Three Perth metropolitan councils are celebrating 30 years of operation after being ‘spun-out’ from the City of Perth.
There was a time when 27 councillors and a mayor sat around a table for meetings at the City of Perth.
That time was more than 30 years ago, before some major changes were introduced by the Liberal government of Richard Court.
Four Weddings and a Funeral was in cinemas with a soundtrack favourite, Wet Wet Wet’s 1994 hit Love Is All Around, dominating the charts as the Perth City Council was divided to form three new local governments.
The Town of Cambridge, the City of Vincent, and the Town of Shepperton (subsequently renamed as Victoria Park) were formally created under the City of Perth Restructuring Act.
The breakup attracted criticism among some in the political class, with claims the state government made the move with little consultation.
Thirty years on, however, the mayors of the new councils have embraced the decision.
Town of Cambridge Mayor Gary Mack said residents and local groups, including clubs, had benefited from a more intense focus from the council.
“It has allowed us to develop the unique character of each one of our suburban areas,” he said.
“Over forty per cent of our land area’s covered by green space. Now, we are well regarded for our wonderful parks and gardens that don’t just benefit our residents, but the whole city.”
The sentiment was shared by Vincent Mayor Alison Xamon, who said the intent of the split, to put the ‘local’ back in local government, had been achieved.
“The needs and expectations of the people who live within the City of Vincent are very different to the business owners and the large end of town that actually work and operate out of the CBD,” she said.
“If we were to be absorbed within the City of Perth, I think there would be a very real risk that the residents of the City of Vincent, of which I’m one with my family, would actually lose the essence of what it is that we want from our council, and our aspirations and our hopes for our community.
“In that sense, I believe it has really achieved what the original intent was.
“In terms of being able to be genuinely representative of the views of the people who live in Vincent, it’s been a success.”
Town of Victoria Park Mayor Karen Vernon said the town had carved a reputation for itself, particularly for its desirable residential and urban forest strategy.
“It has benefited the local residents, because we’ve been able to establish our own identity separate from the capital city,” she said.
“I would describe us as a small village with a big heart.” Ms Vernon said there had been an extended period of planning after the town acquired the City of Perth’s ageing assets.
“When you’re not given a big pot of money to maintain them, you have to just start issuing rates to people to maintain them,” she said.
“That means that you’re on a very, very long journey into ... planning financially. How you can sustainably maintain all that infrastructure as well as developing projects for the future of your community that they want, and they need.
“And you’ve got to find the money to do that, too.
“We’ve done a period of time where we’ve been building our rate space and our capacity to have exciting projects, and I’m really excited to say that we’re now starting … to deliver all those projects.
“This coming financial year we are budgeted to commence construction on the three biggest projects the town has ever delivered.”
For Vincent, Ms Xamon envisions a greater population for the city with vibrant town centres and progressing major infrastructure projects, including the East Perth Power Station and Leederville Oval.
Town of Cambridge’s Mr Mack said his council, like that in Victoria Park, had formed a strategic plan to develop a self-generated source of income.
“At the moment, just under half of our revenue comes from rates,” he said.
“In terms of rates, we’ve actually been far better off in having a town of our own, not just in terms of the social things that I’ve mentioned but also in terms of [being] financially better off.”
City of Vincent Mayor Alison Xamon.
History
As a City of Perth councillor at the time, Corinne MacRae remembers the tension when the City of Perth Restructuring Act became law.
“I was only on the City of Perth for eighteen months before the restructure occurred, but it was certainly a baptism of fire,” Ms MacRae told Business News.
“A council with twenty-seven elected members and the mayor, nine wards, and a geographical area that went from City Beach down to Carlisle.
“It was a very interesting time, quite exciting, but quite nerve-racking at times when you consider the importance of being a councillor on the capital city council of Perth.
“The restructure was quite tumultuous … lots of aggravation.
“People were quite upset about suddenly having the council taken away from them. Some areas were pleased with the splits, particularly the suburban areas, and the city councillors were pleased about it.
“But there was a lot of argy-bargy at the time. “A lot of people, even though they thought it was a good idea, were still quite angry at how it was done.”
Among those to criticise the split at the time were East Metropolitan MLC Alannah MacTiernan and North Metropolitan MLC Reg Davies.
“I hope that the City of Perth will be vibrant, revitalised and a showpiece and gateway to WA,” Mr Davies said in parliament on October 27 1993.
“However, I am concerned at the lack of consultation that has taken place. This could have been a good public relations exercise by the government, but that was not to be.”
During the same parliamentary session, Ms MacTiernan questioned the promise of no rate increases, casting doubt on the calculations touted by the Liberal government.
“There is grave concern about the lack of consultation, even amongst those people who have been initially attracted by the government’s carve-up proposal and have taken at face value the very shonky calculations that underpin the consultant’s claims that there will be no increase in rates,” she said.
Town of Cambridge Mayor Gary Mack.
In a poll held in December 1993, 84 per cent of the 12,383 respondents voted ‘no’ to establishing three new councils and a separate city council, according to Victoria Park’s local history timeline.
The initial plan of including Burswood casino in the new City of Perth’s jurisdiction also failed to take the starter’s gun, with the peninsula ending up in the Town of Shepperton (later renamed Town of Victoria Park).
Despite the public and political opposition to the plan, the Court government’s vision to carve-out Perth as a capital city precinct came into effect.
“The new arrangements will give residents and ratepayers a direct voice in their local council and closer links with councillor presenting their own locality,” Mr Court said in a 1993 brochure.
“It is unfair for residents living in Wembley, for example, to be governed by councillors, no matter how sincere, who live many kilometres away and whose interests are elsewhere.”
After the dissolution of the Perth city council, Ms MacRae became a Cambridge councillor in 1995 and remained with the town until 2017.
“After the initial couple of years of bedding down the town, there were a lot of leftover issues that had to be resolved,” she said.
“But up to about twenty years from that time, the remarkable number of projects that we completed … I believe, would not have necessarily happened, or at least would have taken longer under the old City of Perth system.”
Amalgamation There have been other efforts to reform local governments in WA, but the changes delivered in 1994 remain among the more significant.
Former premier Colin Barnett’s efforts to amalgamate 30 metropolitan councils into 16 failed to get off the ground in 2015.
A potential merger of the cities of Vincent and Perth was also scrapped.
“There are, of course, challenges with having a smaller ratepayer base,” Ms Xamon said.
“Particularly considering that, in the split, what we did end up taking on was a number of large community assets that are utilised by the entire Perth community and, in fact, some statewide.
“It can certainly be challenging for us as a smaller council to have to carry the burden of that infrastructure.
“But when on the very rare occasion a resident asks me whether we should move into amalgamation I have said to them, ‘How would you feel about having the shots called by the big end of town?’.
“Every single one of them says, ‘Actually, no, we don’t want to lose what we’ve got’.”
It is a flat out ‘no’ for Ms Vernon, too, who referenced Mr Barnett’s failed attempt to amalgamate councils, including that of Victoria Park with the City of South Perth.
“We’re just very different in every respect to the City of South Perth,” she said.
“Our dynamic is different. Our population demographic is different.
“Our social, cultural and economic heart is different, and amalgamation would be, I think, a very difficult step for both of our communities to take.”
Mr Mack said there had been no talk of amalgamation among neighbouring councils but acknowledged the benefits of a shared structure, including the recycling centre shared by some western suburbs.
“There’s a number of local governments sometimes sharing resources, sharing ideas,” he said.
“[Particularly] waste, on top of an ageing demographic and urban influence, that’s [waste management] becoming increasingly more expensive.”
