Vegetable Love or Time’s Winged Chariots: local government reform as real change or short term response to frustrations in State economic policy setting level?

Is it just me or do others have lots of questions about what is behind the latest cycle of State government-imposed reform on local government?

Have any other people with an interest in local government got the feeling that the higher up the elected food chain policy makers get, the more simple they want life to be? 

That complexity is the failure-point of political success and to be avoided at all costs?

By now a number of local government stakeholders have been presented with the Minister for Planning and Local Government, the Hon Peter Gutwein MHA’s thoughts on reforming local government.  We’ve all had the power point, selected documents and Q&A.

For those not invited to the forums, the Minister has set a single objective and timelines in which he wants it to be.  He wants Tasmania to be the “most competitive and attractive place to live, work and invest in the entire country” and he wants it done with a voluntary amalgamation investigation process. 

Firstly, at the Council level in 2015.

Secondly at the Local Government Board level, with transitions ready for commencement by the end of 2016.

Don’t get me wrong – if an amalgamation or shared service or fee for service arrangement is the best cost-benefit analysis proven way ahead for what is needed now and into the future for Tasmania, all well and good.  I remain open to suggestions and of course, I’m politically independent, so there’s plenty of opportunity for debate across a wide range of ideas.

So what’s my problem, then?

I just have this nagging feeling that in pursuing a single policy approach, Tasmania is doomed if the focus is only on local government activities and not whole of State.

By now, if you’ve read any of my other blogs, you’ll be familiar with this concern.  And if you haven’t, let me repeat it. 

Is it only just local government activities we should be reforming or given the policy behaviour of State and Federal governments since Federation towards local government, is it not a whole of State service delivery policy that we need to rethink to get the sort of economic outcomes the Minister wants?

So who speaks to policy reform?

It’s the language around the demand for reform that is causing a few alarm bells to go off.  Let’s look at how reform demands are publicly framed.  How has this whole debate being defined in the past few years?  Picking up on the messages out in the community:

• The Property Council defines the problem as too many Councils costing too much with too high rates charged and too much “red and green tape” that impedes the activities of their members to develop/speculate/accumulate property.  They argue for less Councils so resulting in less rates and charges for their members and less restrictions on “growing the pie”.  And they back this up with their tailor-made economic research to fit their arguments of efficiencies to be gained.
• Various Mayors of small rural councils define the problem as wanting to address their Council’s lack of financial capacity to provide services their communities demand in line with other areas of the State.  They lament the growing impediments of cost-shifting where the lack of funding by State and Federal governments causes them increasing problems in balancing their books and therefore cautious to spend on infrastructure.  Other Mayors want to achieve reforms on a regional scale yet are held back by system constraints that in effect penalise reform (loss of size of FAGs once Councils get bigger is a key issue for some; lack of fully delegated powers to take on whole of region issues (ie roads) is another). 
• State governments see local government reform as a political issue with the proven capacity of losing them government (hence the mantra, no forced reforms), yet an arena in which they have to be seen to be doing something.  The ever-present stormy economic clouds make local government finances a handy distraction, happy to isolate each Council via the Auditor-General’s reports yet not taking a whole of State analysis of cause and effect.  At the same time, if they can’t achieve their particular vision of their State of progress, local government has proven an always useful sacrificial goat.
• The community bemoans the always increasing rates and charges.  The recent well-meaning policy shift at the State level to improve the supply of clean water and functioning sewerage systems has resulted in greater costs and this is being sheeted home to local government.  Ratepayers are seeing what is done in other areas of the State and demanding the same services at the same or lesser costs.  Yet they easily turn on the other Councils as being too many, and broadly accept the statement less Councils will cost less and charge less.  Ha!  Did our rates go down after the 1993 amalgamations? No.
• The Auditor-General has developed a number of very informative reports on the financial state of local government across the State.  How the performance of Councils rate is something that is used in the media to label local government as financially irresponsible and therefore ripe for reform.  The language is financial and governance.  (As an aside, why the Auditor-General does not hold hearings on a “please explain” basis as to why elected members vote the way they do, and thereby identify the local culture that influences Council decisions?  And then perhaps form some pertinent questions on State government cost shifting from that?)
• At the elected level, a number of Mayors like the idea of amalgamation as they see regional benefits, particularly for the smaller councils with little in the way of population or major rate payers.  However, the issue of representation of local community concern is something that appears across local government, whether at the suburban level or out in the rural councils.  Financial reform is a given as needing work; no elected member would disagree once they’ve been through a budget review.  However, and this is where many voices, not just mine, are being ignored, financial review for local government means also including the State and Federal government policies and actions to be more accountable for cost shifting.

So it’s all about problem definition?

Problem definition is a first, and often too lightly undertaken, first step. Here are key questions for people to consider in looking at all the debate and information out there: who actually defines the problem and its parameters?  And what evidence do they base their problem definition on?

