MLC slams plans for development commissions

South West MLC Adele Farina has called for an independent committee to assess submissions to the State Government’s review of WA’s nine regional development commissions.

The review’s Structuring Regional Development for the Future report has recommended a raft of changes, including overhauling the entire structure and establishing a single statutory authority.

Dolphin Discovery Centre general manager David Kerr agreed with Ms Farina, saying the Government’s proposed strategy was a ‘‘significant disempowerment of regional areas’’ that removed decision-making authority and increased red tape.

He said the Government had failed to provide a cost-benefit analysis of the proposed new model.

Ms Farina said the review process had been a ‘‘sham with a predetermined outcome’’.

‘‘It is clear that current review committee members have ignored the views of local communities and indeed the South West community, which has voiced overwhelming support for the South West Development Commission,’’ she said.

Ms Farina called on review chairwoman Wendy Duncan to detail the decision-making roles the nine regional development commissions would retain if the report’s recommendations were implemented.

Ms Duncan told the South Western Times an independent consultant had been employed to analyse the 207 submissions and that consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers had provided an independent specialist examination of the commissions’ cost-effectiveness.

She noted that people were able to influence the implementation process of the recommendations, but not the recommendations themselves.

‘‘But it’s not a foregone conclusion; the public consultation that led to those recommendations was extensive, and over a long period of time,’’ she said.

‘‘What we need is input on the implementation strategy.’’

Ms Duncan also assured theSWDC that under the proposed changes it would have greater decision-making powers and capacity.

‘‘It’s not city bureaucrats who are going to be making decisions,’’ she said.

‘‘What we want is just a higher level of peer review so that each of the development commissions is encouraged to work with its neighbours and to test its priorities and its projects against other regional areas to make sure everybody is working together and getting the best projects up.’’