At Tuesday’s council meeting, the City endorsed a motion to suspend all participation with the State Government in respect to reform.
Local Government Minister Tony Simpson said he was ‘disappointed’ with the decision.
‘There has been a lot of hard work done in the reform process to get where we are today and to walk away at this point is disappointing,’ he said.
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The motion from Cr Cala called for all participation with the State Government on local government reform be suspended until the City received an undertaking from the Government that previous funding commitments would be honoured.
‘Firstly, there was the lie that there would be no forced amalgamation; this was shortly followed by the despicable act taking away the democratic right of the community to agree or not to agree to an amalgamation,’ Cr Cala said.
‘By a legal gymnastic act, the likes of which the Cirque du Soleil would marvel at, the Minister circumvented this process by imposing a boundary enlargement process.
‘Nothing beats the latest outrage though. The Minister’s latest pronouncement has been to say that the State will no longer honour its previous funding commitments.’