There is currently being experienced in Australia in any whole of community political debates a worrying denigration of evidence-based, peer reviewed research.  Climate change is one.  Local government reform is another.  Politically, the favour is towards debate-framing lobbying documents prepared to order by those with particular interests in the financial and political outcomes.

I’ve just recently experienced this when pointing people to the work of economics/public policy Professor Brian Dollery (University of NSW) on local government reform.  The first question is whether there is any contra-evidence as to what he concludes, that is, amalgamation doesn’t deliver the outcomes people ask for. 

Good question. 

Yet when it is answered, I haven’t found any, thereby holding his conclusions up as guiding light for working out how current reform can be shaped for Tasmania, the response has been, he’s only an academic, what would he know! 

Yes, I too was stunned, and when retorting that all his work was based on actual on the ground evidence from local government, had this dismissed with a flick of the wrist and change of attack in favour of documents prepared by lobby research groups (which have consistently failed to stand up to scrutiny). 

A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest, goes the song.

So if you think amalgamation as defined by Treasury is going to resolve the problem as the Minister sees it, then I’d personally have to say that the problem definition is too narrow.

And then there’s the problem of political timeframes. 

When an Opposition goes to election and makes promises, they have to be seen to be keeping them thereby getting political wins in place before the next election.  Am I too cynical in commenting that it doesn’t matter that the outcome achieved is not perhaps in the best interests of the people they serve in setting policy reform agendas; what matters is being seen to achieve, and being able to pump out media to improve the political ratings? 

Personally speaking, on long observation, the higher the political position, the greater the pressure to be seen to act.  Those of us lower down the political kicking order are left to muddle through in sorting out the policy directives in the real world.

So what we have here in a Tasmanian context is a current State government having to live up to an election commitment within the timeframe of the next State election when it comes to reform of local government. 

As mentioned before, the Minister has set a timetable that has Councils deciding to look into voluntary amalgamations and developing up detailed proposals by the end of May, undertaking feasibility and community consultation by end September and reporting back by end December 2015.  2016 will be the year the Local Government Board reports on which Councils should be amalgamated, with it all over by Christmas.

One solution to change them all, Amalgamation to reform them, One policy to bring them all and in the political wilderness reform them...

Okay, so maybe this is coming across as some sort of policy quest given the number and length of blogs on it.  Yet the debate has been framed towards amalgamation over any other solution that might arise, especially when you look at the material coming from the Minister’s office being sent to local government elected members.  

Yet at the same time the State Government admits there is no current modelling what amalgamations would achieve in respect of price (rates) or service improvements, in the same breath, the Minister says:

The ‘Right’ (his parentheses) amalgamations have the potential to deliver”

• Improved service delivery;
• Greater opportunity to attract and retain skilled staff;
• Increased capacity to comply with legislative requirements;
• Improved risk management;
• Improve the capacity of councils to respond to future major challenges; and
• Better regional planning

It is the Minister who offers three independent consultants to choose from, a debate facilitator to choose from, and the offer of money up to certain sums depending on how many Council get together.  It is the Minister who defines what the problem is, and what the terms of reference of the amalgamation solution are to be, and the timeframes in which to achieve it (the next two years before the next State election).

But seriously, what do we really know about Tasmania’s local government?

The Minister bemoans the fact that he is unable to compare Tasmanian Councils with interstate Councils, let alone within the State.  However the Minister is also the Treasurer, and surely he can use the copious reports from his own Auditor General to set up some key KPIs to inform him?

All Councils have reports that speak to liquidity, underlying operating results, asset management/replacement, cash reserves and net debt, all well scrutinised by the Auditor General and critiqued.  I refer the Minister to the excellent comparative analysis done by the same in the recent No. 7 Report, Vol. 4, pp. 31-41 (http://www.audit.tas.gov.au/ ) which covers demographics, employee costs, comparative income statements and statements of financial position. 

In fact, the Audit Office has on-line reports going back to the beginning of the millennium on local government.  Lots of comparative material there. 

(I have to ask though, why would you try to compare local councils from different States?  Each serves at their local level according to local needs, and while there are some groupings, even they are difficult to compare given economic, geographic, historical, demographic, environmental etc difference.  Even the economic think tank, National Economics, has difficulties and opts for broader groupings.)

And then there is the excellent work of the Australian Bureau of Statistics to further inform anyone on demographics, employment, gender, manufacturing, education etc, etc, etc. 

And there is floating around, the public version carefully redacted, a qualified report of some year’s age that compares all the Councils and points out the good, the bad and the ugly, just not publicly naming and shaming. 

