Perth Voice Interactive

Perth lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi has slammed premier Colin Barnett’s handling of council mergers as “poorly managed, disappointing and inconsistent”.

And she implies the premier is basing his decisions on what’s in the Liberal Party’s best political interests, rather than sound planning.

Her withering criticism follows Mr Barnett’s support for amalgamating all of Vincent with Perth—despite the formal opposition of the PCC.

The new decision replaces an earlier government plan to split Vincent between Perth and Stirling.

“This is a cop out,” Ms Scaffidi says in a written statement.

“The premier has repeatedly stated that he is keen to take community concerns on board but does appear to have selective hearing according to where his seats are.”

Perth state Liberal MP Eleni Evangel was a key player in Vincent council’s campaign for an “all-in-Perth” amalgamation, helping gather 5470 signatures.

Last week she took the premier on a tour of Vincent to show him it was an urban centre and not a suburb.

Ms Evangel says it’s “a fantastic outcome”: “It really is an example of the government listening to people.”

Vincent mayor John Carey’s reaction was mixed: He’d campaigned hard for the “all-in-Perth” option but will be sad to see Vincent end as a municipality.

Vincent residents had voted overwhelmingly in a plebiscite to keep their municipality alive and he’d only supported the all-in-Perth option as he knew the premier was determined to kill Vincent, and arguing for its retention was pointless. Amalgamating with Perth was “the least bad option”, he said.

“It really is an example of the government listening to people.”

But Ms Scaffidi isn’t keen on the PCC taking on Vincent’s residential hinterlands (it had been happy to take in the commercial centres).

“The [City of Perth] now joins a growing list of strong adversaries to the way this process is being managed while previously they had been very much in sync with the government on this matter,” she said.

She reveals she’d discussed mergers with the premier and WA local government minister Tony Simpson in July and this, “revised announcement is a backflip from those directives and highlights a poorly managed process”.

She’s also unhappy with other aspects of Perth’s new border, including:

• the splitting of the Royal Perth Yacht Club;

• UWA being excluded from Perth’s boundaries; and,

• the de facto creation of a “ward structure”.

“We believe the state has positioned itself to hedge against criticism from Vincent knowing that [the local government advisory board] will make the ultimate decision,” she says.

Also unhappy are residents in a tiny sliver of Vincent known as the Banks Precinct, east of the railway line, which is planned to be carved off and given to the merged Bayswater-Bassendean super-council.

WA Labor leader Mark McGowan has described the merger process as a “dog’s breakfast”.

by DAVID BELL