Option to stay intact was possible

COULD Canning have made a proposal to stay intact under local government reform?

Yes. Measures such as allowing the anomalous part of Leeming to go to Melville in the first place, as Canning is happy to cede now, or correcting other anomalies in our boundary with Melville and Victoria Park would have qualified as a proposal.

Instead, and against the wishes of the community, Commissioner Reynolds chose to endorse merging a percentage of Canning with Gosnells.

Canning’s change-of-mind ‘submission’ is seen as additional information, taken into account along with other submissions, against the original set of proposals.

Unfortunately, this submission was not augmented with key economic data for another three months, mere weeks before the Local Government Advisory Board was to make its recommendations.

To make matters worse, our governance did not entirely convince the inquiry into Canning that it could operate as it purports to now with a council back in place. Yet neither the commissioner, our chief executive, the Government nor even our own community appear interested in returning Canning to a ‘normal’ operating environment, with a new council.

Is it any wonder nobody appears to be taking Canning’s ongoing viability as seriously as we’d like in the reform process?

DIANA RYAN, Bentley