On the South Coast we now have more ratepayers living in areas with administrators appointed than with elected councillors; which begs a number of questions, including: “Do we really need elected councils at all?”
In 2007 the State Government directly controlled five bodies: Warringah Council, Liverpool City Council, Walgett Shire Council, Tweed Shire Council and Broken Hill City Council; in more recent times the biggies, Wollongong and Shellharbour cities, have been added to the black list.
But Wollongong is not the largest city to fall, in fact our second largest population centre, Newcastle, suffered the same fate over a decade ago and has since returned to democratically elected representatives and has reputedly gone ahead in leaps in bounds – although many would say they also benefited greatly from a timely earthquake which pumped hundreds of millions of new infrastructure into the area under the Better Cities program.
So what are the lesson to be learned?
Clearly councils operating illegally, corruptly or even in circumstances obviously not to the general benefit of all ratepayers are candidates for intervention, however organisations which are inept, unprofessional or just unable to make the correct decisions in a timely fashion usually still fall into the too hard basket, prompting : “it’s all too hard, we’ll have to wait till they give us more obvious grounds for Macquarie Street to flex its muscles.”
It seems councils democratically elected immediately after a period in administration perform markedly better than their predecessor, although the record is not so clear whether this improvement is lasting over a significant period of time, i.e. if once brought to heel the offending areas never lose their way again.
Regular independently audits, a la the Obama stress test, could offer a longer term management improvement and this non-politicised procedure could also monitor the performance of court appointed officials since when administrators have actually completed their mandated tasks, and should step down, is still a very fuzzy area.
About those costly elections
Some would say for many years the value of living in a democracy has been overlooked in this country and whilst we have chosen as a nation to participate in many wars overseas under the flag of spreading or defending democracy we have largely ignored this basic right, and more importantly the associated obligations, in our own homeland – well, certainly at the local level anyway.
But is this a fair assessment? Or, for most people, is it more of a question that with the busy modern lives we all lead the business of grass roots democracy has simply morphed from a part time amateur activity into a full time professional occupation and the days of the average Joe having time to fit in councillor activities, along with all the other work, family and hobby related obligations is now well and truly long gone.
The fact is that unless you are retired or semi-retired most ratepayers cannot realistically consider standing for council and for representation on local issues must turn to people who are actively pursuing a political career through the trade union movement, as public servants, or working for pollies as backroom staffers - all with an eye for a future backbench seat at state or federal level and no real interest at staying over long at the council stepping stone.
It has also been suggested that this trend has largely been responsible for the decline in the quality of people prepared to serve on council for any extended period, a void which has been largely usurped by the growing ranks of professionalised council paid staff and in the Wollongong instance this particular development had massive town planning implications which surfaced spectacularly in detail at the ICAC enquiry.
The oft heard cry for less tiers of public administration has become more subdued in recent times but the logical consequence of this process would be to conduct all council level basic functions (the 3 Rs) Roads, Rubbish and Rates with locally based professional staff and embed the roles requiring ratepayer participation in a state controlled entity.
Of course, any of these types of organizational changes would have a major impact on existing council staff although given the state of the state/nation/world at the moment the time may have come to finally bite the bullet and make the much needed necessary modifications to streamline the shape of local government in the increasingly challenging 21st century. | 
