Perth Voice Interactive

VINCENT city council is considering legal action against the Barnett government over mergers says mayor John Carey.

Mr Carey broke the news at a special electors’ meeting Monday night, addressing a 90-strong crowd who’d gathered to debate local government reform.

He said the council was involved with the councils for democracy group—which is lobbying for ratepayers to be given the right to determine whether amalgamations go ahead—but was not yet officially part of the group.

“If the city launched a legal action on our own and lost we could be up for hundreds of thousands in legal bills,” he told the crowd.

“But if we do it as part of the councils for democracy we can share the burden and might it only cost us around forty or fifty-thousand. We have to be ready for a number of eventualities.”

The meeting was triggered by 81-year-old Denham “Bob” Boulger submitting a 142-signature petition that calls on the council to keep its boundaries intact, and not merge with Perth.

Despite a passionate speech, in which his jowels glistened and he name-dropped Winston Churchill, Mr Boulger lost his motion calling on the council to withdraw from merger talks with the state government. A similar motion from Ian Ker, a former deputy mayor, was also defeated.

Mr Carey says he prefers keeping Vincent intact but says it’s politically unrealistic: withdrawing from negotiations will simply leave the city exposed, with no say at all in its fate: “Mergers are going to happen,” he said, bluntly. “The [local government] minister [Tony Simpson] had described this as his legacy. So we have to be at the table fighting for what we can get.”

A motion for the council to consider legal action was carried unanimously.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK