Local Government News Roundup · Chris Eddy

Criminal charges, council mergers, and a four day work week - #562

March 12, 2026·30 min·2 clips

Chris Eddy opens the program with the day’s local government bulletin and a sponsor message about emergency dashboards. The show then flags a councillor and a CEO served with alleged criminal charges. New chief executive appointments are announced at Berrigan and Junee councils. A CEO performance review in New South Wales exposes divisions inside a council. New land valuations in southeast Queensland raise concern about potential rate rises. Western Australia sees council mergers back on the agenda. Calls also surface for compulsory voting in local government elections. The program broadens out to an international example, where a major city introduces a four-day work week. The reporting keeps the focus on institutions rather than commentary. It moves quickly from one jurisdiction to the next. The tone stays formal and factual. A countback result brings a previously serving councillor back onto a council without a by-election. The episode then turns to the practical back-end work of splitting Cootamundra Gundagai Regional Council into two separate entities. That process includes unwinding shared systems from contracts and payroll to property and supply chains so two independent councils can start without disrupting services. Council says that includes a major upgrade of the Council's enterprise resource planning system, followed by months of scoping and consultation before building two separate platforms and migrating data ahead of the planned start date of July 1 next year. Council says staff are doing that work while keeping day-to-day services running, and it is asking residents for patience as milestones are reached. Rising oil prices are squeezing freight in regional New South Wales, and Regional Cities New South Wales says the state risks sliding backwards on productivity unless long-known bottlenecks are fixed. The group's chair, Liz Moore-Mead, and Mayor Councillor Steve Krieg says the freight network is worth about $66 billion, but bridge limits, detours and underloading are holding it back. Regional Cities New South Wales says it's mapped 93 bottlenecks and has business cases ready for 10 priority projects with 10 priority fixes ready to go. Upper Hunter Shire Council then moves to solidify its regional partnerships and progress the future of aged care in Merriwa following an extraordinary meeting this week. Council has voted unanimously to inform the Minister for Local Government that the Shire intends to remain a member of a joint organisation. The Council highlighted that the joint organisation model is the most effective way to support ongoing collaboration across the Hunter and Mid Coast regions. The episode closes with the same steady local-government cadence it began with. It is less interested in opinion than in what councils, ministers, and administrators are doing next.

As heard by us

A broad council bulletin that keeps the practical consequences in view.

The piece tracks a wide spread of local government business, moving from alleged criminal charges and new CEO appointments to a performance review that has exposed divisions in a NSW council.

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Why you'd press play

You want the week's council headlines without losing the thread.

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