The upcoming council elections will serve to stoke the merger flames. The feeling that communities’ rights to be heard have been stripped away will be cemented next month as they vote on new councillors.
In many cases, voters will feel a proportion of candidates won’t represent their interests.
In areas where a number of candidates are strongly anti merger, being elected may be seen as justification to challenge the government to unscramble the merger egg.
This will fan the flames for demergers as a platform for the state election – especially for Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, which will exploit any weaknesses in the Nationals in a seat such as Cootamundra.
A state election win for them would shift the message from being about a protest vote against the Nats, to the Shooters being a more serious force.
Meanwhile, there will also be pressure on these newly elected councils to get hold of some of the state government’s $4.5 billion record surplus – perhaps that will be a pork barrelling opportunity for the government in council areas where uneasiness remains.
It would be one of few tricks it could pull after the Greyhound debacle and the more recent water scandal, which has made it the target of multiple inquiries.
One upside of the merged councils will be the bigger pool of candidates – some councils getting up towards 30 - that voters will have to make heads and tails of.
It is possible the merged councils will therefore have a stronger skill set representing them than the sum of the pre-merged councils. However, the success of these up-sized councils will be seen through whether financial sustainability can be obtained.
The mergers were the Coalition’s solution to the high number of financially unviable councils (as was controversially proved by its means test).
If ratepayers continue to hear a lack of funds as the reason why local infrastructure and services are not maintained, then the mergers won’t have achieved much.
There are also challenges ahead where merged councils will have to equalise rates. There will be an expectation that services improve where this occurs. This is bound to leave a bad taste where mergers are already on the nose.
So however you look at it, the forced mergers will continue to haunt the Coalition, even if the council elections go smoothly.
