A proposal to the inquiry into municipal boundaries in
Waverley, Woolahra, Randwick, the City of Sydney, South Sydney,
Leichhardt and Marrickville
By Bob Gould
The present City of Sydney, South Sydney and Botany, plus part
of
Leichhardt, Marrickville and Woolahra municipalities, should be
amalgamated to produce a major City of Sydney, which would administer
both the CBD, the significant inner-city residential areas, the South
Sydney industrial area, Mascot Airport and the functional port part of
Botany Bay as well as Centennial Park and the new film complex at the
former Sydney showgrounds.
It would have a population of about 200,000 and should have
five or
even six wards of four councillors elected under proportional
representation (PR). The area I've outlined is a natural geographically
unified area for the central core of the Cumberland region.
The boundaries of the City of Sydney, expressed another way,
should
include the old Sydney City boundaries that prevailed from 1948 until
it was broken up in the 1960s, plus the whole of Botany Municipality
and the suburb of Annandale.
All boundaries that follow a street should include both sides
of the
street in one municipality or the other. The rest of the municipalities
subject to the current inquiry should be reorganised in municipalities
with between 80,000 and 120,000 people, which is the population figure
considered by most urban economists to allow for a sufficient economy
of scale in the provision of local services, to make local government
reasonably economic.
The commissioners undertaking the redistribution of municipal
boundaries should attempt to design municipal areas that have unifying
geographical and regional features.
I believe that these councils of 80,000 to 120,000 people
should
generally be divided into four wards of four. I believe that the ward
principle, with proportional representation (PR) and wards of four, is
vital in local government because it gives people in the wards a
reasonable chance of knowing their representatives and exerting
pressure on them.
In the sphere of local government the lives of local people
are
affected very directly by decisions made by their representatives, and
for this reason a ward system, with a sufficiently large number of
representatives per ward to ensure diversity, is preferable to any
all-in system for the whole municipality, or to smaller,
first-past-the-post arrangements such as the present set-up in Botany,
where there is no diversity at all because of the electoral system.
I believe wards of four with PR is an indispensable principle,
because it ensures that significant groups in any area get
representation, as the quota is 20 per cent. In practice, it will
usually mean that Labor and Liberal get major representation, but as
well you get representation from environmentally minded independents,
Democrats, Greens, conservative independents and others, whose presence
can keep the major groups honest, so to speak.
In local government, a certain tension between Labor, Liberal
and
environmentally minded independents is a very healthy thing and leads
to proper scrutiny of measures affecting people's day-to-day lives.
The broad principle of wards of four with proportional
representation would enshrine a basically democratic arrangement at the
core of local government.
For the other municipalities, the boundaries of Randwick
should be
left untouched, other than some minor adjustments (such as to bring
both sides of a street into one municipality), as Randwick is already
around the top end of the appropriate size.
Waverley and the rest of Woolahra should be amalgamated as one
municipality. The residue of Marrickville should be amalgamated with
Ashfield. The residue of Leichhardt should be amalgamated with
Drummoyne.
All these four new municipalities should have four wards with
four
aldermen elected by proportional representation.
These proposals, while they involve, in several instances,
somewhat
larger municipalities, with councils of 16, actually involve a slight
reduction in the number of aldermen in the whole region, with the
obvious consequent financial saving.
Mayors of all municipalities, including the new City of
Sydney,
should be elected by the aldermen. The present direct election of the
mayor of the City of Sydney is an anomaly. All other representative
bodies, state and federal parliaments and most councils elect their
leader or mayor in the representative chamber, rather than by direct
election, and there is no sound reason why the City of Sydney should be
an exception to this.
Social, historical and demographic considerations involved in
this
proposal
The breaking up of the City of Sydney in the 1960s was a piece
of
political vandalism that was imposed for narrow electoral purposes. The
1948 boundaries of the City of Sydney worked perfectly well and gave
Sydney a strong municipal and corporate identity, economic viability
and a considerable extension of services to residents.
If local government is to be preserved properly, a balance
between
economic viability and democratic considerations has to be struck, and
a combination of a sensible size, with four wards of four, achieves
this result for most areas.
A larger area with five or six wards of four, is appropriate
in the
Sydney urban core.
One feature of all the municipalities that would emerge from
my
proposal is that they would all have a broad social, economic and
cultural mix among the residents, which would give some momentum to a
unified but diverse social and economic life in each municipality.
Proportional representation and wards of four are intrinsic to
ensuring broad representation in local councils, and a significant size
is necessary to ensure a sufficient rate base to make councils
economically viable.
Residents, ratepayers and municipal employees all have a
legitimate
interest in local government. I would urge adoption of the above
proposals, and then negotiation with the appropriate unions
representing municipal employees to ensure no redundancies, and that
the economies of scale resulting financially from the above
amalgamations should result in maintaining the same level of municipal
employment, by way of extending and improving municipal services.
I would stress that the above proposal is a unified whole.
Amalgamations without wards of four and PR would be a disaster because
they would be undemocratic, and would probably be opposed by the
municipal workers unions for the obvious reason that in a less
democratic set-up it would be more difficult for them to advance the
legitimate interests of their members.
The real changes being lobbied for by the governing group in
the
present City of Sydney are particularly unfortunate because they would
add a small, primarily residential area in Glebe, Kings Cross and Surry
Hills, to the overwhelmingly commercial CBD, which would weight the
whole set-up towards the interests of commercial development, and often
against the residential interests of the people in the suburbs added.
(In my view it is fairly obvious that most of the options put
forward by the City of Sydney contain an element of window-dressing,
and that the real option being lobbied for by the current ruling group
in the City of Sydney is the option of incorporating Glebe, Kings Cross
and Surry Hills in the existing City of Sydney area.)
By way of contrast, the carefully considered network of
amalgamations that I've proposed above would produce a major Sydney
municipal region in which the residents and ratepayers of all areas
would have a substantial interest and say, and in which the interests
of those who desire commercial development would be in a proper balance
with the interests of residents, with the interests of residents having
a powerful entrenched role because of the large number of residents
voting and the representative diversity ensured by the Proportional
Representation electoral system in wards of four.
December 18, 2000
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