The current Audit report is not so shy in mentioning names.  So it’s not as if the information isn’t there around with which to form some excellent questions on what actually needs reform.  In particular, consider this comment from the Auditor-General:

“As noted in previous years, rural councils can face difficulties in providing and maintaining services because they do not have access to the higher ratepayer base of larger councils and in some cases they manage large road networks.  This is highlighted in the number of rateable valuations per square kilometre which reflects the population and area disparity between the Councils already referenced.” p. 32

Further, in the day to day and future maintenance of infrastructure:

“The analysis of non-current infrastructure assets per square kilometre and per head of population confirms the concentration of infrastructure and people in the major cities and larger urban areas.” p. 35

And finally, in the matter of sustainability, the chapter on local government financial sustainability includes a summary table (p. 59) that compares each Council in terms of whether they have an Audit Committee (a governance/risk), a long term asset management plan (capacity to plan forward and know what you have), a long term financial management plan (twenty years of thinking forward on finance to guide decision-making) and governance risk rating (just how well skilled are elected and employed people are to do the job).

Amalgamation is no bed of roses either.

There’s a lovely document going around from the 2010 LGMA Emerging Leaders Conference “Amalgamation: Is it a dirty word?”  Local government stakeholders (elected, employed, private industry, state government, community members) concluded that:

“Councils and government need to be very clear about what the seek to achieve should further amalgamations be considered, particularly as there is no ‘one size fits all’ option and as the survey data revealed, it can take years to recover from both the financial and energy expenditure required to undertake an amalgamation.”

And yes, amalgamation is good if cost-benefit analysis supports it however cost-benefit analysis may also support options such as shared services and group purchasing, both of which have had some success when pursued strategically.

So let’s go back a few policy cycle steps here.

First of all, what did the Minister list as the issues confronting local government when he recently presented to the Mayors? 

• Operating deficits
• Insufficient investment in assets
• Inadequate maintenance of road systems
• Declining net financial asset value over the last three years
• Rate increases that have exceeded CPI and the Tasmanian Council Cost Index
• Second lowest average population per municipal area of all Australia States

Now, if local government stakeholders had written a list also, what do you reckon they’d list out? 

• A century of neglect by the State in assisting Councils to develop adequate financial and planning systems which are comparable across the State.  Only recently is this being addressed in the smaller Councils.  Is it any surprise the Minister is unable to make the sorts of comparisons he wants and the Auditor-General’s reports are so damning?
• Cost shifting from State and Federal governments resulting in creation of services that then have to be funded via rate increases long after the pork barrel has left town.  The Price-Waterhouse report, over a decade old, is still relevant today in pointing the policy finger.
• Overnight devaluing of water and sewerage assets financial value through the water and sewerage reforms, thereby creating financial issues in Council accounts.
• Road systems that have been created to service State development projects (hydro, mining, forestry) and now left to local government to find funds to maintain and rebuild after floods and fire and for everyday depreciation and maintenance (for which we read, rate increases and highly competitive political lobbying for increasing Federal Roads to Recovery and Blackspot funding, thus adding to the pork barrel effect).
• A lack of any definitive State population growth policy, and State policies predicated on keeping Tasmania as a “quarry State” focusing more on extractive industries, thereby creating shifting populations in towns following commodity boom employment, and loss of the younger demographics to interstate and international employment.  Yes, there are shifts to more innovation, but it is industries changing, not State policy (by which we read State politicians just loving being photographed with the winners).
• A tentative at best style of State leadership in reform over decades resulting in multiple, tangled attempts at the local level for improvement, with each Council following what they believe is the best path in servicing their communities, rather than any regional or whole of State policy approaches.

Every participant in the policy process looks at a problem from their viewpoint.  Exclusion of key stakeholder input in policy definition is a real problem.  It is a major concern for me, both as a ratepayer and as a local government practitioner, that only the Minister is defining the problem. 

I have a real depth of concern for what local communities are likely to face into the future with what I see as poor problem definition now.  It is a serious worry that simplistic problem definition and choice of solution may well cause significant dislocation and financial hardship for local communities in the long run.  

What would you do then, I hear you ask?

So if I were Minister, heaven forfend I hear some of you say, reform would be a wholesale issue across the whole of state and local government.  It would be a matter for some serious think-tanking, not just solution-grasping.  Ask yourselves, just what is the problem here for Tasmania as an island, as a State in the Federation, as a player in a global economic market, as part of the web of life on this planet?

And I’d go to the community, and ask them, are you willing to give us some real time in which to get some answers on this?  It may take two terms of government, it may take less, but give us enough time to overcome two centuries of poor policy decisions, and granted, we’ll make changes along the way where we can.

History’s a wonderful thing.

If I were Minister, I’d take a leaf out of what two opposing colonial State governments did in reforming local government prior to 1900.  When Dr John McCall MHA was dealing with local government reform, he went from government to opposition.  Yet the new government kept him in charge of reform.  They recognised that to otherwise would waste his years of experience and understanding of the players.  They knew that to not take a long view would mean policy failure.  And the State did succeed in the end with a new Act and reforms implemented shortly after Federation.  Some 366 plus local bodies all combined into 50 Councils (who shortly then reduced to 47).

So, there’s some basic housekeeping policy and practice that needs fixing first before we go on to amalgamate Councils and then (the Minister’s recent expressed desire) make them more responsible for economic development in accordance with State policy.

It’s the sort of thing that can take a decade, even today, and what State government today is willing to plan for that long?  Yet it must do so if this round of reform is to succeed. 

