalgamation at all costs. I've seen first hand the local loss of community power following the Kennett years when he decided to amalgamate many Victorian shires.

My own little shire of Grenville was taken over during this process to be absorbed into the Golden Plains Shire despite our protests and a street march. Kennett was, it seemed, tarred with the same disregard for our shire's citizens as is John Howard with Australians in general. In fact, pigheadedness and self promoting agenda appear to be the hallmark of Liberal policy.

What we have today is a huge shire that covers a massive area, reaching from Haddon in the North down as far as the outskirts of Geelong. Since Geelong has been subject to a major housing boom the same as many other areas of the State, it comes as no surprise that the Golden Plains Shire is one of the fastest growing shires in Victoria and although it claims to have the lowest rates of any of the major shires, those same rates go up every year.

When we were under the Grenville Shire, very ordinary citizens ran it in unison with their fellow residents. Things got done and rates were kept very low despite the fact that Grenville had it's own road maintenance crew and machinery. Since we've fallen under the banner of the Golden Plains Shire, we've had a reduction in some services and unwanted town projects thrust upon us by a shire well out of touch with residents desires.

Big money has entered the Golden Plains Shire and the untouchable attitude that goes with the money. People in smaller communities no longer have the power to decide what's best for them. Instead, the shire forces major changes which in the end can only benefit land developers and the shire coffers as rates rise to meet the demands of these changes.

(tobecontinued)

(This is a reponse to a post by noreeblue (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=884#15411) in another thread which I started entitled "Don't let Peter Beattie save John Howard's political hide".)

noreeblue, when you wrote "You blew your arguement when you said there were no sound reasons for amalgamations in Queensland", you only betrayed your own ignorance about this question.

If anyone doubts me, check the map of the proposed greater Cairns City Council which is to swallow up the existing Douglas Shire. The map is at http://www.strongercouncils.qld.gov.au/Portals/0/ReformDocuments/Cairns_map.pdf The new council region is massively elongated from North to south and joined in the middle by a narrow strip of land on the coast.

The only more geographically stupid political unit I can think of at the moment is the original Pakistan comprising "West Pakistan" and "East Pakistan" (now Bangladesh) separated by India.

If this amalgamation proceeds, those very few councilors representing the current 11,455 residents of the current Douglas Shire will be consistently outvoted at every turn by councillors representing the 131,268 current residents of the current Cairns City Council.

In spite of its small size, Douglas Shire is doing perfectly well. It has healthy finances and looks after its environment. There is simply no logical reason to force it to amalgamate with Cairns. This one example is surely confirmation that either the Local Government Reform Commissioners either did not have a clue or that they were doing the bidding of Peter Beattie and the property developers who consider the current Douglas Shire Council an impediment to its plans to profit from the destruction of the Douglas Shire's environment.

See comment in forum thread "Don't let Peter Beattie save John Howard's political hide" at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=884#15557 .

I notice no response from Paul Reynolds. That says it all, doesn't it ?
Measnwhile indefatigable Dagget instead carries the day as to logic. Sadly, the process exemplified most spectacularly by the Lib/Lab Tasmanian gerrymander of the late 'nineties that robbed the Greens of balance of power in Tasmania and that state of a useful handbreak against untrammelled vandalism, is applied right across the three tiers of government and universally at local government level.T hat's apart from more spectacular global examples like Iraq- a s ort of fourth tier.
All top down rather than emanating from the grassrooots. All part of the hegemonisation "harmonisation" imposed by local Quislings at diffeent levels on behalf of by that unhappy mix of greed, incompetence,self absorbtion and ideology that currently has the stockmarkets on the verge of inflicting a nasty recession on the world's poor.
That is, wretched neoliberal globalisation.