23 February

This is the reality. Local government is nearly in ‘financial ruin’, pretty much everywhere. Even those Councils who can balance their books will have millions in arrears on infrastructure backlogs, like roads and basic asset maintenance. The funding for these basic services has always been missing. Populists take this situation and try to turn it to their advantage, by blaming the councils and their staff, pretending to stand for ‘the community’ in opposition to alleged incompetence and corruption. Really the populists just want to be in charge themselves, and will take cheap shots every day to try to bring that about.