TASMANIA is stuck with too many councils for its population because these lazy tribal kingdoms are untouchable. They know they have the upper hand on amalgamation.
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It is ludicrous for a tiny state like Tasmania to have 29 councils, each with their own planning schemes and almost 300 elected representatives.
It has taken almost two decades to reform the chaotic planning system and water and sewerage delivery, mainly because these were the services that could be used to justify the number of councils, even though they ignored their responsibilities.
They ignored a growing backlog of maintenance and improvements for decades - a core function - the basic delivery of water and sewerage services. But, rather than force them to pay the price, the state government made ratepayers and taxpayers pay the price by relieving councils of the burden and creating separate water authorities.
Our rates kept increasing and we were lumped with a whole new water and sewerage billing system.
So, if you create a uniform planning system, and separate water and sewerage services, you surely don't need so many councils.
This is a classic failure of administration, like the concept of 'resource sharing', the council defence against amalgamation, when really it is an admission by councils that there are too many.
The fickle nature of politics will dictate that this gross inefficiency in local government will prevail, because of the maths of the next election.
The Hodgman government will win a second term. It's a reasonable assumption, given the party's emphatic landslide last year.
The Libs picked up 15 seats to win majority government for the first time since 1992. They lost their majority at the 1996 election and lost to Labor in 1998, partly because of the attempt to force council amalgamation.
Recent polling suggests the Libs will naturally lose a seat in Braddon and possibly one in Franklin. Northern Midlands councillor and former Lyons Labor veteran Michael Polley believes this makes the Libs vulnerable in 2018 and effectively rules out forced amalgamations.
"You have these tribal Liberal areas in Lyons, in the highlands and Hamilton-Ouse regions. These people abandoned the Liberals in 1998 over forced amalgamations and the party would be too afraid to make the same mistake twice," Polley says.
In 1998 he ran rampant in Lyons on the local government issue. The Rundle government asked the local government board to determine a suitable number of councils, and effectively dealt itself out of the game for a year, leading up to the election. It was dumb politics.
If the Liberals lost a seat in Braddon and Franklin in 2018 they would still have a majority of one. Hence they are not about to gamble a seat in Lyons, and majority government, on radical municipal reform.
Local Government Minister Peter Gutwein is pushing the envelope as far as he can without upsetting the tribes. They know he won't push any harder.
Perhaps, in the absence of a big stick, a carrot may be required. If the government was able to tempt the tribes with financial rewards for serious merger negotiations it may work. The government could justify the outlay if it could showcase the benefits and savings to ratepayers gained from fewer councils.
The trick would be to neutralise any scare campaign either from the other political parties or from the councils themselves, but it won't be an easy task, asking councils to write their own epitaphs.
It's the NIMBY principle. Tasmanians want reform as long as it doesn't affect them.
And so, councils survive, with less work to do, longer electoral terms, and they survive on voter apathy because elections are still not compulsory. They're cruising. The untouchables.