Brian Anderson The Western Front www.sunlive.co.nz

I am holidaying in Perth and my bad habits mean I haven't been able to resist checking out this council's solutions to issues of the day that are common to Perth and the Bay of Plenty.

Perth is open. People in the street wanted to talk about their city and offer opinion. The first person who met me at the airport welcomed me with the advice that Perth was a great place and that I should have to be prepared to travel for miles to visit the different centres but each of the sixteen centres is a self-contained city centre. Amalgamation doesn't seem to be on anyone's agenda. Decentralisation doesn't seem to be a problem when a family day pass for use on trains, buses and ferries through the whole of the Perth region only costs $11.50.

The first person I spoke to on the train volunteered his opinion on democracy and the council and offered inside information on an example of democratic rights being trampled by the council. He introduced me to the continuing story of ter Horst, a resident of Fremantle, who had been in conflict with the local council for over twenty years. I returned to base and Googled ‘ter Horst Fremantle' and started following the saga of a council that has been unwilling to admit or correct mistakes. The story is being followed worldwide.

On the ferry, the tour guide pointed out the properties of the excessively rich and famous to explain how this very small group lived while contrasting that with tales of intensification of housing developments, the loss of the quarter acre sections, and he was a little cynical over projects like the pipe dream for beautifying the city's quay area.

I didn't start any of these conversations and much of this controversy is in local papers. Most councils in a democracy expect to be scrutinised by the public and measured in the local media. The Auckland papers are full of people debating their problems with the new authority and by now we should have been starting to see an increase in public interest and debate on the planning for our ideas for new Western Bay in the media.

If there is work being done at the moment, it is behind closed doors and, if this continues, it can only perpetuate the current model of closed council mentality and thinking. All councils in democracies feature mechanisms for engaging with the public. Perth uses forums and I hope to have more information on how these are working by next week.