And remember what the cunning old devils did back then – they gave a non-elected Commission of three people the power to make reform decisions, thus deflecting most of the political opprobrium from elected Parliamentarians and getting on with the job.  (The records in the State Archives are a hoot to read on what locals said and then what the Commission actually did!)

And so on to implementing the policy...

If I were Minister, I’d be thinking carefully of what outcomes, intended and unintended, could likely happen in simply choosing only amalgamation.  Remember, the higher the political level, the greater the temptation for a simple policy approach to be taken. 

And here lies a trap in what happens outside of Parliament and the Ministerial speeches - implementing the policy.

Perhaps, given he was one of my old university lecturers, the Minister’s Senior Policy Advisor, Dr Tony McCall could supply the Hon Peter Gutwein with a copy of Pressman and Wildavsky’s:

Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington are Dashed in Oakland: Or, Why It's Amazing that Federal Programs Work at All, this Being a Saga of the Economic Development Administration as Told by Two Sympathetic Observers who Seek to Build Morals on a Foundation of Ruined Hopes

It might have been published in 1984 and it does refer to the US policy arena; however it has solid policy lessons for all those who seek to implement great ideas from above.  (And Tony, you can still get it on Amazon.com, updated with three new chapters if you don’t have a local bookshop to order it from.  Can you imagine the fun in going up to the counter in the Hobart Bookshop and asking for it by full title?)

A final hopeful request.

In asking the Minister at one of the recent forums why there is no debate on a whole of state approach to government (state and local) service delivery, the Minister responded that it was over the horizon, that he wanted local government reform first, before dealing with what the State should do, what local should do.  Is it too much to ask that the Minister takes some time to reflect on some likely outcomes of his chosen policy approach, before time’s winged chariots overtake?

Leadership as a vocation in government and government reform agendas

The current round of calls for local government amalgamations raises a number of questions about what leadership means in government today.

Firstly, why do we have local government at all in a State with a population of around 500,000?  Okay, it’s an historical thing for Tasmania – look at my earlier blogs on the State’s local government development and the excellent historical writings of Dr Alison Alexander and James Boyce on early Tasmania. 

And, for Tasmania alone, geography/geology and demographics have all played a significant role in shaping government/governance.  The isolation of much of the State that existed pre-Imperial British invasion is still with us today, despite roads and bridges (and I might add, fragile ones at that given how easily flood and fire and government neglect impair their efficiency).

And here we are today, with 29 Councils all with varying levels of financial competence and capacity being held up as ripe for reform.  Yet no one is talking about a State Government whose financial competence and capacity to cope with its place in the Federation and global economy is also a matter of concerned debate.

So the question then is, given we have local government in Tasmania as an historical, financial, governance artefact of nineteenth and twentieth century policy decisions, is there value in continuing to govern (and I use that word, governing as in governance, not administration) at the local level? 

For this blog, I’m looking at the dichotomy of local representation and leadership that affects local issues; and central representation and leadership that is constitutionally set up to look at a various State/Federal matters.  Local government has no constitutional recognition as other than as a responsibility of the State Government.  (Various Federal politicians from both sides have mouthed support for changing this but backed out at the last minute or hemmed and hawed when asked for a definitive policy position.  No State government has ever supported local government recognition in the Australian Constitution.) 

Now scratch the surface of any local government representative or indeed any local person, and see what response is garnered from a discussion of transferring local control to a central body.  Apart from anecdotal comments made by a range of elected local government members over time, quiet discussions over the Christmas/New Year convivial drinks has elicited an interesting response from the ordinary ratepayer around the State.  Something along the lines of a reluctance to cede any local control to “them over there” or “you lot in Hobart” is not an uncommon response, even if better services result.  There just isn’t the trust that local needs will be properly met.

Neither was the belief that only local people had the knowledge of local issues an isolated comment.  Indeed, the contempt with which State and Federal politicians were held regarding their local knowledge and understanding of governance and economy is getting somewhat legendary.  Just what happens to their capacity to know their electorate once they get elected?  (I have some ideas on this – a later blog perhaps on the problems of span of political management in western democratic government – Taylorist ideas still have some currency.)

And this brings to mind that what policy writers have reported as “community of interest” is a strong a driver in debates.  (Mind you, rationalist policy writers then fail to enlarge any further on what “community of interest” really means and how it can be quantified as they simply just don’t have the right tools for analysis.  Indeed, if you’re a policy wonk, then you’ll notice the dominance of quantification over qualification seems to be the approach used in western economic democracies, Westminster or otherwise.)

So this brings me to ask whether the current debate on reform is being framed around quantitative issues only at the State level, while at the local level, the language is more concerned with qualitative issues.  Careful reading of the documentation issued by Minister for Local Government, the Hon. Peter Gutwein MHA, to various regional groupings of Mayors, Deputies and General Managers in the February  2015 reform talkfests/death by powerpoint presentations, causes a person to ponder the old policy saw – if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Seriously, does the State Minister for Local Government actually have a handle on his portfolio of local government or is he really first and foremost addressing the reform debate as the Tasmanian State Treasury Minister, and therefore seeing all things through the policy lens of finances? 

