Shire of Harvey votes against motion to consider investigating amalgamation with Shire of Dardanup

A South West council has rejected a proposal to merge with a neighbouring Shire after it was put forward by one of its councillors.

The Shire of Harvey voted at a meeting on Tuesday not to support a motion to have the council engage with the Shire of Dardanup to see whether they would be interested in amalgamating, after more than half an hour of debate by councillors.

Putting the motion forward, Cr Craig Carbone used his recent experience of visiting Brisbane and its transformation by late former mayor Clem Jones to push his case.

“I think it’s time now in this area with the population we have that the Shire had a serious look at how and what we want this place to be in the future,” he said.

Cr Carbone asked councillors to take a holistic view of the situation, noting the “absurd” duplication of infrastructure within the Greater Bunbury area.

“The Shire of Dardanup are building a $20 million office complex, and ourselves are planning to build one not more than 5km away,” he said.

“I think it’s absurd the Shire of Dardanup built a new depot and the City of Bunbury built a new depot within 3km of each other.”

Under the Local Government Act, councils can take proposals to change their boundaries to the Local Government Advisory Board, which can then order a formal inquiry or make a recommendation to the Local Government Minister.

The Minister then has the ability to call a public vote on the matter if they believe it is necessary.

Cr Paul Beech supported Cr Carbone’s motion, expressing his concern the council may have no choice but to amalgamate in the future.

“If the Labor Party win the next election and they’ve got a lot of their mandate out the way this time around, it could very well be that we may be forced into doing something whether we like it or not,” he said.

“If we were to research this, at least we would be on the front foot and we’ve got some idea of where we’re going and we’re not reactive to a direction.”

Cr Wendy Dickinson noted Local Government Minister John Carey had previously ruled out amalgamations and said it was not prudent to be pursuing the proposal at this time.

“I acknowledge that our local governments are in a period of growth,” she said.

“We don’t know exactly where that growth is going to go — we probably need to know more information before we look at amalgamation.”

Cr Amanda Lovitt used her personal experience from Kalgoorlie-Boulder to argue against the proposal.

“I come from a town that was amalgamated 30 years ago,” she said.

“It’s not amalgamated ... it does not amalgamate communities, it creates more division within communities in the long run.”

Cr Dakota Krispyn said he would vote against the proposal due to elected members not being given time to workshop the proposal and the complexities of amalgamation, but did support increasing collaboration among local councils.

“We do need to be looking into the new future on what we can be doing to benefit the community here and in other places by uniting our expenditure with what we are actually giving out to the community,” he said.

“We shouldn’t be doubling up on a lot of things which is costing us big money when in reality we could unite, we could talk, we could look over each other’s plans.”

Cr Carbone’s proposal to seek State Government funding for an independent consultant to develop a merger proposal and a comprehensive 2050 plan was also rejected by councillors.

The report to elected members prior to the meeting notes the council has traditionally opposed amalgamation proposals by the State Government, with the most recent being those from the Barnett government in 2009 and 2013.