Welcome to Melville Shadow Council. We are attempting to correct that legislated and practiced bias against the Melville district community created when the State Government Legislated into existence Local Governments in West Australia in 1995. The systemic legislated class discrimination extended in recent reforms on top of an intimate relationship between staff at the City of Melville and Staff at each of the Department of Local Government and the Local Government Inspector’s office provide an inherent architectural dysfunction not capable of correction by those bodies.

Despite trumpeting of recent Local Government Legislative reforms, investigating those reforms identifies their blatant contradiction to Section 1.3(2) of the Act. Reforms should have addressed and resulted in better decision-making, greater community participation, and increased accountability of local governments to their communities. However, those reforms primarily focused on behaviours and created a stronger centralised government control utilising autocratic monopoly administrations legislated to unilaterally bias advice to Councils. This has instead resulted in forcing the prejudicial exclusion of community balanced advice. One doesn’t need to look far to find one-sided, inaccurate or direction biased advice proffered to mislead council.

All “funded” Government agencies purporting oversight of Local Government Matters are either; directly in conflict of interest by having provided policy, rules or advice; claim a legislated restriction against acting; have a history of applied bias in favour of benefiting Local Government employees; or that share “revolving door” constitution, including:

Department of Local Government – “revolving door” staff
Local Government Inspector – “revolving door” staff
WA Local Government Association – “revolving door” staff
State Administrative Tribunal – personal bias applied
State Ombudsman – conflict of interest policy advisories
Public Sector Commission – substandard conduct protection
Crime and Corruption Commission – legislatively constrained
Magistrates Court – cost and lack of access inhibits justice

It is a clear indictment on the State Government that despite all these Agencies participating in the conflicts in Local Government, those conflicts remain as intense and persistent as at any time since the Local Government Act was introduced.

The underlying cause is a failure to build into the sector’s architecture any single independent advocate. There is no “funded” organisation in the whole of WA, chartered with balancing advocacy for communities.

Summary of Alleged Contradictions

Section 1.3(2) Goal	Reform Implementation Criticisms
Greater Community Participation	Community engagement charters are self-regulated by the same councils they engage with.
Greater Accountability to Communities	New Inspector and Monitors report to the State Minister, not the local community.
Better Decision-Making	Key decisions can be overridden or directed by external state-appointed Monitors.
More Efficient Local Government	Smaller councils must bear the financial cost of appointed Monitors, potentially diverting funds from local services.

It is hard to understand why the State Government wish so many millions to be spent on that which the community can deliver better and at a fraction of the cost.