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The sale of community assets including environmental land, rate hikes and service cuts are expected to continue on the NSW Central Coast even though the public was told the merger between its two old councils in 2016 would result in a “mega council” with a seat at the table to negotiate more funding from the state and improved services for the community. So where, asks Jackie Pearson, do we go from here?
It can be much easier to create a mess than it is to clean one up. On the Central Coast NSW politicians of all stripes appear to have drawn that magical ‘line in the sand’, moved on and told residents and rate payers to get on with it following the 2020 suspension and, finally, the 2022 sacking of the elected councillors. What happened… happened. We’ve had our public inquiry – the public should be satisfied and just move on.
The councillors, deemed ultimately responsible for the financial mismanagement of the Council even though they had no control over the finances other than to ‘sign off’ on budgets and reports, were sacked. New processes are being put in place and we have a benevolent administrator taking care of us until the next time we are permitted to have a local election – beautiful one day and perfect the next.
Why, then, do so many still feel so aggrieved? Here are a few good reasons.
Loss of democracy
The Australian Constitution does not provide for local government. It only exists at the behest of each state or territory. Arguably there’s nothing very democratic about local government in Australia at all but, when you lose your elected representatives, you soon realise the importance of the role they play – to varying degrees of effectiveness.
Most councillors do their best to look after the interests of their community for little money. A few rotten eggs do get intoxicated on the “power” and some manage to become very wealthy from humble beginnings, but that’s hardly limited to the bottom tier of government in Australia these days.
Council meetings, particularly with 15 councillors attempting to represent close to 350,000 constituents (most with no former political experience), can be messy but at least there is debate, questions are asked and attempts are made to provide the public with some transparency.
The absence of elected councillors has already resulted in some decisions on the Central Coast that have angered the population. The first was a hefty land rate increase to facilitate the repayment of the debt racked up by staff and refinanced at commercial rates by the administrator following the Local Government Minister’s refusal to provide any other solution. I know that’s a long sentence so allow me to reiterate.
Over $300 million worth of debt was rolled into the Central Coast Council from the former Gosford and Wyong entities.
By the time the councillors were suspended that debt had increased by around another $150 million.
The councillors ran deficits because they didn’t know they had run out of cash and staff were spending restricted reserves.
Consequently Rik Hart and Dick Persson set about fixing the debt problem by negotiating loans with banks at commercial rates.
Commercial loans had to be used, according to Hart, because the government would not deliver a bailout in any form.
The cost of those loans has been passed on to rate payers as special rate variations.
Services have also been cut and a substantial number of jobs lost. Local roads on the Central Coast are in disrepair yet the Administrator decides it is appropriate to spend money moving a fountain from one park to another.
IPART is also currently considering a substantial increase to water and sewer rates – less than the Administrator has asked for but it will be adjusted by inflation for the next four years which is a bit of a kick in the pants when the CPI is above five per cent and rising.
The public can register to speak at a pre-council meeting forum but speakers are expected to hand across a copy of their notes in advance. Council meetings on the Coast have gone from a frequency of one per week to one per month.
We had, under Central Coast Council, one of the lowest per capita rates of local government representation in the world. Now we have none.
Due process not followed
Over 20,000 citizens petitioned the NSW Parliament for a judicial inquiry into the collapse of Central Coast Council but we were told that was not available under the Local Government Act so we had to settle for the McCulloch Inquiry.
Parts of the McCulloch Inquiry were a farce. It appears the NSW Office of Local Government did not know how to live stream a Zoom or Teams meeting so the first few days were a debacle.
Some of the evidence presented was compelling. It was painfully clear that at least one councillor had been personally traumatised by her treatment at the hands of staff. The live performance by two former Wyong Shire Mayors, one the witness, the other his legal counsel, was memorable, including the lawyer’s denied request to “cross examine” the first Central Coast Mayor – you cannot make this stuff up.
The inquiry concluded in mid-October 2021 but the public was not given a due date for Commissioner McCulloch’s report. We waited patiently through the summer, the Australia Day long weekend, return to school. Labor MPs ended up doing some media calling for the new Local Government Minister Wendy Tuckerman to release the report.
McCulloch’s report was dated February 10. On Thursday, March 17, which was not a sitting day, Parliamentary Secretary for the Central Coast and Member for Terrigal, Adam Crouch, announced on his facebook page that the report had been released and gave a link. Administrator Rik Hart published a statement and a link to the report on the same day, making it clear he supported Tuckerman’s response, which was to sack the councillors.
The report wasn’t tabled in parliament until March 22, when Crouch again announced on his facebook page that he had given “notice of motion that the House notes the findings of Commissioner McCulloch’s report into Central Coast Council. I also thanked the Minister for Local Government, Wendy Tuckerman MP for ensuring those found responsible were held accountable.”
Member for Gosford, Liesl Tesch called the report “a pretty disappointing outcome” on her facebook page. “It is very clear that the Central Coast needs financial assistance as a result of this forced amalgamation yet the government’s not coming to the party,” Tesch said.
Harris was quoted in the Coast Community News as welcoming the publishing of the report and supported the notion of separating the region’s water and sewerage services into a water authority but said he didn’t want the assets privatised.
It was an interesting coincidence that within weeks of the sacking of six Labor councillors, two Liberals (two had already resigned) and five independents, state and federal Labor MPs were given the media running on a Liberal Government announcement that the long-awaited upgade of the road through Wyong town centre would be fully funded by state and government grants.
