City boss slams amalgamation report

The report by Professor Brian Dollery recommends councils should share services instead of merging, arguing amalgamations almost always fail to deliver lower rates and charges.

The report was commissioned by Northern Tasmanian Development, an organisation consisting of the eight northern councils of which Launceston City Council is the biggest financial backer.

Mr Dobrzynski said the report ignored the reality of local government in the North including what he described as the major impediments to Launceston's economic development under multiple councils.

``This alone is a damning indictment on the inadequacies of the report,'' he said.

``The report appears to be little more than a cut and paste by the author from previous work . . . it pursues his penchant for broad-scale resource sharing as the panacea to all the ills of the current anachronistic 20th century local government framework in Northern Tasmania. ''

Professor Dollery told this month's Local Government Association of Tasmania conference that resource sharing would only lead to modest savings, if any, and real reform must include guaranteed funding streams from the state or federal governments.

But Mr Dobrzynski said the report had achieved its ``purpose of ensuring that no meaningful reform occurs''.

Mr Dobrzynski said the report would ``provide succour to those councils within the region seeking to assume the ostrich position to do nothing, conveniently avoiding the reality of the state and region's circumstances''.

Mr Dobrzynski said it was astounding that the report did not mention the ``inequity of 65,000 rate payers within the Launceston City Council area continuing to fund . . . facilities enjoyed by 106,000 people'' in the city and more in the region.

He also accused Professor Dollery of highlighting failed forced mergers when there were more successful endeavours in Victoria and New Zealand.