Elisabeth Champion
Premier Peter Malinauskas has described the upcoming amalgamation plebiscite as “the ultimate community consultation”.
The plebiscite will ask voters whether they want an examination into the potential amalgamation of the Mount Gambier and Grant councils.
Speaking to the Border Watch on Monday ahead of a flying visit this week, Mr Malinauskas said the plebiscite had come about after years of repeated conversations with South East locals regarding the make-up of the two councils.
“Over the last few years, I’ve been talking to a lot of people in business amongst others in and around Mount Gambier, and one issue that has kept coming up is the peculiarities or the circumstances with the way the Grant District Council and the Mount Gambier council operate with each other,” he said.
“That conversation on every single occasion has led to ‘why isn’t there an opportunity to amalgamate?’
“So those conversations have been repeated, if not constant, and it’s always been debated in and around the area.
“At our country cabinet that we had during the year where we had a big community turnout and lots of meetings that happened either side of it, again, this issue kept coming up. So I thought well, why don’t we do something about it? Why don’t we give people a chance to have a say?”
The matter has been the subject of many meetings, discussion and forums, and much of the discussions has revolved around what the community perceives as a lack of communication from the government regarding this.
However, he rejected the idea that their had not been sufficient communication on the issue.
“All these people talk about a lack of consultation, this is the biggest consultation that’s ever happened in the South East,” he said.
“This is the ultimate consultation, a vote of people.
“This is a consultation about whether or not there will be a consultation. Now, I don’t know how much more consultation people want.
“This is a this is a democratic vote on whether or not we have a community consultation on council amalgamation. So for those people who are complaining about that, I suspect they are probably complaining about everything.
“This is literally a community vote on whether or not we have a community consultation.”
Mr Malinauskas said that should the overall vote be in the negative, the Labor government will not look at amalgamation again.
“If the community in and around Mount Gambier want to explore it, we’ll explore it, if they don’t want to explore it, that we won’t. But if that’s the decision, there’ll be no point in anyone raising this with me ever again.
“If we’re not even willing to explore these things, then it would never have a chance of success, in my view.
“A willingness amongst the local community to at least examine the possibility is a key precondition for any prospect of this being successful, so I’m just not willing to countenance a massive community consultation, or a forced amalgamation, unless people are willing to explore in the first instance.”
Speaking on the seemingly sudden announcement of the Plebiscite, Mr Malinauskas claimed it was simply due to the timing.
“If we wanted to give people the ability to have a vote on an exploration, we thought it made sense to do it in the ballot papers that go out for the local council election.
“So it was just a timing issue. So otherwise, we would have had a council vote, and then another vote afterwards, which added more expense, so we might as well be done at the same time.”
Mr Malinauskas will be in Mount Gambier on Friday, with a packed schedule of meetings and functions.
