Russell Trood (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am sure Senator Fifield is usually a well-behaved member of the chamber. I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Democratic Plebiscites) Bill 2007. It is a bill of wide scope but it pays particular attention to the circumstances that have arisen in Queensland in recent times. In that context, as a Queensland senator I think it is a matter that deserves my attention and, as indeed has become the case, the attention of the Senate.

The now not-much-lamented, in my case, Beattie government proposal to amalgamate local councils in Queensland is one of the more disgraceful exercises in local government reform in Australia, from my perspective, and is certainly one of the more disgraceful exercises in local government reform in Queensland. It will almost certainly fail to achieve its objectives, in my view, as well as having dire consequences for the rights of Queenslanders, which they have been able to take for granted since the beginning of responsible government in Queensland.

At every turn the Beattie government has acted in a high-handed and dictatorial way to deny the democratic rights of Queenslanders. This dictatorial manner of acting reached its height, surely, when the final bill was rammed through the single chamber of the Queensland legislature early one Thursday morning, at a time when few Queenslanders were able to pay attention. All they could do was wake up to the consequences of the denial of their democratic rights greeting them early in the morning.

I am of the view that there was probably a case for reform of local government in Queensland. The existing system has certainly been in place for a long time. But the tragedy of this particular reform proposal is that it is a completely wasted opportunity. It proposed and achieved a simplistic solution to what are very complex problems of local government reform. The tragedy of it is that, with greater creativity and with more attention to the possibilities, the Beattie government, as it then was, could perhaps have claimed the reform as a matter of some credit. The result is that the Beattie government at the time deserved and received a wide degree of public opprobrium for its actions, and what we have now is a bastardised system of local government in Queensland.

This saga began with the proposal for reform in 2005. The Local Government Association of Queensland began the size, shape and sustainability initiative, and 118 councils across the state participated in this program. I visited various councils throughout the state during this period. They were reassuring about the progress that was being made, and they were pleased to have had the opportunity to participate in the process. Shortly thereafter, there began a concerted campaign of violence against democracy by the Beattie government. The Premier decided to override the SSS initiative to impose his own agenda for reform on local government and to create his own Local Government Reform Commission. Then, something that could be regarded as the most outrageous foray into totalitarianism occurred: the government passed new legislation to bypass the Local Government Act 1993. In that act there was a right of individuals and councils to express an opinion about changes that might occur to council boundaries and a longstanding right to approve any changes to the local government boundaries in Queensland. The loss of that right is addressed very directly by the bill that is currently before the chamber. After the Beattie government had passed the act that took away these rights, it proceeded to the next stage of ‘de-democratisation’ when it rammed these provisions through the Queensland parliament in the face of widespread concern, expressed throughout the state, about these changes.

The question before us, and one that has been before Queenslanders all of this time, is why a government would do this: what is the rationale for trying to reform government in this way, and why would you incur such massive public opprobrium? Further, what public purpose is being served by these local government reforms? The answer—which, in my view, is not a particularly compelling one—that was given to the Queensland councils was that the purpose of the reforms was to provide a more efficient local government system. More particularly, they would provide the opportunity for these councils to meet the challenges of economic growth being experienced by my state. This is a challenge that is certainly true in the south-east corner of Queensland, but it is being reflected right throughout the state. So the argument before us was that local government amalgamations were necessary so that local government authorities could meet the challenges of economic growth that were before them. To that end, there was supposed to be an examination of the economic integrity of some of these councils.

The Queensland Treasury Corporation undertook an examination and produced a report, in which it rated 43 per cent of these councils as being in a weak or very weak financial position. This was a very curious report indeed, because it did not evaluate all 156 local government authorities in Queensland. It did not purport to go through the financial circumstances of every council—in fact, it dealt with only 94 of the 156 councils, so less than three-quarters of them. Thus we had an incomplete process of examination. There was never any attempt to examine each council’s circumstances and then to propose public reforms based on the circumstances of councils right across the state. This was a half-baked effort to try to understand the alleged problems of local governments and councils.

But then the process of reform became even more bizarre. After the proposals were examined and the report was released with the names of the councils that were alleged to be in various states of financial distress, the government proceeded with its program of reform. It set up the Local Government Reform Commission and, in due course, the commission produced a report. Peculiarly, the report failed to carry through the concerns that were reflected in the Treasury Corporation’s assessment and at least four of the so-called financially unstable councils were left alone by the amalgamations. Councils such as Carpentaria, Diamantina and Boulia were said to be very distressed, yet no attempt was made to reform those councils in the context of these changes. Even more peculiar is that some councils which were not thought to be financially distressed have been reformed and have been amalgamated with adjacent councils, such as Caboolture, Pine Rivers and Redcliffe.

