Last month’s Local Government Focus (February 2015) featured a front-page story on the subject of amalgamations.
As reported on www.lgfocus.com.au both the Western Australian Government and the Western Australian Local Government Association have now walked away from the mergers, with the entire process being put ‘on hold’.
The decision was made after ratepayers in the affected councils voted on whether they supported amalgamations.
In order to reject a merger, councils needed a majority ‘no’ vote from a minimum 50 percent voter turnout.
If a council did not achieve a 50 percent turnout, amalgamations could have gone ahead as planned.
The City of South Perth received a 77.75 percent ‘no’ vote, but from a voter turnout of only 50.83 percent.
The City of Kwinana was in a similar situation with a strong 87.98 percent ‘no’ vote from a turnout of 52.93 percent.
The City of Freemantle also voted against merging with the City of East Fremantle following a similarly slim result.
After announcing the results, the City of Fremantle Chief Executive Officer Graeme Mackenzie pointed out the problem with the whole process.
“The irony is that if those that voted ‘yes’ had abstained, we would be proceeding with the amalgamation because the percentage turnout would not have been sufficient for a result binding on government.
“The whole poll process is therefore highly flawed.”
It’s difficult to tell if the results would have been different had the voter turnout been higher
or lower.
For the City of Kwinana the results are tough to dispute, given that the vote had the highest voter turnout in its polling history.
The ideal way to solidify the legitimacy of future votes would be a higher turnout through either compulsory voting or encouraging a more politically engaged community.
However changes need to be made so that throwing away your vote is never someone’s best option to get their preferred result.
