Amalgamation announcement a small win for communities and workers

Premier Jeremy Rockliff and Local Government Minister Nic Street said on July 16 that any amalgamations would be voluntary, with councils and their residents having the final say through a poll.

The Australian Services Union (ASU) and the Planning Matters Alliance Tasmania (PMAT) say this is a step in the right direction, but concerns over jobs and town planning remain.

State director of PMAT Sophie Underwood said the group supported voluntary amalgamations, but communities were not yet out of the woods.

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Ms Underwood said the review process had been "flawed from the start" and lacking in transparency and questioned whether it should continue.

"We don't know what the details are and how they're going to achieve amalgamations if at all," she said.

"We're not anti-amalgamation but we certainly don't support forced amalgamations.

"If amalgamations are to occur, they have to be transparent and and there has to be an elector poll run by the Tasmanian Electoral Commission so that ratepayers are very clear on what they're voting for."

Ms Underwood said the situation in New South Wales, where some councils that were amalgamated in 2016 were now seeking de-amalgamation, demonstrated potential weaknesses in amalgamations.

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The PMAT state director said the group remained concerned amalgamation would provide an avenue for the state government to remove planning authority from councils, or at least worsen planning outcomes if left in council hands.

"You're not going to get place-based decisions," Ms Underwood said.

"Councils will be bigger and you have less representation in a bigger area.

"That affects local decision making, because someone who's elected somewhere might not necessarily understand the place that they're making decisions over."

As voters were the ones who "live with any of the consequences" of these decisions, she said all state parties needed to bring robust local government policies to the next election.

The ASU has previously raised concerns over job losses at councils should amalgamations or proposed centralisation of services - another proposal considered in the review - occur.

ASU Vic Tas Branch secretary Lisa Darmanin said given these outcomes, the review "risks everything and solves nothing" and should be scrapped.

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The union secretary said the fallout from the amalgamation of water providers into TasWater was still being felt through redundancies and outsourcing, with fears the same fate could befall council workers.

"Centralised services threaten local jobs and local decision making," Ms Darmanin said.

"Reductions to local services and reduction to quality of service to local residents has often been a consequence of rationalisation in other states, and we would not want to see this happen in regional Tasmania."

The union has repeated calls to take the centralisation of services off the table.

Ms Darmanin said although the announcement of voluntary amalgamations was "a win" for communities and council workers, jobs remained on the line.

"No matter the industry, job losses are expected after mergers or amalgamations," she said.

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