Smash’n’run or reform with care: local government in NSW

The failures of the long-standing top-down planning system are seen in the “spatial blindness” that has damaged the prospects of Western Sydney as well as in the varying demographic projections and State interventions in site and area planning. Councils have Local Environment Plans (LEPs) which date back to the early 1990s and have been modified 70 and more times and even then, the NSW Department of Planning (DOP) has missed errors in streetscape and site elements. The recent rail and transport visioning documents cannot guide regional and local planning in the bulk of Sydney’s Western economy because they were largely ignored. The planning challenge there – including balancing population and employment growth, reducing car dependency and achieving prosperity - is so serious that the Macquarie Street approach cannot provide a sound basis for intergenerational improvement, not without a local bottom-up and solidly based holistic planning and funding cycle.

Almost all of the alternative models at the moment go no further than forced amalgamations but there are two involving “planning” as well as “governance”. There are some “regressive” themes.

Widely rumoured is the wider introduction of popularly elected mayors and restoration of their pre-1993 executive responsibilities (breaking the fundamental concept of separation of function).  The Allan idea of removal of infrastructural functions (below) would reduce the significance of this.  However, the inability to remove incompetent popularly elected mayors and the lack of scrutiny committees as in the U.K. are impediments. There is a documented tendency to nepotism, corruption, conflict and inefficiency, and a lack of well-established benefits (the conclusion of the only local academic study Inam aware of as discussed in the Australian Journal of Political Science in 2011).

Professor Percy Allan and the Urban Taskforce have taken up the former’s Secession – A manifesto for an independent Balmain local council (2001) arguing for groups of say ten councils to have a shared services centre, removing about 90 per cent of their staffing. Planning reforms would be through the existing mechanisms such as expert panels. Councils would negotiate service agreements in line with budget contributions.

The benefits have been assessed by various parties and “we are obliged to draw the modest conclusion that while the thoughtful selection and application of shared service arrangements would almost certainly induce cost savings, it could not by itself solve the acute problems of financial sustainability confronting a majority of Australian local councils” (Journal of Public Administration 2009).

I have authored “Creative Re-construction of NSW Local Governance”. It takes a holistic approach to the structure and culture of local and regional planning and finances and goes further than any other proposal while staying within Australia’s culture and traditions. The current local government review processes have not posted this on their websites although the planning review did.

In short, the Joint Regional Planning Panels would be removed, Regional Planning Boards would be obviated, and the Urban Taskforce’s suggested Shared Service Centres would parallel the Regional Planning Councils (RPC’s) in respect of commercial service delivery but not community governance. Appeals on rezoning, development applications or whatever would be on matters of law, not merit. Justice would be direct and immediate on disputes within councils. The RPCs would relieve local government of much of the complexity and duress of direct service delivery but give control over negotiated service standards and adherence. The planning professionals would be corporatised, remunerated and trained appropriately, relieved of interference and micro-management, and sent back into communities and LGAs in far more effective ways. Democracy would be reinforced through the alignment of consultation zones (precincts) with electoral boundaries (wards). A superior voting system is available from Australian and U.K. practice.

Most importantly, democratic processes would be linked with “willingness to pay”, heading towards a sustainable infrastructure funding cycle.