THE southern suburbs’ controversial waste authority is set for a major shake-up as part of a Barnett government push towards privatisation.

In anticipation the Southen Metropolitan Regional Council (SMRC) is already preparing to sell one of its recycling plants.

Veteran Fremantle representative on the body, Cr Doug Thompson, says the government is keen for all assets to be offloaded.

The SMRC deputy chair says looming new governance models will scrap regional councils and replace them with compulsory “waste groups”.

Another option would be for councils to establish waste management business structures.

Cr Thompson says whatever model is adopted the government wants  the structures to be contracting agencies, not service providers, although they may still run garbage trucks and hand collected waste to the private sector.

Cr Thompson isn’t sold on the idea the private sector can do the job more efficiently and worries that in pursuit of profit, contractors won’t have the drive for innovation that councils have shown.

“My other concern is that one of the ideas that the minister has floated is that whatever structure these groups end up having, they would have external expertise like a board of directors,” Cr Thompson says.

“If the councils are the contractors it’s council money, so I would think that there should be elected members on the board.”

SMRC chair Cameron Schuster, Melville’s representative on the body, is more comfortable with privatisation but says the debate is really about the structure of the industry.

He says one problem facing the SMRC is its material recovery facility in Cannington doesn’t work to capacity, so it’s an economic drag. He believes current rules make it difficult for the SMRC to pick up that capacity, so it makes sense to hand it to private operators.

Cr Schuster says councils can put strict conditions on their tenders to ensure private operators don’t cut corners with things like cheap landfill rather than recycling.

If the state government does mandate council membership of new waste authorities, it will eliminate the bickering and withdrawals that have been a common problem for regional councils across Perth. Canning and Rockingham pulled out of the SMRC in 2009 while Stirling spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to extricate itself from the Mindarie Regional Council last year.

In December, Cockburn CEO Stephen Cain told councillors behind closed doors they should consider exiting the SMRC too, saying the council was paying a significant premium for the SMRC’s inability to be competitive.

Cockburn had been planning to use amalgamations as an excuse to dissolve the SMRC, but will now cool its heels and produce another report.

It will look at a controversial move towards waste-to-energy incinerators, with environmental approvals already given for a facility to be built in Rockingham.

Last month, Mr Cain warned councillors he’d had to rewrite a report that had been rushing the council towards waste-to-energy.

“I strongly feel that this report is asking us to place ourselves in a position where we are, in effect, committing to write a blank cheque on behalf of our ratepayers and hand it over to a private operator, whose sole reason for existence is to make maximum profit,” his report read.

Cr Schuster believes waste-to-energy is inevitable, but is a long way down the track before it’s viable.

He says he’s aware of concerns the plants produce nanoparticles that are not regulated and whose health effects are little-known, but says he’s not qualified to comment on them.

However, he’s confident regulatory bodies will make the appropriate recommendations to the government.

by STEVE GRANT