People power pushes council mergers to the brink

By Lisa Visentin, Jacob Saulwick, Sean Nicholls
Updated February 4 2017 - 2:08am, first published 12:15am
"The byelection was the last chance we had to make our voices heard": Marj Bollinger. Photo: James Brickwood
"The byelection was the last chance we had to make our voices heard": Marj Bollinger. Photo: James Brickwood
An anti-merger protest outside Bathurst MP Paul Toole's office last year. Photo: Supplied
An anti-merger protest outside Bathurst MP Paul Toole's office last year. Photo: Supplied

It was a policy dictated from the heart of commercial Sydney; from government office blocks in Macquarie Street and Martin Place, and from consultants' suites in Barangaroo. But if the state's council amalgamations plans are defeated in the coming days, or at least pared back, it will owe to political power exercised from RSL clubs, town halls, and showgrounds on the other side of the Great Dividing Range. Decision-making tends to flow from east to west in this state: here the west may have reversed the tide.

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