Sacha Blumen argues for a Greater Sydney Metropolitan Council [GSMC] which would be a supra-council body modelled along the same lines as the Greater London Authority. The GSMC would be responsible for "broad Sydney-wide planning and transport within the Sydney metropolitan region rather than for this to be done by the NSW state govt." Sacha expects there would be an elected mayor and approximately 25-30 councillors.
The Queensland councils are as a rule larger than the NSW ones. The Brisbane City Council [BCC] has a population of about 950,000 and a budget of close to a billion. The Sydney City Council [SCC] in comparison has a population of approximately 156,000 in its political borders.
There are numerous local governments in Sydney responsible for greater populations than the SCC including Blacktown, Fairfield, Wollongong, Sutherland, Lake Macquarie, Penrith, Liverpool, Gosford and Bankstown.
This is probably because those parts of Sydney are newer as well as being demographic centres of the Sydney suburbs. The SCC is mainly for the central business district of Sydney rather than the suburbs.
The BCC is also unique in Queensland politics because it has its own charter. If you look at the local government act for the BCC the Queensland state government lays out the charters for all local governments except for the BCC. Nearly every line of legislation has an "except for Mike clause" in it.
I am not certain a supra-council body would be a good idea for Sydney as it would be centered in Sydney proper which has urban issues rather than the suburban issues of Hornsby, Bankstwon, Liverpool, Campbelltown, Penrith and the Hawkesbury.
It may be that an inner-city and inner-west super council would provide the kind of urban leadership that Sydney requires, but I would be loath for such a structure to extend out to the Blue Mountains. That kind of consolidation of the urban councils would be better achieved by amalgamation of the urban councils than a Sydney-wide super-council.
Tangentially - Guy discusses the London congestion charge policy at polemica.
