The body that represents Western Australia's 139 councils has turned on Local Government Minister Hannah Beazley. It accuses her of repeatedly running down the whole sector over the behaviour of a few, as the fallout from the City of South Perth's chief executive saga spreads beyond Mill Point Road.
WA Local Government Association president Mark Irwin answered the minister's latest public criticism line by line on Wednesday, The West Australian reported.
"We've had enough of the Local Government Minister constantly devaluing the sector. The broad-brush criticism has to stop." — Mark Irwin, WALGA president
What started it
On Tuesday, the day after it emerged that South Perth chief executive Liz Ledger had resigned, Ms Beazley posted on her official social media accounts about "another day of dysfunction in local government". She called for "the chaos" to stop and said she had "had enough" of some councils "constantly behaving badly".
She also urged local governments and the Opposition to "get on board" with Labor's reform package. Mr Irwin rejected that call outright.
"The reset that local government needs is for the minister to work for the sector, not against it." — Mark Irwin
He argued that councils doing the right thing deserved recognition, and that only those falling short should be held to account.
Meanwhile, in South Perth
The row has played out against an increasingly public fight inside the City of South Perth. Ms Ledger, a 30-year local government veteran who had been in the job for four months, confirmed her resignation this week and partly blamed factional politics. She says she was unable to carry out her statutory duties after council blocked her attempt to commission an independent psychosocial assessment of the city.
On Wednesday Mayor Greg Milner posted a council statement on Facebook. It said councillors had unanimously suspended Ms Ledger in August and appointed an external investigator to look into multiple misconduct allegations. Council received the findings last week, and on Tuesday night a special meeting voted unanimously to terminate her employment, the statement said. According to the council, that decision "supersedes" her resignation of 26 October.
Ms Ledger denies any wrongdoing. She told The West Australian she was seeking legal advice and would pursue her workers' compensation claim, and said the conduct the council called misconduct related to her disclosure of information to the proper authorities.
The reforms in the background
The clash comes a fortnight after the Cook Government introduced the Local Government Amendment and Repeal Bill 2026, which it describes as part of the biggest overhaul of the sector in more than 25 years. According to the government's statement, the Bill would:
- move every council to "all-up" four-year election cycles from 2031, so all members face voters at once;
- let extraordinary vacancies be filled by the next-in-line candidate for up to three years after an election, instead of holding a by-election;
- remove the "Dadour poll" provision, which lets residents force a public vote on boundary changes, to make voluntary amalgamations easier;
- allow technology-assisted voting for people with disability.
Ms Beazley has said repeatedly that 139 local governments is too many, but Labor has stopped short of forcing mergers. When the Bill was introduced she said amalgamation "may not be the right solution for all" but should be achievable where it would help.
Why it matters
The minister and the peak body need each other to get the reforms through and make them work. A public slanging match between them, in the same week a Perth council sacked a chief executive who had already quit, is likely to harden opposition in councils already wary of amalgamation. Ratepayers will want to know whether the reform push survives the noise.
The Bill is still before State Parliament.
Photo: Parliament House, Perth. Steelkamp via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). File photo.
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