Twentieth Century
With the passing of the Local Authorities Act 1902, which repealed both previous acts and extended councils' authority over the areas they controlled, the municipalities became Towns (unless they had City status) and the divisions became Shires on 31 March 1903. In 1915–1917 and again in 1949, significant changes were made to local government in south-eastern Queensland and also in far northern Queensland. By the time the Local Government Act 1936 came into effect, although the different categories of local government areas still existed, they were essentially a naming convention and had no practical meaning under the Act. A City had to be proclaimed by the Governor following certain criteria being met.
In 1925, a number of local governments in Brisbane were amalgamated into the City of Brisbane, covering what was then the entire metropolitan area. Its council, Brisbane City Council, effectively became a "super-council" with some powers normally reserved for the state. It has its own Act of Parliament, the City of Brisbane Act 1924, and a population today of over 1 million. Due to population growth and suburban spread, however, almost half of metropolitan Brisbane's population actually lives in neighbouring areas such as Ipswich, Logan, Moreton Bay and Redland, which are all managed under the Local Government Act.
In 1989, the Electoral and Administrative Reform Commission was set up to investigate and report on a range of reforms to Queensland public administration, and one area of its purview was the Local Government Act 1936 and local council boundaries. As a result of its recommendations, the Goss Labor government then in charge amalgamated several councils and a new Local Government Act 1993 was introduced.
Read more about this topic: Local Government In Queensland
Famous quotes related to twentieth century:
“War is bestowed like electroshock on the depressive nation; thousands of volts jolting the system, an artificial galvanizing, one effect of which is loss of memory. War comes at the end of the twentieth century as absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to ‘feel good’ about themselves, their country, is a measure of that failure.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)
“... the nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not. Not.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)
“Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1947)