It does not take much to stir up the repeated cry: “We don’t want self-government we just want a local council.”
But events of the past week might show the truth of Oscar Wilde’s adage: In the world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
The local-council brigade naively imagine that a local council will be more efficient; that rates and charges would fall; and we would live happily under the benign dictatorship of a federal minister.
In Alice Springs this week, at the meeting of the Local Government Association of Australia, it was made fairly plain that local government has inefficiencies and deficiencies which are felt everywhere in Australia except the ACT.
Federal MP David Hawker, who chairs the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration, painted a fairly grim picture of the funding for local government.
The enemy was cost shifting, he said. Typically a state government would announce a new program with much fanfare in the hope of gaining political kudos. A year or two later, the state government would withdraw its funding and sponsorship and leave the program in the hands of local government. By then, the expectations of the local community had been raised. They wanted the program it to continue and did not care which in government delivered it. Local Government copped the rap.
Hawker cited a Tasmanian council having to spend nearly 20 per cent of its total expenditure on responsibilities cunningly devolved from state government. There were many other examples. They included things like bridges, animal-control enforcement, environmental management, public health and emergency services.
The Commonwealth provides some money directly to local government in the form of federal assistant grants, or FAGS. It is about the only discretionary money at the councils’ disposal. But Hawker concluded, “The bottom line is that FAGS have been used to prop up state government programs, while councils face a blow-out in infrastructure and assets costs.”
Cost shifting is not new in Australia. At the state and federal government it has been rife for decades, especially in the health system. It can get to the ridiculous stage where, for example, chemotherapy patients being treated at state hospitals as in-patients are asked to buy their drugs the day before treatment from external pharmacies so that costs can be shifted to the federally funded Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
Now, it seems that the inefficient folly of cost shifting has reached a new art between the state and local government levels. But not in the ACT, thank heavens. Our much-derided ACT Government embraces both state and local functions. If people want an unsafe bridge widened in Fyshwick or a new pre-school in Woop Woop, they line up with other priorities such as mental health, the refurbishment of a shopping centre, or resealing Woop Woop Drive. The single Government can slide money across those responsibilities much more efficiently as needs require, rather than having two levels of government with fixed bases of finance. And the political responsibility for dealing with those priorities in the ACT lies with one government which is accountable every three years.
Moreover, administration costs in the ACT are better than most states and councils.
There is one good thing about the town council idea, tough. And it could easily be adopted in the ACT without rearranging the system of Government. Local Councils do much more in public than our government. Recently, for example, the ACT Cabinet had a fatuous idea of going to the people by meeting in further flung parts of Canberra. The first meeting was in Tuggeranong. Alas it was in held in secret. A closed door in Tuggeranong is no better than a closed door in Civic. Secrecy may be fine for state responsibilities. But when it comes to local-government responsibilities, the Cabinet should meet in public – just like town councils.
Perhaps the secrecy is one of the reasons for such fury in Canberra over development issues.
(And while we are at it, maybe board meetings of the National Capital Authority should also be public.) Obviously, the tender process has to be secret at first, but otherwise publicity is a great counterfoil to people being disaffected by their government.
Council finances have got worse over time. In the mid-1970s, the states provided about 10 per cent of the revenue of local councils. That has now shrunk to less than 5 per cent. Meanwhile user charges have gone from about 10 per cent to nearly 25 percent of revenue. And rates have fallen from 60 per cent of revenue to about 45 per cent.
One of the enduring inefficiencies of governance in Australia is its three tiers and the misalignment of responsibility for raising money on one hand and the responsibility for spending money on the other. Government would be more effective if those who earnt the political kudos for spending the money also copped the political opprobrium for raising it in first place. Instead, we have a system where state governments can sling blame up the line to the federal government for failing to provide money and down the line to local government for failing to provide services.
True, there was a referendum 25 years ago which voted against self-government. But many of those who voted are dead or have left the ACT. Most present Canberra adults were too young to vote, or were not even born. And it was at a time of Federal largesse.
Can you imagine Canberraphobic John Howard and Wilson Tuckey running all the state functions in the ACT? They would cost shift down to whatever local government we had like fury and they would wash their hands of blame, telling Canberrans to vent their fury on the local government. They would probably starve the ACT of state-type funding because there are no marginal seats here.
Give it away folks. A town council sounds very cozy and cheap, but the noises from Alice Springs this week reveal Canberrans would have more to lose and nothing to gain by going that way.