Hired Guns: Local Government Mergers in New South Wales and the KPMG Modelling Report

© 2017 CPA Australia Across the developed world, including Australia, public policymaking now rests heavily on commissioned reports generated by for-profit consultants, contrasting starkly with the earlier customary reliance on the civil service to provide informed policy advice to political decision makers. Dependence on commercial consultants is problematic, especially given the moral hazards involved in ‘hired guns’ providing support for policy ‘solutions’ desired by their political paymasters. This paper provides a vivid illustration of some of the dangers flowing from the use of consultants by examining the methodology employed by KPMG in its empirical analysis of the pecuniary consequences of proposed municipal mergers as part of the New South Wales’ (NSW) Government's Fit for the Future local government reform program. We show that the KPMG (2016) modelling methodology is awash with errors which render its conclusions on the financial viability of the NSW merger proposals fatally flawed

Participatory, technocratic and neoliberal planning: an untenable planning governance ménage à trois

This article explores the tensions between the practices of professional planners, the participatory planning frameworks of governments and the neo-liberalisation of planning governance in Australia. Rather than fitting neatly together, there are fundamental theoretical and practical tensions between participatory, technocratic and neoliberal planning frameworks. Each dictates a different source of power in terms of setting the planning agenda and making planning decisions. Using the New South Wales (NSW) planning system as a case study, we show that the introduction of ‘the market’ and ‘local citizens’ as possible planning agenda setters and decision-makers has proved difficult for the NSW Government to manage in practice. First, we separate the three planning governance processes and analyse each process as a discrete political philosophy. Second, we highlight where the political power is located to set the planning agenda and to make decisions within each of the three processes. Third, we show how each governance process enables and/or undermines the efficacy of the other governance processes. Fourth, we conclude that enabling a suite of power structures in one governance space can disable or undermine important power structures within the other governance processes