Perth Voice Interactive

VINCENT mayor Alison Xamon wants the state government to give councils more advice to try and stem the number of local laws being knocked back by one of its oversight committees.

Over the past few years several councils have tried to pass laws to keep cats confined at home, only to have them rejected by the Joint Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation, which rules on whether they are consistent with state law.

Vincent in particular has butted heads with the gatekeeper over policies around parking restrictions, controlling election signage, or rules preventing filming people in change rooms. 

A knock-back can force councils into bringing in lawyers for a rewrite, which comes with a hefty bill.

Ms Xamon sat on the JSCDL while an Upper House MP: “Del-leg is what we call it,” she said at Vincent’s last meeting for the year.

Ms Xamon said councils seemed to be asking the committee for advice early on, but weren’t always getting feedback. 

Feedback

That meant there was a fair bit of finger crossing when first drafts were submitted.

“That puts local councils in a very difficult position because local councils need to be able to pay lawyers to be able to construct legislation and it’s obviously a lot of staff time to try to put together legislation,” Ms Xamon said.

“And if you don’t get that early feedback then it means that ratepayers can end up spending a lot of money only to find at the end that there’s a particular interpretation that’s being applied by the del-leg committee that could have been avoided if only there had been that early feedback.

“I don’t believe this is the orderly way that we should go about construction of legislation and I’m disappointed about that because I do believe the committee’s system within the legislative assembly and council is a really important oversight and I want to make sure that it’s functioning as well as possible.”

Former councillor Dudley Maier, who served from 2005 to 2013, believes the laws Vincent is putting forward are not as well drafted as those of yesteryear (“Cat laws unleashed,” Voice, August 12, 2023).

Rejected

Mr Maier has raised the issue at several council meetings during public question time, and wrote a submission for December’s meeting noting there’d been five occasions in the last five years where the JSCDL had either outright rejected a Vincent law or sent it back. 

Mr Maier wants to know what Vincent’s success rate is in getting laws passed by the JSCDL, and he’s posed the question: “Do you agree that there have been a significant decline in the technical quality of the proposed local laws in the last five years?”

The answer is due in the agenda for the next meeting, scheduled for February 13, 2024. 

For now Ms Xamon will write to the speaker of the lower house, the president of the upper house, and to the WA Local Government Association, to “see if there is a better way that there can be earlier input from the del-leg,” she said.

by DAVID BELL