So we have had a very peculiar process of the public examination of an argument for change, and it has produced some very peculiar outcomes. In the context of these very peculiar changes, it is hardly surprising that Queenslanders right across the state are offended by the consequences of these changes. They are offended by the speed and the determination with which the then Beattie government rammed through these changes and deprived them of their right to express an opinion about those changes, including the impact those changes would have on their lives, on the economic sustainability of their councils and on the sustainability of their democratic communities, which were well established across the state.

We now have a very peculiar situation where Queensland will have fewer councils than either Victoria or New South Wales. Queensland, a state several dimensions larger than Victoria and larger than New South Wales, will have fewer councils—73. I think the figure is 79 in Victoria and 152 in New South Wales. Here we have a huge state, growing rapidly and economically vibrant, and yet we now have fewer councils representing people across the state than exist in other states of the Commonwealth on the east coast.

What has been particularly disturbing and distressing to Queenslanders throughout this process has been the ripping away of the fabric of community and the way in which these reforms have been rammed through the commission and rammed through the parliament, with contempt—and that is the only word that can be used—for the concerns of the local government community and the consequences that this will have for democratic representation at local government level in Queensland. In places like Noosa, Redcliffe and Port Douglas, the anxiety, distress and annoyance is certainly overt. It will mean that people will now have to travel vast distances to meet their elected local government representatives. There are consequences that will follow from these reckless reforms.

I take you, Madam Acting Deputy President, to one example of the way in which democratic representation will be changed by these reforms. Take what will be the new Toowoomba Regional Council. The new council will have an area in the vicinity of 13,000 square kilometres. It amalgamates eight councils into one and brings together a population of 302,000 people whose representation prior to these reforms, on the collective eight councils, was 82 councillors. As a result of these reforms, there will be 11 councillors for these 302,000 people. In some of those old councils—the Millmerran council, for example—there was one councillor for every 223 people. That is, admittedly, an excellent council representation to population. But it varied across these councils. In some places—Toowoomba, for example—there was one councillor to 7,000 constituents. The consequence of these changes is that these 11 councillors will now each represent something in the vicinity of 19,000 people. So in places like Millmerran, where there has been an intimate relationship between the councillor and his constituents, it will now blow out to one councillor to 19,000 constituents.

What is going to happen with the Toowoomba Regional Council, in all probability, because these are now undivided councils, which means that each place will not be represented by its own individual councillor, is that many people in these small communities—Millmerran, Pittsworth and places like that—will be unlikely, because they do not have the population size, to gain representation in the council. Having gone from a position of great intimacy with their local councillor, they will essentially be deprived of the right to be represented in local council. How that will advance democracy and expand economic sustainability in Queensland I have no idea, and I suspect that the Queensland government has no idea either. It is one of the serious consequences and one of the reasons why this bill is necessary and why the Beattie government stands condemned for the way in which it has behaved on this matter. It is a shameful deprivation of representation, and it defies, from my perspective, any particular logic—certainly in relation to building sustainable communities, which I presume is part of the intent here.

We know that these kinds of reforms do not work. We know that in Victoria, for example, where amalgamation took place and there was an expectation of substantial costs savings, the result was that, instead of 20 per cent in cost savings, savings came down to something in the vicinity of 8.5 per cent. We know that, in South Australia, amalgamation reforms which were supposed to produce cost savings in the vicinity of 17 per cent produced savings in the vicinity of 2.3 per cent. Sensibly, the New South Wales government, having examined the consequences of reforms elsewhere, realised that this was a pretty dumb way to reform councils and that there must be a better way of trying to address the problem of economic weakness at a local government level, so they decided to avoid that course of action. From my perspective, that was a sensible action in public policy.

We should be asking ourselves whether there is anything in this barren landscape that can retrieve these proposals in relation to the proclaimed public objective, which is to provide sustainability. I looked at the various proposals and the documents which were produced at the time and I found there is a thing called a ‘local transition committee’ being set up. In the documents which were provided at the time, there is a statement about the composition of these transition committees. One would have thought that if these committees are about economics—producing economic sustainability and preparing local government for the challenges of economic growth—when you create them you might provide for someone to be on them who might know something about economics. Perhaps that would be a financial adviser, a local businessperson who has some experience in the field or someone with some economic experience. What do we find when we look at the composition of the local transition committees? We find a representative from the affected local governments, an interim CEO and, astonishingly, up to three union representatives. There will be up to three union representatives on these transition committees!

Where is the person who will make a contribution to improving the economic sustainability of these councils? Where is the person who will carry through, in some constructive, intelligent way, the kinds of aims that lie behind these proposals? The only conclusion one is justified in reaching is that this is not a reform that has anything to do with local government. This is not a reform that addresses itself to Queensland’s future economic needs. This is a reform which talks about the future of trade unionism in Queensland. All Australians, whether or not they happen to be Queenslanders, ought to reflect on that particular point when they are addressing their attention to the election later in the year. (Time expired)