Just because we have things, does not mean we have to continue to have them.
What do local councilors do that could not be done without them?
A few years ago the Logan City councilors were sacked and replaced with an administrator. During that period of time the functions of council continued.
I have been told ther are to many decisions that need to be made for the community to be able to make those decisions. Which means we only have the ability to occasionally make a decision about who will be making the decisions for us. Is this correct? Or is it only that previously decisions were made about that.
In which case just because we have things, that were decided by others in the past, does it mean we have to continue to have them? Like local councilors?
I would be interested in others thoughts.
Lyn,
Ther have already been 2 unsuccessful Australian constitutional attempts for the recognition of local government.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_in_Australia
Perhaps we need a referendum on changing the way we have referendums.
The Switzerland system of sudo Direct democracy seems logical?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Switzerland
Another alternative would be to abolish federal and state government and only have local government? Closer to bottom up decision making.
I'm sure there are many other permutations as well.
After writing my original post I discovered this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_in_Queensland
It would seem we have the remnants of decisions that were made by as little as 50 householders. See the history part of the above link.
History quite often records what happens but not why.
Unfortunately most people have no idea what the constitution says.
Even politicians. Like a lot of them did not no they were not entitled to be politicians. Based on my virtual country, none of them are currently entitled to be politicians.
http://greig.homeip.net/doku.php?id=politicians_disqualified
Yes, as evidence in the number of unsuccessful changes to the constitution, most people don't want it fiddle with. Even though they don't know what it is.
It's basically a fear of change.
Councils generally haven't got more power than they had in the past, it's just that current and potential councilors keep talking about things that they have no ability to change. The potential councillors probably don't know that. The ones that are currently in council want to pretend they have that power to make them look good to voters. So the council electorates are under the impression the councilors have got the ability to do things that councillors talk about.