By Andrew Paloczi
THE CHALLENGES of implementing Jeff Kennett’s radical council amalgamation initiative and the community angst that arose at the time were recalled when current South Gippsland Shire councillors and council staff welcomed a trio who played key roles in the process locally.
As part of the overall restructure that entailed dissolving 210 councils throughout Victoria, creating 78 new councils through amalgamation, South Gippsland Shire Council was formed through merging four previously separate council areas.
Each new Local Government Area was headed by commissioners appointed by the State Government.
Peter Jennings and Garry Leeson were commissioners for South Gippsland, along with the late Bruce Warr, and were joined at Wednesday’s amalgamation celebration event in the Leongatha Council Chambers by Danny Luna who served as Interim CEO early in the amalgamation process.
It was a chaotic period Danny recalled.
“We had to quickly get together and make sure we could function (as a council) and that meant paying staff, and paying bills,” Danny said, something that was no small feat given the merger resulted in a payroll numbering 410 people.
One challenge was deciding which systems to adopt, with the four merged councils each having their own computer and rating systems.
Reducing the now bloated staffing numbers was a more testing task.
“We had to substantially reduce that payroll so we lost a lot of good people,” Danny said, acknowledging some of the pain and angst remained for a long time, but offsetting that by stressing smaller municipalities such as Mirboo would not have survived as they were.
Peter, who was then a Giffard farmer and Yarram School teacher as well as being on the Alberton Shire Council, was surprised to be chosen as a commissioner after responding to an advertisement in The Weekly Times.
He recalled an induction meeting at Sale for commissioners from across Gippsland, noting there was no manual outlining what the role entailed.
“We did the best we could,” Peter said, recalling the introduction of competitive tendering as one of the toughest changes that sprang out of amalgamations.
“It was quite a brutal process,” he said of staff competing for positions.
Garry, who runs Leeson’s Logging and Cartage in Rosedale, was instrumental in his role as a commissioner in reconfiguring the engineering and outdoors staff of the new South Gippsland Shire Council, his background with machinery enabling him to assess the existing set up and what efficiencies needed to be introduced.
He reflected on the overall success of amalgamation for towns in South Gippsland Shire.
“Challenging as it was, some areas very much benefited from the amalgamations,” he said, albeit not feeling that was the case for Rosedale.
Recent South Gippsland Shire councillor Mohya Davies recalled the angst in her hometown of Foster at the time councils were merged, saying many people locally felt disengaged with the process and the new council, then outlining her view 30 years on.
“We couldn’t have survived, the way things are done now, as such a small shire,” she said, adding that Foster is now thriving.
