Certainly, I would agree that united Local Government is beneficial for good public transport systems. One of the problems that Auckland had in days gone by was the infighting between the local City and Borough Councils, the Auckland Regional Authority, and Central Government when proposals were made. For instance, I believe that in the 1980s, the ARA was in favour of busways; the Auckland City Council was in favour of light rail, and NZR (i.e. Central Government) was also in favour of light rail. Of course, since the ARA owned the Yellow Bus Company, they had a vested interest in the busway scheme.

When I made my submission to the Commission, I also mentioned that when it comes to planning for Auckland, we need to start looking further afield, and I used the example of South East Queensland and how in New Zealand, we may need to start planning for Northland, Auckland and the Waikato as a grouped area, especially when it comes to transport.

Most of those proposed mergers have now occurred, on March 18 2008. In particular the ones you proposed for Caloundra/Maroochy/Noosa, Redcliffe/Pine Rivers/Caboolture and Lockyer Valley have occurred.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Government_Areas_of_Queensland

cheers,
Colin

Many of the big local Government mergers you advocate have already actually happened up here, in the big mergers that the State Government mandated to occur on March 15, 2008.

The two mega-mergers were Sunshine Coast and the Pine Rivers area:

Noosa, Maroochydore & Caloundra are now the Sunshine Coast Council:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Coast_Regional_Council

Caboolture, Pine Rivers and Redcliffe also merged:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moreton_Bay_Regional_Council

There were other lesser merges up north (Townsville/Thuringowa, Cairns/Douglas), south of Ipswich (Beaudesert/Boonah), and Logan was expanded to cover Beenleigh and parts of the old Beaudesert shire, creating a coherent local Government area between Brisbane and Gold Coast.

I need to finish the main post and would like to do so soon!

The good point with BCC is covering such a large area in an integrated way. Of course, that size is a disadvantage in the BCC has worked poorly with QR in the past because it had the power to ignore, or compete with QR. Still, there is a lot to be said for metropolitan governance, and for the SEQ idea of several of these very large bodies covering the urban areas that aren’t directly part of Brisbane. I’d like to see Caloundra, Maroochy and possibly Noosa in one body, and a Lockyer Valley Shire. And I’d probably merge Pine Rivers and Caboolture (but keep calling it Pine Rivers).

Sydney has the nucleus of such an idea but is still a long way from it. For example, Kuringai, Warringah and the infamous Shire have the beginnings of what is required.

Melbourne, despite the Kennett amalgamations, LG is still a peripheral role when it comes to transport and planning. They whinge about losing their planning powers – but I’ve yet to see a local government plan that didn’t either ignore public transport, or talk about pie in the sky, monorails and so on.

Getting them to focus on the task at hand, such as improvements to the access to stations, or street layouts for buses, is not easy!

Urban governance and its role in integrating transport and land use planning (a lesson learned in a different context with a different set of mechanisms in WA) is an undiscovered country in the cities of South-Eastern Australia…

LS

I do fear, however, that we are starting to diverge from past behaviour toward a more NSW / Victoria like planning model. The entire Kippa-Ring saga being the classic case … Brisbane’s own version of the “never never” lines to Castle Hill / Norwest and Doncaster respectively.