What to do about the worst type of government: local

The Problem

"Art is meant to challenge, educate and entertain."

So said then Melbourne City Council lord mayor Robert Doyle in 2012 in attempting to justify such expenditures as a $5,500 grant to two "artists" to stack and unstack piles of bricks in Melbourne's CBD. That and other grants such as $25,000 for a dance of choreographed BMX bike skills were authorised in closed meetings and passed through Council as confidential items, despite protestations by Ratepayer Victoria President Jack Davis that grants should be made public before being finalised. Frankston council got into the high spending act a few years later when it indulged in splashing out $150,000 for eleven public, wood and metal seats, but all this was only small beer compared to a later endeavour by Melbourne's erstwhile lord mayor.

In 2013, the Gillard federal government proposed a referendum to change the constitution to allow Canberra to directly make grants to local councils. This was a controversial issue and Victorian councils, led by lord mayor Doyle, committed two million dollars to the 'yes' cause, believing their councils would benefit from the change. Even though the proposal was subsequently cancelled before donations were made, one wonders what ratepayers thought of their money being offered to a political cause. Whatever financial benefits residents might have gained would merely be eventually paid for by an increase in their federal income taxes, or a loss in benefits elsewhere.

Perhaps being influenced by that creative funding below the border, Sydney's well-known lord mayor, Clover Moore, similarly bilked her unfortunate constituents to finance a political cause in 2017 regarding the gay marriage plebiscite. In a unanimous vote by her council, $100,000 was authorised to spend on banners throughout the city, a cash grant to the Australian Marriage Equality activist group, as well as free advertising in council literature and allowing it (but not its opponents ) to use publicly owned properties to operate from. Of course, all this would be perfectly legitimate if 100% of her constituents supported gay marriage, but somehow, one suspects there still would have been non-supporters, non-supporters who would resent their rates not going towards the municipality, but towards a political cause they disagreed with.

As may not come as a surprise the boards of councils often get sacked for misbehaviour. Last year Queensland's Logan City Council went under administration when the mayor and seven other councillors were charged with corruption.

Currently the NSW Central Coast Council is in the process of being sacked due to, amongst other things, getting the council $89 million in debt and not being able to maintain wages for more than 2,000 employees. Travel over the border to Victoria and three councils, South Gippsland Shire, Casey City and Whittlesea have all been sacked by the state government in only 10 months, the latter having five different CEOs in as many years and spending $500,000 on legal fees for internal disputes.

From the infamous Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall notoriety of New York City in the late 19^th century, to the present, council maladministration, if not outright corruption, has too often been co-driver with council governance.

The Solution: Stakeholder Democracy

Unlike two unfortunate constants in life which we all learn to accept, death and taxes, this occasional swamp in our town square might be something we do not have to accept with resignation.

In attempting to ascertain the roots of the problem, one could look at the three government levels together, and note that what significantly makes Local government stand out from Federal and State, is that with it there is a loose connection between those who elect the governing body and the stakeholders who live under it. Practically all municipalities contain a plethora of properties occupied by businesses: individual shops and offices, industrial parks, shopping malls, service stations, sports centres, hotels, theatres, high rise rental apartment buildings, etc., of which none of the owners have voting rights, or rights proportional to their financial investment or the rates they pay.

Might it not be an idea to extend the franchise to property owners in proportion to the stake they have in the community?

A current councillor would probably say that as State and Federal governments are strictly one person, one vote (OPOV), should not Local also be the same. In response to that, apart from the fact that both the Senate and Western Australian upper house are, strictly speaking, not OPOV, that principle is still appropriate for State and Federal because those governments are, in the main, institutions debating and implementing politically philosophic questions of human rights, efficient economic, health and criminal justice systems, and otherwise of peace, order and the general welfare for the people of the community. Compare that to your local council whose raison d'être/mission statement is mostly a local environment management service (parks, libraries, roads and rubbish).

And just as the board of a public company is appointed by shareholders, and proportional to the number of shares each holder owns, so the council management team could be appointed by stakeholders (property owners) and proportional to the number of properties each stakeholder owns.

Do the transients really care about their current municipality?

With reforming the franchise, in most situations only property holders would be granted the vote and as many as units (house, apartment, shop, office suit, unit in industrial park, etc) they possess. Bearing in mind the current high level of non-voters at council elections, it would be fair to say that a large portion of that figure represented temporary residents, leasing. A property owner could, if desired, legally surrender his/her vote to a renter as a part of lease negotiation if his community spirit was not as strong as that of the prospective tenant.

When one looks at the very built up Melbourne City municipality, one might guess that approximately half of the stakeholders, comprising owners of office blocks, department stores, restaurants, theatres and shops etc., currently get only a miniscule number of votes, while the remainder, the residents, get most. Then bear in mind the approximate half of all residents who would be leasing. Why would such people, temporarily in the municipality, bother voting at all, and if they do, consider the long-term ramifications of their vote if a short-term benefit is offered? If things later go bad because of their vote, they simply pack up and move to another municipality.

But Does Our Democracy Suffer?

The claim that extending the franchise would be a blight on our democratic principles might wane when considering further existing drawbacks of our system.

Unlike citizens of Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia, Turkey, the Philippines or the United States, Australians do not have the democratic right to directly appoint their state or federal chief executive, ie, the Premier or Prime Minister. Voters for smaller parties or independents do not even have an indirect right, and no supporters, big party or small, have a say when chief executives are changed between elections, something that has become an unfortunate regular occurrence in the last decade. Moving on to the next branch of government in this democracy, unlike Switzerland, Japan or the United States, Australian voters are denied the right to appoint or remove members of the judiciary. And regarding the criminal justice system, it is our Public Prosecutor who leads the charge in protecting us by bringing suspected felons to trial and conviction where appropriate. But he/she is public in name only, unlike some overseas jurisdictions where the District Attorney/Chief Prosecutor is, in fact, appointed by the public in an election.

Thus, are we to assume it is acceptable in Australia that the important positions of Premiers, senior judges, heads of prosecution departments, or even the most important job of all, that of Prime Minister, are not appointed directly by the public, but what is important is that the local government body to look after our roads, rates and rubbish, is completely democratic?

In summation, to save ourselves the somewhat regular embarrassments of the antics of local councils, the suffrage should be extended to all stakeholders of the municipality. Residents merely renting accommodation with no long-term commitment would not ordinarily have the vote, but property owners would, and as many as the individual residences or business units they own. Profit being an extremely compelling motive, the newly enfranchised, the multi-property owners, would have the incentive to vote responsibly so as to maintain a safe, clean and pleasant environment for their clients. And in doing such they would have little desire to occasionally welcome refugees, declare nuclear free zones, mandate all staff engage in diversity/intersectional aware/safe space training, or visitors to Town Hall made to declare their preferred pronouns before making such inquiries as to which day green waste is collected.