St George has historically been made up of 3 council areas, Hurstville, Kogarah and Rockdale. Those days are now behind us with the forced amalgamation of NSW councils by the Liberal Government.
Wholely within St George we have the new “Georges River Council” comprised on Hurstville and Kogarah LGAs. Spanning either side of the airport we also now have “Bayside Council” encompassing Rockdale and Botany LGAs.
Bayside is an interesting choice.
The whole justification of the mergers was economy of scale and simplification of our planning processes, streamlining and elimination of redundancies and yet with Bayside we have a newly created LGA that doesn’t fit neatly inside one of the newly created Commissions either.
Commissions?
Another change in planning in NSW was the creation of the Greater Sydney Commission which broke Sydney up into 5 areas or “districts” for more cohesive planning that spans LGAs. A structure to help bridge federal, state and local council planning. By creating Bayside, the Baird government has also created an LGA that sits neither within the Southern Sydney Commissioners area or the Central District. It flies in the face of simplicity of structure that is the main message of Bairds program and shows it for what it is – a gerrymander.