By Danielle Kutchel
The City of Casey has moved to dump a number of its sister city arrangements, following a change in Federal Government legislation.
In a council meeting on Tuesday 16 March, the administrators of the City of Casey agreed to end foreign arrangements with Berwick Upon Tweed, the City of Springfield, Mianyang City, Dujiangyan City and CRRC/SRIC, a Chinese state-owned company.
The council’s motion follows the passing of the Federal Government’s Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Act 2020, which allows the Minister for Foreign Affairs to scrutinise prevent foreign arrangements, or cancel existing ones, if the arrangement is considered to be inconsistent with Australia’s foreign relations.
Administrator Cameron Boardman, who moved the motion, said the motion was required under the act.
He said some of the sister city agreements that had been formed by previous councils were absurd, including some with Chinese state-owned government entities.
Mr Boardman said it appeared that many of the agreements had been used to justify travel expenditure, and said it was unclear what the purpose of some of the agreements was.
“It goes without saying that the responsibility of organisations such as the City of Casey has to be to its citizens and ratepayers first, and it’s very difficult to identify what benefits the citizens and ratepayers would’ve gotten from these arrangements,” he said, labelling them “utterly pointless”.
His fellow administrator Miguel Belmar said it was an appropriate move, and that foreign affairs should be left to other levels of government.
“The place of a local government municipality like Casey is to concern itself with the matters of its local community,” he said.
In a a review of Casey’s foreign arrangements, council officers identified six arrangements that may fail under the new Federal legislation. All bar one of those – with Ermera District of East Timor – were found to be inactive.
The sister city arrangement with the City of Springfield dated back to the council’s City of Berwick days, in 1985.
Arrangements with Mianyang City, Dujiangyan City and CRRC/SRIC were signed as part of the City of Casey’s China Engagement Strategy.
The strategy was axed in April 2020, after a council report found it “lacked clarity”.
