Greater Brisbane 1925
The Brisbane Courier: THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 1925
GREATER BRISBANE
When the Home Secretary announced yesterday, at the first meeting of the Greater Brisbane Council, that "the policy of the Government will be one of co-operation and not of interference" he conceded something that represents a very important advancement in civic government. In the past, governments have looked upon the local authority not from the point of view of high principle, but from that of party expediency; and session after session Parliament has been asked to tinker with the Local Authorities Act so as to make it accord with the narrow principles of a party platform. That was why the franchise was altered, and why the lodger, who might be here to-day and have gone to-morrow, has been placed on the same footing of franchise as the man who has to find the money for the Council and its works. The Brisbane City Council, to give the new Council its official name, is confronted by tremendous tasks; but if it has the co-operation of the Government, and the co- operation of the citizens, it will have before it a wonderful field in which to demonstrate its municipal statesmanship. We have said times without numbers that it is possible only for a unified city, which has its forces concentrated, to carry out successfully those vast undertakings that fall within the manifold activities of civic government. When Mr. Fihelly remarked yesterday, without any feeling of carping criticism, that Brisbane had not been well governed in the past he made a statement that cannot be challenged. But Mr. Fihelly will be the first to admit that good civic government is impossible when twenty different authorities, with twenty different methods, are engaged in a work that is clearly meant for the statesmanship of one. The new Council meets with a very fine charter, perhaps the most wide and democratic in Australia. But just as the last word of Parliamentary government has not been written, so the last word has not been written of municipal government, and it will be surprising if within a few years some of the Australian cities do not adopt the Commission system of civic government which has become so popular in parts of Europe and of America. It is an axiom in government that small expert bodies with large powers do infinitely better work than large bodies with no particular technical ability for the work they are called upon to perform.
Another system, a modification of the Commission system, is that of control, under the direction of a council, by a City Manager, who acts for the city just as a General Manager does for his joint stock company. In the United States and Canada several hundreds of cities have adopted the General Manager system, and have found that the results have been extremely beneficial. Under our system the great problem is to secure men of legislative ability, who, as the late Mr. Joseph Chamberlain said many years ago, will consider themselves as "directors of a great co-operative undertaking in which every citizen is a shareholder, the dividends being payable in better health, in increased comfort, in the recreation and the happiness of the people." Unfortunately there is a growing tendency to look upon civic government not from the point of view of the whole of the citizens but from that of party platforms. In his address yesterday the Mayor said that he would know no party because party influences should not be permitted to operate in municipal government.
Every one will agree with the sentiment; but it is no use closing our eyes to the fact that Labour has determined to make civic government a battle ground for its platform. In Sydney, at the present time, because of the drastic and foolish proposals of the Labour-controlled Council, admittedly directed from the Trades Hall, an agitation is on foot to secure a legislative enactment that will enable that great city to be governed by a commission of experts. Obviously that is the logical check that the citizens must operate in their own defence. It is the inevitable result of too much party government in civic affairs. In national government party politics have many advantages, because the duties of politicians are almost entirely legislative.
In municipal government the duties of aldermen are almost entirely administrative, and there is no valid reason for the intrusion of party politics. In Brisbane, so long at all events as Mr. Fihelly remains in his position as leader of the Labour aldermen, the spirit of partisanship is hardly likely to be very pronounced, because he is a travelled man, with a personal knowledge of municipal government in London and other big cities of the world, and he understands perhaps much better than the average alderman just where partisanship should remain silent. If the aldermen realise how great 13 the responsibility vested in them, and how vast are the tasks that confront them, they might accomplish a great work, and help to bring about that happy period of which the Mayor spoke when he said he looked forward to the day when "to be elected an alderman of the city of Brisbane will be regarded as the highest honour that can be conferred on a citizen."