On a broad twenty first century analysis, the fact is that the issues facing Tasmania’s State Government, are in fact rooted in its history of cost shifting to local government of one type or another since the 1820’s.  (Yes, as early as that.  The history of Road Trusts in Tasmania is a litany of Colonial financial management unable afford at the end of the Napoleonic Wars to maintain this prison colony’s roads.  You can just guess what happened.  It was all downhill from there, even as the wealthier settlers fought tooth and nail to resist taxation, and some say, continue to do so to this day.)

So let’s look at what language is being used to frame the debate both between the Minister for Local Government and Mayors, and between media commentators and the public.  It causes me to ask whether the choice of language and how the issues are framed is in fact skewing any meaningful debate.  What do we all really understand by the current calls for reform?  Qui bono?

Now I know you all want a quick and dirty analysis to match the time it takes to drink a coffee, however a little background reading is something that everyone really needs to do.  For starters, as always, I’ll send you to some websites as foundation for what this discussion is about.

1. The Department of Premier & Cabinet Local Government Division Role of Local Government project: http://www.dpac.tas.gov.au/divisions/local_government/role_of_local_government

And their document on Principles for Voluntary Mergers:

http://www.dpac.tas.gov.au/divisions/local_government/publications#localgovernmentboard

2. Professor Brian Dollery’s (University of New England) collected research and peer-reviewed publications on why amalgamation is a financial and economic dead duck for local government: http://www.une.edu.au/staff-profiles/business/bdollery  (and before anyone asks me for any contra peer-reviewed evidence, let me say I struggle to find any.  You can get lots of lobby documents, but none that stand up to evidence-based, peer-reviewed scrutiny – for which you may read the recent Deloittes report paid for by the Property Council, etc.)

There are many other publications however these suggestions should give a quick flavour of the underlying policy decisions and language.  And while you’re ferreting around the Local Government Board web page, have a quick look at the report on the attempt to amalgamate two East Coast Tasmanian councils – in particular the reasons why the LGB report said, don’t do it. 

At one level there is a central authority focusing on rational issues of financing and services, framed in terms of State government policy imperatives.  For the Minister in his recent presentations on voluntary council amalgamations, he wants Tasmania as the “most competitive and attractive place to live, work and invest in the entire country”.

Seriously, who’s going to object to that sort of statement?  Yet in the powerpoint presented in the attempt to get Councils to voluntarily amalgamate, there is no analysis of the issues confronting the State government in terms of economy, society or demography, only local government.  There is no analysis of how these challenges confront the State government at all in this whole debate.  It’s all about local government, as if it is an isolated entity, away from State and Federal decisions, away from global market decisions, away from the society in which we all live.  People are presented at ratepayers – a financial role as a human.

The language used makes the bold statement that it is all local government’s responsibility for the problems and it is up to them to fix it.  Shared services are dismissed as an option and voluntary amalgamations presented as the only way forward.

Now if any voluntary amalgamation must succeed, according the Minister it has to:

• Be in the best interests of ratepayers;
• Improve the level of services for communities;
• Preserve and maintain local representation; and
• Ensure the financial status of the entities is strengthened.

All well and good, but then where is the State in all this?  If we substitute the word “ratepayer” with “Tasmanian residents, businesses and visitors”, we then have a policy prescription approach to reform debates for both State and local government to work together in redefining what government constitutes at a State and local level.

Let’s consider water and sewerage as a past example of what this could mean, and contemplate roads and waste management as just two current issues ripe for reform.

Tasmanians outside of major population areas all know that water quality and security of supply has been a difficult issue.  Boil water alerts are not uncommon even today.  Septic tanks just don’t cut it when populations fluctuate and water tables end up contaminated – the very water that supplies townships or flows into waterways also end up near shellfish industry leases and contamination has a massive impact on local jobs and business confidence.

So despite the highhanded way it was done, and the haste with which it was implemented, we now effectively have a statewide water and sewerage supply service.  And as Tasmanians no longer live and die in the same bark hut in their lifetimes, but mostly live, work and play around the State, we also now pay and use around the State for these services either directly in our TasWater bills or indirectly as part of other goods and service supply charges.  If you live in Launceston and holiday on the East Coast, and travel to Hobart for business, you should reasonably expect that the water can be drunk safely and the toilet flushed with confidence the environment or the local fishing industry isn’t being stuffed in the process.

From a central policy strategy, water and sewerage infrastructure is now managed to meet needs with a finance base that individual country Councils could never match, and even urban Councils struggled at times to get the loan funds for.

So what about roads and waste management?  If the State government really wanted to improve the level of services for communities and in the best interests of ratepayers (or for that matter, read, Tasmanian residents, businesses and visitors, and in a way that ensures the financial status of local government is strengthened, shouldn’t the Minister also be thinking to manage roads/bridges and waste in the same way as water and sewerage, on a statewide basis?

