Fight for Canning relaunched

Although the City’s preferred option is to remain a stand-alone council, it welcomed the LGAB’s recent recommendation for Canning to retain its western suburbs, including Rossmoyne, Shelley and Willetton, and a portion of both Leeming and Riverton.

The City was to lose Willetton, Riverton Avenue and Rossmoyne as part of local government reform, but under Proposal 10, will keep its current western border, except for Leeming, which will go to the City of Melville.

Canning chief executive Lyn Russell said it was not possible for the City to make a proposal to remain unchanged under the Local Government Act 1995.

She said a proposal could only be made to change the boundaries of a council or amalgamate.

‘The City of Canning strongly encourages all interested residents to respond to the LGAB’s call for public submissions and to endorse the proposal for Canning to retain its western suburbs and to keep Canning within its present boundaries,’ she said.

Ms Russell said there were four options open to public submission. The first is for the City of Canning to amalgamate with Gosnells, which it no longer supports.

The second is to abolish Canning and divide its community among surrounding councils as proposed by the Minister for Local Government.

The third is Proposal 10, originally proposed by the City of Melville, in which the City of Canning will retain most of its western suburbs. The last is to leave the City of Canning unchanged.

However, Riverton MLA Mike Nahan is encouraging local residents to fight for the whole of his Riverton electorate to be merged with the City of Melville.

Dr Nahan said Gosnells was the fifth largest local government in the metropolitan area with about 117,000 residents and Canning ninth with 94,000. He said merging them would make the new entity one of the largest local councils in Western Australia.

‘The local community needs to understand that there are only two options available to them; join with Melville or be taken over by Gosnells,’ Dr Nahan said.

‘There are obvious synergies with Melville, including having similar older, well-established suburbs, a strong sense of place regarding the Canning River, good provision of community facilities and to some extent, a commonality of house values.’

Submissions close at 4pm on Thursday, August 14. They can be posted to LGAB, GPO Box 1250, Perth, WA, 6844 or emailed to advisory.board@dlgc.wa.gov.au.

– THE City of Canning is holding two community meetings on local government reform on August 10 at 3pm and August 11 from 6pm at the Civic Administration Building at 1317 Albany Highway, in the civic function room.