Crouch and Liberal candidate for Dobell Michael Feneley were strangely quiet. Member for Wyong and Shadow Minister for the Coast had been calling for the road upgrade for decades but the timing and Liberal downplay of substantial state and federal funding was interesting.
Very little commentary has followed the release of the McCulloch report from any of the state MPs, Local Government Minister or Shadow Minister. Move on, people, move on.
Election date
The public may find it a bit easier to move on when it is told, unequivocally, the date of its next local government election. Hart told local media last week that he’d had a bit of a look at his tea leaves and thought there would be a Central Coast local government election in 2023 but probably not until after the State election in March.
It is unclear whether Rik Hart will remain in his position as Administrator until the next election. The whole of NSW is due to have its next round of local council elections in 2024. Does that mean Central Coast would have local government elections two years in a row? Or does it mean the next lot of councillors (heaven help them) will be in their chairs for five years to bring the region back into sync with the rest of the state?
My best bet is Central Coast Council will remain under Administration until at least September 2024 and, perhaps, beyond. If the current NSW Government is re-elected next March it has big plans for this region as its “lifestyle city” in the six cities planned to sprawl along the climate-threatened east coast from the Illawarra in the south to Newcastle in the north. That’s code language for overdevelopment and mass destruction of nature. If there is a change of government, who knows which proposals they will keep and which they will throw out.
Who will run?
When the Central Coast finally gets to elect its next lot of councillors who, given what happened to the first batch, will be prepared to run for office? Who will be prepared to sip from such a poisoned chalice?
Ongoing selloffs
The sale of public assets to bring the council’s books back into the black has been the most galling part of this period of administration for those wishing to retain what is left of the bushland habitat that has been characteristic of this region and deter over-development.
Rik Hart and Dick Persson promised the asset sales would not be a “fire sale” and they promised that no environmental land would be sold. Both promises have been broken. The public is told it is too late to stop the sale of assets. In fact, Rik Hart, at the April Council meeting, attempted to rescind a motion from the former councillors to reclassify tranches of land from operational to community so they could not be sold. What reason would Hart have for keeping land operational other than its potential sale?
Legislative Council inquiry needed
The first 23 pages of Commissioner Roslyn McCulloch’s report to the Central Coast Council Public Inquiry read like a justification for a full Legislative Council inquiry into the whole fudged amalgamation process.
McCulloch made the point of reminding readers that amalgamation was not a foregone conclusion for Wyong and Gosford – the establishment of a Central Coast Joint Organisation was given serious consideration because the two former councils had a history of working together and shared water and sewer assets.
McCulloch reported that in January 2016 the merger proposal for Gosford and Wyong was published.
“In his foreword the Minister for Local Government listed the benefits of the proposed merger including a total financial benefit of $135 million over a 20-year period, a projected 119 per cent improvement in annual operating results, potentially reducing the reliance on rate increases through Special Rate Variations (SRV) and a greater capacity to manage and reduce the infrastructure backlog.”
None of those promises is likely to eventuate and that cannot all be the responsibility of the 15 councillors elected in September 2017 and dismissed three years later.
On 1 May 2019 the Audit Office published its report entitled Workforce Reform in Three Amalgamated Councils (Workplace Reform Report). It looked at Inner West Council, Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council and Snowy Monaro Regional Council.
The two regional councils didn’t expect to achieve savings or efficiencies from workplace reform within the first three years of amalgamation, according to the report.
The report also said that amalgamated councils should be routinely reporting to their communities about the costs and benefits of amalgamation. Councillors interviewed by The Point shortly after their suspension said every request they made for information about the status and cost of the amalgamation was stonewalled by staff.
Staff protections under the Local Government Act were cited as the main reason for stopping efficiency gains and that was certainly a factor within Central Coast Council but there is much that went on that cannot be explained by those restrictions.
“There were also administrative and logistical barriers to achieving efficiencies including the need to maintain duplicated information technology systems until an integrated enterprise system could be implemented, inconsistent policies, procedures customs and practices that needed to be aligned, and significant staff time devoted to recruitment.
“None of the Councils concerned could adequately assess the effectiveness of the changed management efforts.”
Following the 2016 amalgamations new councils were required to prepare benefits realisation plans for the Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC), according to McCulloch but in mid-2017 amalgamation monitoring and support was transferred to the Office of Local Government. “After that time no mandatory reporting of benefits realisation was required.”
These comments from McCulloch barely skim the surface of a festering sore spread across at least some of the 17 amalgamated councils created from the 39 that were sacked in May 2016. The current NSW Government certainly doesn’t have the appetite to lift the rug and have a good look at what’s been swept under.
It remains to be seen whether the Labor Opposition and cross benches will tackle the state’s local government problem before the March 2023 election. A Legislative Council inquiry would appear to be the best antiseptic. Labor has undertaken that, if elected, it would give residents living in merged councils an opportunity to vote on demerging. Why wait – why not push for an upper house inquiry now?
What you can do
1. Tell us your story. If you live on the Central Coast or in any other amalgamated council area, share your experiences with The Point and we will gladly publish
2. If you believe the NSW Government must do better in terms of its management of local government and own up to its amalgamation disasters, write to the Minister for Local Government, Shadow Minister and your local state MP to tell them how you feel.
3. Ever thought of running for council? Elections are held in NSW every four years in September. This NSW Government wants to further corporatise local councils, suggesting councillors should have business or financial management experience prior to running for office. Perhaps a better approach would be to ensure Chief Financial Officers and CFOs have local government knowledge and experience before being recruited to those positions