After all, with the current downturn in Forestry Tasmania’s financial capacity, there are now many roads and bridges that service the State’s tourism and other industries which local councils cannot afford to maintain (they currently financially struggled to maintain what they have).  The State’s economy as a whole suffers.  And what other services local government provides can be opened to a statewide prescription for delivery?

According to the Minister, the “right” amalgamations have the potential to deliver:

• Improved service delivery;
• Greater opportunity to attract and retain skilled staff;
• Increased capacity to comply with legislative requirements;
• Improved risk management;
• Improve the capacity of councils to respond to future major challenges; and
• Better regional planning.

I’ll go one step further.  The “right” policy approach has the potential to deliver the same shopping list.  And for better regional planning, add in the words, “and State”.  Isn’t it time that the State government, and local government, sat down in the same room and discussed what services each should be responsibly undertaking?  In a State with a struggling 500,000 demographic with isolated communities and underfunded local councils, with increasingly burgeoning central urban areas, there is the strong risk that amalgamation will not deliver the Minister’s shopping list, but simply highlight the incapacity of local government to take on more and more of the responsibilities of the State. 

And it is not unreasonable to suggest that the levels of inequality will get worse as the more politically noisy urban populations get the greater funding opportunities.  In an age of increasingly interesting Parliaments, what State or Federal member will listen to any rural Mayors pleas for infrastructure or project funding when he/she knows there is better voting bang for buck in the denser population zones of the State’s five electorates?

I’ve put two questions in a previous blog, and I’ll repeat them here as a start point for the sort of discussions the Minister must undertake in any whole of State/local reform debate:

1. If we visit a locality, what local and state services will be different?
2. If we live/work/play around the State, what local and state services are provide to everyone to use?

Have a look again at this recent blog for my responses:

http://evaruzicka.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/effectiveness-and-efficiency-is-that.html

What would your list look like?

As a criticism that might seem to some protectionist, when reforms in local government are called for, there is a lot of talk about creating “efficiencies”.  For this, read, lowering staffing and tendering out services to the “free” market.  In some cases, I don’t have a problem with getting the local business sector to provide some services.  Let’s also acknowledge that in the small economy of Tasmania, choice is not at the same level as you might find on the mainland.  Competition therefore for the best provider is limited. 

However when you talk about the “right” amalgamations, and in particular attracting and retaining skilled staff, etc, is this really an argument that counters the calls for reform?  And if “efficiencies” means shedding employees does this ignore the fact that Council employees are part of the local economy (especially in rural areas) and have families and ties into the local community through volunteer, church, scouting, etc groups?  Get rid of staff and they inevitably will look elsewhere for work opportunities and our communities, especially the rural areas, will be all the poorer. 

If you think local government is demographically challenged now, think about the real cost of “efficiencies”.  I’m not arguing for “make-work”; on the contrary, there are better ways to do a job all the time.  However for Tasmania, the mountains and valleys and long roads and isolated communities existed in the past, exist in the present and are likely to be there for the future.  Sometimes, efficiencies cost us more both directly and indirectly, in the Tasmanian context.  So let’s be careful when we talk about reform.  Let’s consider the real cost of outcomes being called for.

And on a final note of criticism about the process and timetable currently being foisted on local government by the State’s demands for reform, if you were elected to local government, and you decided to investigate amalgamation with one or more other Councils, do you think that “up to $25,000” (two councils) or “up to $50,000” (three or more) would be sufficient to ensure a level of information, probity and confidence that this type of reform (using the Minister’s shopping list) will:

• Be in the best interests of ratepayers;
• Improve the level of services for your communities;
• Preserve and maintain local representation;
• Ensure the financial status of your new Council is strengthened;
• Improve service delivery;
• Create greater opportunities to attract and retain skilled staff;
• Increase capacity to comply with legislative requirements;
• Improve risk management;
• Improve the capacity of councils to respond to future major challenges; and
• Lead to better regional planning?

And actually deliver.

That’s an aweful (deliberately spelt this way) lot of questions for even a mere “up to $25,000”.  The previous round in 1997 resulted in many hours of local government officer time and resources being used up, and therefore other work and opportunities for ratepayers foregone.  It is nice that the State government is willing to provide some funding.  Would it not be money better spent by having the two tiers work together to sort out what each level can properly achieve, and not just focus on one tier in isolation? 

The funding offered is lacking to do the job asked for and in my opinion as an elected person in local government, just doesn’t seem to give any confidence that the business case alone for amalgamations will get the level of professional probity, analysis and scrutiny that is needed to ensure the best interests of the people we serve.

I started out with the statement of leadership as a vocation in government.  I’m still of the opinion that, in Tasmania at least, people get into power at the State and local levels to do some good.  And I know that Minister for Local Government, the Hon. Peter Gutwein MHA would share that opinion.

