Richard Tomlinson writes in The Conversation (11.4.16) about the need for Australia’s cities to adopt ‘metropolitan governance’, where residents can contribute to planning and decision making in their localities, largely free from dictates by ‘distant’ governments at state and federal levels.
‘For residents of Australia’s cities, federalism means state governments have the right to assert what is in their best interests. Vertical fiscal imbalance has given the federal government licence to presume to know better than state governments what is in residents’ best interests. The possibility that they might themselves know what’s best is not a consideration.
‘The Greater Sydney Commission’s chief commissioner, Lucy Turnbull, might disagree. The commission values “citizen engagement”. However, it reports to the NSW planning minister.
‘A metropolitan planning agency that engages citizens, but is not representative of – and accountable to – those people, cannot be represented as promoting democratic governance. This is especially so when state and federal governments control the budget for metro-scale infrastructure and services.
‘The federal funding largely takes the form of infrastructure grants and other tied grants that limit decision-making at the metropolitan level.’