AMALGAMATION: 21 DECEMBER 2016

Niall Blair supports proper local government … or does he?

Following on from its look at what new Deputy Premier John Barilaro stood for when he gave his inaugural parliamentary speech, Cabonne’s Amalgamation No Thank You (ANTY) group we thought we take a look at what Niall Blair, the new Deputy Leader of the NSW Nationals, said when he was elected.

ANTY’s Chairman, Jock Haynes, found the following quote of particular interest:

“Throughout my time working in local government, I came to appreciate its place in our community as an essential provider of frontline services, particularly in regional communities,” said Blair Niall.

“Heavily criticised at many times, local councils need to be adequately funded to allow them to efficiently and effectively implement the services that their communities require.

“They also need to be empowered to make the decisions about their community that impact on their community, particularly planning decisions, and that is why I support restoring planning powers to local government.

“I am a believer in decentralisation and feel that we need to work with our local councils to ensure they can provide infrastructure to assist with the Coalition’s planned decade of decentralisation, another great policy that the Coalition will deliver in government.”

Jock Haynes responded: “Apart from understanding how vital local government is to the delivery of frontline services in regional communities, such as Cabonne, the other major point he raises is around decentralisation.

“This view of decentralisation is in direct conflict of lower population (but larger area) councils being forcibly merged with larger regional city councils. Examples include Wellington, Guyra, Gloucester, Palerang and potentially Cabonne, Blayney and Oberon all being pushed into a forced ‘merger’ with a much larger city council.

“To suggest that centralisation of staff and management will not occur would be to suggest that no savings will be made — alleged savings being the only case provided by the Government for the mergers.

“Centralisation of representation will also occur, with most of those smaller councils potentially having their number of councillors dropping by between 75 per cent to a possible 100 per cent, with the original city councils always having a majority of the votes on council.

“Given Mr Blair’s views on local government, and those of his new leader, John Barilaro, which we have previously publicised, it is becoming clear just how suffocating and overbearing the leadership of Troy Grant in particular, but also of Premier Mike Baird, became.

“For the views of Mr Barilaro and Mr Blair, as well as the former member for Orange, Andrew Gee, to be so ignored in the party room suggest that probably most of the other National Party MPs were also opposed, albeit silently, to the forced amalgamations that were taking place right across NSW.

“Now Mr Barilaro appears to be serious about looking at the negative impacts of forced mergers in regional NSW, both social, financial and importantly political, we hope that the remaining National MPs will find their voices and stand up for their constituents against Mike Baird.”

Based on media release issued by ANTY.