Yet it appears that the Minister has painted himself into a corner in focusing only on financial issues in local government reform.  The mark of a good leader is flexibility.  I’ll be diplomatic and say that even if he has got the policy debate off to a pre-determined start with a timetable that appears to fit more with mitigating electoral risks, there is nothing to preclude in any feasibility study terms of reference to include a direct analysis of what services local government should really only be providing at a local level, and then putting it those services left over back to the State to consider the greater good in acting on its constitutional responsibilities.

When is temporary really temporary?

Once again (15 December, 2014) Hobart City Council Aldermen have taken yet another leap of faith on a planning matter, and approved the first stage of transitional planning amendments for the site on the Hobart waterfront known as Macquarie Point, contained in the Sullivans Cove Planning Scheme.  You may know it as the old Railyards.  It is also known in planning circles as Activity Area 3.0.

Tellingly, this leap of faith was in the absence of even the sketchiest of draft Master Plans for the site.

The planning technocracy argued that to wait until even March of 2015 for a draft Master Plan will lock up the site from all human activity, despite also their contra advice to the Development and Environment Services Committee that development applications for temporary works could be lodged as needed. 

So anyone who argues that festivals, or tram renovation or men’s sheds or art displays would be excluded between now and March, when a draft Master Plan is first expected to emerge from its chrysalis, clearly has a comprehension deficit.  Seriously, it’s as if people have never heard of delegated planning authority for certain minor uses and activities.  Oh, but that was considered too hard to do, even for three months or six months, while the draft Master Plan starts to gently fan its drying wings prior to taking flight in the area of public consultation.

This now means that controls on heights, landscaping and uses have all now been put aside or watered down.  So where will any capacity of comparison of past, present and future reside?

It has been claimed that temporary buildings will only be temporary for 5 years and this will be “set in stone”.  Forgive me, but given the planning, building and plumbing requirements for a building, who would spend any money on a development if they knew it would be removed in five years?  Of course, extensions would be sought.  Hobart City Council has a proud history of granting extensions for all sorts of things.

This is where a little history of Tasmania’s economy and state of governance has to be taken into account, as there’s a lot of awful historical buildings in Hobart (and we’re not talking Georgian sandstone here) that has persisted through the preservative effects of economic depression.

Great plans, lots of fanfare, pollie photo ops, and then the Australian economy cycles down again.  Or some developer tries to seize the planning debate with a state of the art convention centre and hotel and we all get locked up in adversarial planning tribunal proceedings and nothing is eventually achieved, other than the economy resurging from all the fees paid to lawyers and planners and experts.

And given the state of the Tasmanian and Australian economy, who is to say any development needing significant planning discretion will not be promoted by a government wanting to be seen to be “open for business” well before the sealing of any Master Plan of the rail yards as a key site?  Mind you, “open for business” is getting a whole new meaning in Tasmania lately (as the Cenotas proponents are finding out), but even so, the risks are enormous of yet another convention centre/marina/hotel/time-shared apartments development horror when a government is desperate for a good news story.

And give the quality of governance that comes to real estate development by Tasmanian governments, who is to say what uses will or will not prejudice the future long term development of the area? 

(Watch and learn, oh gentle reader, when the impending kerfuffle over the Mawson Hut Museum development becomes public as its temporary planning permissions expires and it is made to shift off site over at Key Site 5.  I sense an impending media offensive against the Council’s current refusal to extend the lease beyond the original temporary time limits.)

Back at the Railyards site, pounds to peanuts, there will be significant resistance when uses (for this, read car parks) that people want become entrenched, and then similarly, are attempted to be moved on in favour of installing, say, a cycle way connection.

And some of you with very long memories may remember the planning concerns that were raised over the wheat silos (later converted to the Silos Apartments that from the front bear little resemblance to their earlier incarnation, perhaps being better suited to the Gold Coast or the Toaster of Sydney Harbour infamy).  Anyone remember the site development plan that was proffered by the developer then?  Leading planning proponents decried its content, as it simply provided a somewhat (at the time) illiterate rubber stamp for what was built on the site.

There is such a history of getting to wrong on the Hobart waterfront.

And it is not as if permits cannot be given by delegation to ensure land contamination investigation and decontamination works to go ahead as needed (that would be a far simpler amendment to the Sullivans Cove Planning Scheme).  This is not an argument for onerous bureaucracy, rather for developing a streamlined best practice process badly needed for all of Tasmania’s planning processes.

Ensuring appropriate planning considerations are in place before any significant development on the site is a laudable aim – indeed it is essential that planning controls guide any development proposals.  But is removing existing planning controls in the way being suggested prior to even the comfort of a draft Master Plan represent the best way to go?

And here’s another thing.  If you have a site that is needing a new look, and you’re on the public record as saying you’re all about public consultation, why then would you not also want any public consultation (people actually meeting face to face) on these sorts of transitional changes?  A three week consultation period is being suggested via websites and the old analog of newspaper advertising.  But no public meeting, oh no, we don’t want that.  Which is curious, given the exhaustive public meetings have been held so far on what is wanted to happen to the site.

