No Taxation Without Representation?

Our letter in today's West Australian sets out a clear case for sacking the City of Perth Council and holding fresh elections for Council and Lord Mayor - along with an interesting 'turn the tables' letter from B Walton of Embleton.

A key issue that has been all but absent from discussion of the City of Perth Act is that the current Subiaco electors who will be forcibly transferred to City of Perth on July 1st will be without representation until October 2017 - and even then will only have the chance to vote for half the council and not for the Lord Mayor, who is not due for re-election until 2019.

No matter that some City of Perth councillors will do their best to engage with the ex-Subiaco community, the fact is that they have not been elected by those people.

At the same time, the City of Perth will expect those people to pay rates and rubbish charges to support a council budget they have had no part in determining.

This smacks of 'taxation without representation' which was one of the major causes of the American Revolution. We could hardly blame those soon-to-be-former Subiaco ratepayers if they were to refuse to pay taxes levied on this undemocratic basis.