Roper Gulf Regional Council and the awkwardness of local government investing outside their jurisdiction
"...Council is part of the Katherine community..." "... we have a social responsibility to contribute to the growth of the town..." Positive rhetoric like the above is par for the course for any Australian local government. The above quotes come from Roper Gulf Regional Council's CEO Michael Berto. Great messages? Definitely. One major problem though: the town they refer to - Katherine - isn't part of the council's area. Roper Gulf Regional Council covers a massive, sparsely populated area reaching from east of Katherine right out to the Gulf of Carpentaria coast. It came into being 10 years ago when the NT Government oversaw the establishment of 'Super Shires' - amalgamations that subsumed a stack of community government councils which were often local government areas with only a few hundred constituents. The creation of 11 'Super Shires' a decade ago was an unpopular move . Poorly consulted and hastily done, some say it ca