Electoral Commission announces 14 September 2013 referendum on local government recognition in the Australian Constitution

 

AEC Announcement 9 May 2013:

 

The Government has announced that it is planning to hold a referendum on recognition of local government in the Australian Constitution at the same time as the federal election planned for 14 September 2013. The Australian Electoral Commission will be making the necessary preparations to conduct the referendum ballot with the election.

This forthcoming national referendum will be the forty-fifth since Federation and the second time voters have been asked to consider recognising local government in the Australia Constitution.

On the first occasion in July 1988 the referendum failed, as only 33.62% of voters wanted local government recognised and therefore there was no majority in any of the mandatory five out of six states required for it to pass.

Voting in a referendum is compulsory and, in a better world than this, the question would be framed in such a way that future regional local governments on the NSW North Coast and across the nation would be able to resist being turned into no more than powerless ciphers of successive city-centric state governments.

Unfortunately the intention of the referendum is not to remove the power of state governments to legislate in relation to local councils, neither is it to lessen the risk that state governments will reduce local autonomy even further, nor is it to take from the states their powers to impose compulsory amalgamations on residents and ratepayers.

What is being offered is the formal inclusion of local government in Section 96 of the Constitution so that the Commonwealth may directly grant financial assistance to councils on such terms and conditions as the Parliament thinks fit.

Much in the same manner as it does now under certain federal government funding programs, but without the ongoing uncertainty created by a successful constitutional challenge in 2012.

The principal reasons for this referendum can be found in Chapter 2 of the Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition of Local Government's Final Report (7 March 2013)