As Dubbo City Council asks the community for its views on its no-mergers stance, the Local Government Association of Queensland (LGAQ) is watching NSW undertake reform of the sector with interest.

The NSW government announced its Fit for the Future reforms last year, saying more than one-third of state’s councils were facing financial problems - losing more than $1 million a day.

It put on the table cash incentives of up to $13.5 million for regional councils that volunteered to merge to share and required every council to make a submission by a June deadline.

Forced amalgamations in the Sunshine State in 2008 reduced the number of councils from 143 to 74 and significantly expanded the boundaries of the resulting councils, LGAQ spokesman Craig Johnstone said.

He said at first the reform had been voluntary, but then it was “short-circuited” by the Beattie government, who took it out of the hands of the councils.

 “The general situation now is there are still a lot of councils that despite amalgamation have problems with financial sustainability,” Mr Johnstone said.

“We as a peak body work with councils to strengthen their finances so they have a more certain outlook.

“The issue remains that some councils are still suffering the problems amalgamation was supposed to fix.”

Nor were the 2008 amalgamations the last word.

“It’s safe to say amalgamation was not accepted in some areas and there was a lot of agitation to de-amalgamate,” Mr Johnstone said.

One of those areas was the Sunshine Coast, where Noosa, Maroochy and Caloundra were merged to form the Sunshine Coast Regional Council.

When the Newman government came to power in 2012 it introduced a process to allow councils to reverse the process, Mr Johnstone said.

In 2014 the Noosa Council was reborn, he said.

There had been “quite a few success stories” in other areas, including the Moreton Bay Regional Council, which after the amalgamation of three local government areas became the council with the third largest population in the Australia.

“It’s operating quite well now as a very large entity,” Mr Johnstone said.

Dubbo council has invited community feedback about its draft Fit For The Future submission until June 5.

Mr Johnstone said there were some examples in the Queensland experience relevant to NSW and some that were not.

“We’ve got a lot of experience in the area and are interested in what the outcome will be,” he said.

“Hopefully it’s one where the community will continue to be served well by their local councils because everywhere in Australia local government is the level of government that is closest to the people.”