Amalgmation saves money

The quotation cited above is from a well-established body of research on prior amalgamations in other states and overseas. Such research has conclusively established that amalgamations produce increased expenses and poorer service delivery. One of the many books about this is Reshaping Australian Local Government: Finance, Governance and Reform by Brian Dollery, Neil Marshall and Andrew Worthington (eds), UNSW PRESS, Sydney, July 2003, 288pp

The councillors and mayors that are eliminated through amalgamation are simply replaced with far larger council staffs and layers of management. Councillors with double or triple the number of constituents expect larger paychecks, more staff, bigger offices for those staff, and more office equipment.

Finally, even if this myth were true, government does not exist to force “efficiency” on us for its own sake, especially at the expense of democratic representation. Private industry can be quite efficient, but it is most emphatically not democratic.