Premier Barnett sums up Subiaco
Colin, we want to vote!
Press Conference with Colin Barnett 12 February 2015
Question: Will the Governors Orders for the other boundary changes now be rescinded?
Barnett: Cabinet hasn’t had a chance yet to look at this issue, we will over probably next week and that may well be the result, but we also want to get some feedback from councils as to which of them may wish to continue with some reform process
Question: Do you expect any to go ahead, even if a council wants to merge and its partner doesn’t?
Barnett: That’s true, although its interesting that many of the submissions received from the local governments was for mergers to be done according to the way we envisaged. So I accept the reality, people voted against it, that’s democracy if you like, that’s politics, but the case for mergers of local governments is overwhelming.
Question: You said you want to see if some councils want to continue to merge and you would support that but what about councils like Subiaco that clearly don’t want to merge?
Barnett: What a waste of taxpayers money, Subiaco went to the Supreme Court, they used taxpayers money and they lost the case
Question: But now they are appealing that decision, they clearly don’t want to amalgamate, how do you respond to that?
Barnett: What a waste of taxpayers money, Subiaco went to the Supreme Court, they used taxpayers money and they lost the case.
Question: But now they are appealing that decision, they clearly don’t want to amalgamate, how do you respond to that?
Barnett: Well the councillors don’t want to vote I would think many people, a majority of people in Subiaco would want to see a new council.
There is a lot of logic in the merger that was contemplated there and it would have been a good western suburbs council of a viable size
Question: But they weren’t given a referendum, so we’ll never know will we?
Barnett: Nothing has happened, has it? Nothing has happened. I think the people of Cambridge and the majority of people – particularly business owners in Subiaco would have supported, and probably would have supported a merger between Subiaco and Cambridge
Question: The Governors Order for that merger has been given and executed so the sector is wondering if there will be a decision to reverse that call
Barnett: Cabinet has yet to discuss that.
We MUST NOT be merged!
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Let him ‘sum up’ all he wants – it’s less obnoxious than his previous ‘stitching up’ of Subiaco.