Local government in Queensland

[1] Each area has a council that is responsible for providing a range of public services and utilities and derives its income from both rates and charges on resident ratepayers and grants and subsidies from the state and Commonwealth governments.

[2] As bodies which obtain their legitimacy from an Act of the Queensland Parliament, local councils are subordinate rather than sovereign entities[3] and can be created, amalgamated, abolished, or dismissed by the state at will.

Recent reforms, which took effect on 15 March 2008, resulted in over 70% of Queensland's local government areas being amalgamated into larger entities and generated a considerable degree of controversy, even attracting national interest in the context of a federal election campaign.

[12] On 16 November, a petition containing 91 signatures was received seeking to have Ipswich, which had 3,000 people, granted municipal town status.

[18] During the 14 years that the Act was in force, the Drayton municipality was abolished in 1875, and nine new municipalities were created: Townsville (15 February 1866), Gayndah (28 November 1866), Clermont (21 January 1867), Roma (21 May 1867), Allora (21 July 1869), Mackay (22 September 1869), Copperfield (10 May 1872), Cooktown (3 April 1876) and Charters Towers (21 June 1877).

Examples of such anticipated by the Act included parks and reserves, libraries, cemeteries, water and sanitation services, roads, bridges, wharves, street lighting, public health, fire prevention, the regulation of building construction, and the regulation and issuing of a range of licences for uses of land.

[17] Any man or woman over the age of 21 who was liable to be rated on any property in the district was eligible to vote in elections, which were to be held every February.

It introduced adult franchise into local government elections, bringing them into line with the state and federal parliament (previously, the voters were restricted to ratepayers).

These bodies had quite different responsibilities to traditional local governments due to the nature of land ownership involved and the different relationships of the council to the community.

In 2005–2007, as part of the Queensland Government's response to the Cape York Justice Study undertaken by Justice Fitzgerald QC in November 2001,[22] these bodies became "Aboriginal Shire Councils" and "Island Councils" and obtained additional powers associated with local governments.

Of the 156 councils, 118 agreed to investigate their long-term future through the Size, Shape, and Sustainability (SSS) program; however, it failed to deliver timely, meaningful reform.

The Commission reported back on 27 July 2007, recommending massive amalgamations all over the state into "regions" administered by regional councils and centred on major towns or centres, based on a range of criteria such as economy of scale, the community of interest, and financial sustainability.

Some changes happened in much larger areas as well – the Sunshine Coast was to come under one local authority instead of three, as was the Moreton Bay region to the north of Brisbane; Beaudesert was split into urban/planned urban and rural sections, with the former going to Logan, and the twin cities of Townsville and Thuringowa in North Queensland were merged.

The responses to the Minister showed that significant reform was not going to be achieved by the SSS program before the next local government elections, due in March 2008.

The amalgamation program was not without considerable controversy in many of the affected areas and even a threat of Federal intervention from the Howard government, who funded plebiscites on the change in December 2007 in many affected areas, which recorded a strong "No" vote in most cases but with fairly low turnout by Australian referendum standards.

On 10 August 2007, the Commission's amalgamation recommendations were passed into law as the Local Government (Reform Implementation) Act 2007, with only a few name changes as alterations.

The Opposition leader, Jeff Seeney, pledged to de-amalgamate councils with community support by way of a poll if they came to office.

[27] The Parliament of Queensland passed the Local Government (Reform Implementation) Act 2007 on 10 August 2007, following which Local Transition Committees were established to guide the reforms and appoint interim CEOs (Chief Executive Officers) to manage changes from October through to February 2008.