UP TO 600 people are expected to show their support for Walcha to stand alone as a council body as a last-ditch fightback at a state government inquiry there on Wednesday.
Walcha Mayor Janelle Archdale believes there will be so many protesters prepared to stand up and be counted over the Fit for the Future amalgamation plan that they won’t be able to fit in the doors of the local club.
“They’ll be standing out in the car park if we get 600 people there, and I’ll be surprised and disappointed if we get less than that,” she said yesterday.
Under the Fit for the Future reforms, Walcha has been proposed to merge with Tamworth Regional Council, but there has been a groundswell of opposition since the IPART recommendation was announced in early December.
Cr Archdale was speaking ahead of this week’s public inquiries under the Fit for the Future process, in which individuals and groups have the chance to put their cases forward over the state government plans.
Her comments come as federal MP Barnaby Joyce announced at the weekend he’d this week lobby high-profile media and politicians to save Walcha, on the heels of former MP Tony Windsor exhorting Walcha to fight on, because he believed it could win the battle.
At Guyra, where the proposal is for the shire to be merged with Armidale Dumaresq council, organisers expect a similar big turnout at meetings in Guyra and Armidale on Thursday.
On Wednesday, Cr Archdale will be among scores of people who have registered to speak at the Walcha meeting.
Yesterday she said she would carry the flag for giving evidence about the council’s solid financial state, its Fit for the Future status and sustainability, and its unique community of interests that set it apart from other councils.
“And the inconsistency of the merger proposal has to be showcased, because that inconsistency is what they have proposed and is something that makes no sense to anyone – not the councils, not the public, not the politicians,” she said.
Cr Archdale said if the proposed merger plan was endorsed by the state government, then it would be purely on political grounds, because the shire met the overriding Fit for the Future criteria in other areas.
“Under the local government reform process, Walcha has been hard at work turning our council’s financial status and infrastructure backlog around, and the process has been very good for us,” she said.
“We’ve taken a good, hard look at ourselves.
“We’ve come from having a deficit of some $440,000 to recording a $1.2 million surplus for the financial year ended 2015, and we look like posting a surplus for this year of over $4 million.”
The community group Save Walcha Council is mobilised and is expected to also send speakers to the two Tamworth meetings later that day and evening. Cr Archdale and general manager Jack O’Hara and a busload of supporters will attend too, but the biggest numbers are expected in Walcha.
Cr Archdale said the last anti-amalgamation protest rally there in 2010, when there had been earlier moves to join Guyra, Uralla, Armidale and Walcha together, at the multi-purpose centre had attracted more than 700 people. She said the mood against the merger with Tamworth was exactly the same and just as strong.
Earlier last year, Cr Archdale said the council was extremely close to its community and had been speaking with residents for some 11 years about proposed mergers – and it knew exactly how the community felt.
Walcha had about 1800 voters and a shire population of 3200, she said.
Walcha shares boundaries with the Tamworth, Uralla, Armidale Dumaresq, Kempsey, Port Macquarie Hastings, Upper Hunter and Great Taree local government bodies.
- This story first appeared in the Northern Daily Leader.