Why do I smell Ministerial intervention in the offing?  It happened recently when the MPDC was warned off by the Minister over proposing universities from around the world becoming tenants on the site.  Is this what is holding up the draft Master Plan?

So here’s the thing.

A good planning process would indicate having even the sketchiest of a draft Master Plan in place before deciding to ditch any existing planning controls.  Having a draft Master Plan in place would give a deal of comfort over the relevance of or retaining of, any existing planning controls.  Right now, a decision has been made akin to shining a weak torch around a massive warehouse.  You see some things, but not the whole of the area in context.

Yes, it is acknowledged that the preferred future for the area is now for mixed use development opportunities consistent with the Macquarie Point Development Corporation Act 2012.  No issues with that.  However, does that mean we should water down the Activity Area 3.0 provisions before the final uses can be settled on?  And given the quantity and quality of changes to the provisions, isn’t this in effect a de facto draft Master Plan?  So what is holding up the cutting and pasting of a draft Master Plan document?

Surely after all the public consultation that has occurred, the Macquarie Point Development Corporation should be able to formulate a set of draft Master Plan site activity statements that reflect preferred heights, uses and activities, etc that have emerged?  It is not as if they don’t have access to planning advice from the expertise of Hobart City Council.

After all, it is the Hobart City Council’s officers who have drafted up the transitional planning changes – imagine if they had been able to devote such energies into assisting the workers at the MPDC?  It is not as if there is a demand for a fully fledged site development plan – that is something that should emerge well after the planning reassessment is done and dusted and a Master Plan is finalised.

What does concern me is that in the absence of planning controls, development applications that are meant to be temporary will exceed the sorts of heights and setbacks that will fit well in the area, and end up becoming permanent fixtures. 

Heights and setbacks against what is recognised as the edge of the Cenotaph (the “topographical wall”) or against existing heritage buildings were controlled but now, if a development application is lodged, and we know the sorts of discretions asked for by various of developers, what happens then when a significant discretion is asked for, because after all, “no one complained about the temporary buildings”?

What does concern me is that in the absence of real income for the site (given the budget model for the MPDC is a zero budget by the end of its stewardship, that car parking will become a de facto income stream and become a permanent feature in the absence of any Master Plan statements on permitted, discretionary or prohibited uses.  Carparking become a permitted used for 5 years, otherwise then is “discretionary”. 

What does concern me is that uses currently deemed “discretionary”, such as an arts and cultural centre, research and development centre, offices, markets and suchlike, are now going to be deemed temporary uses for five years or otherwise prohibited. So tell me, whose going to invest with such a limitation, and then do we then see after five years no proposals forthcoming, so a Master Plan is written that excludes them out? 

Yes, public art requires no permission, as neither does land decontamination works.  So are we looking forward to five years of decontamination works screened by public art as other proposals are scared off by the lack of certainty and having to jump the hoops of the now changed objectives and performance criteria?

What does concern me is that landscaping controls are being weakened, such that the careful control of landscaping at the entry point to the City of the Brooker Highway-Davey Street-Tasman Highway nexus will be lost.  It was hard enough in the past to get landscaping controls to try and cover up the bare walls and wire security fence of the now disused Ports Cool Store under the now-defunct planning controls. 

(Ah, I remember one now dead Alderman insisting the Ports Cool Store building would be in use for many, many years, it was inconceivable it would no longer be used for purpose.  And that was only twelve or so years ago!)

What does concern me is that transport is no longer a prime use of the site – so what happens to cycling?  What happens to light rail opportunities?  What happens to having a tram connection between the City and the Royal Botanical Gardens?  Because transport is downgraded, does it preclude using the site for cycleways, light rail, etc.  What possible future uses are now being written out of the final Master Plan?

What does concern me is the downgrading of importance of access to the working port.  What is exactly meant by “adequate” access to the working port?  Has anyone any idea of the crucial role transport to the working port plays in Tasmania’s $187 million dollars a year plus Antarctic and Southern Oceans industry?  Or the burgeoning resupply and tourism benefits of the cruise ship industry?

And what does really concern me is that there is no guarantee that the relevant careful planning controls built up with experience and knowledge, which have had significant support through the public consultation process over the years, but will no longer be in existence, will make their way back into future planning documents (ie the Master Plan, the Site Development Plan).  Yes, the site will change in its uses and you match planning accordingly, but not this way.  Not in this “arse-about” process.

I can’t say it’s been a good move.  In fact, I voted against it and I suggest that sadly I’ll have the pleasure of saying “I told you so” in a decade’s time, and not for the first time, over planning issues around the waterfront.

So have a read of the report, make your own mind up, and ask yourself the question.  Is this a good planning process for one of the most significant development sites in our City, give Tasmania’s economic and political history?  Will we get the good outcomes the public has been building up its hopes for?

http://www.hobartcity.com.au/Council/Council_Meetings/Development_and_Environmental_Services_Committee

Agenda meeting 8 December 2014 Item 6.2.1