Laura Newell: Hedland debacle shows what happens when we don’t pay attention to local government

Hands up if you never think about your local council — until that time of year when a hefty envelope demanding money lands with a thud on your doorstep. I don’t blame you. Local government isn’t usually the scintillating stuff of your average dinner party conversation. As long as the bins get emptied and the local park has its grass mown so the snakes don’t bite the dog, we’re all good, right? Well, yes, apart from a few local authorities that are increasingly biting into our hip pockets while simultaneously shifting focus to divisive debates such as vaccine mandates, Australia Day events and having to grit their teeth through “sovereign citizen” queries during public question time. Now, let’s be clear here, it’s not every council and it’s not being driven by the officers, either, in most cases. Mostly, the nub of the issue is that a very vocal minority in some key areas are, effectively, able to hijack council elections and meetings, by taking advantage of the general public’s apathy over local government. Take the Town of Port Hedland as a notable example. It’s one of our most important economic areas, propping up the entire nation with its mining exports. But its council is, I think everyone can now agree, a complete mess. With meetings that were running upwards of four plus hours, debate overrun by vaccine matters and constant squabbling among councillors leading to resignations left, right and centre, it’s effectively been at a standstill for months, not even able to pass its budget as briefing after briefing failed to produce a timely end result. Its controversial mayor, Peter Carter, quit last week citing dysfunction and toxicity as his reasonings, meaning the council was without a quorum for the second time in just six years. As a result, once again we’re facing down the barrel of having a commissioner installed, tasked with cleaning up the god almighty mess left behind by the elected representatives, who were voted in in elections that saw a fraction of the town turn out. But Hedland is not alone in dysfunction, just last week a show cause notice was issued to the Shire of Coolgardie over financial mismanagement, and both the Shire of Derby and City of Nedlands are being run by commissioners right now. So, the question is, how do we fix our councils? Eminently sensible changes to the Local Government Act that came into force at the start of the year, forcing most councils to livestream meetings, were a good start. As is the appointment of the new local government Inspector. Who has the time to schlep to a council meeting at 7pm on a random Wednesday? Not me. Watching from the comfort of you own home, another matter entirely. As individuals we need to be more active in local government, setting aside some time every now and again to actually watch those livestreamed meetings. But even more needs to be done. We can’t just lead that horse to water, we need to make it drink. Local Government Minister Hannah Beazley’s idea of four-year fixed terms for councillors in future, instead of the current bi-annual elections, also has great merit. As she said last week, that arrangement can lead to dysfunction, as there tends to be rival factions that come in against the other every two years. And Premier Roger Cook hit upon another good idea when he last week said compulsory voting in local government elections was “a conversation that the community needs to have.” “We’ve seen over a period of time, particularly with the impact of social media, the vulnerability of a lot of the governance arrangements for local government authorities and that’s made them more fragile,” he said. “So certainly having a plebiscite of a larger group of people, more reflective of the community at large, means you would get, I think, stronger outcomes in terms of governance.” Spot on, Premier, so can you kick those conversations off now, please, because we could all do with a little less dysfunction in our lives.