This means council is put in charge of an awful lot of things it hasn’t traditionally had carriage of, like New Year’s Eve events. Is it essential? Well, no, but if we really are a city then we need to act like one and having a few fire crackers at midnight is part of that. 

Now, the plan our mayor put forward includes an earlier 9.30pm display and no mention of fireworks at midnight, which will upset quite a few punters. 

But the question needs to be asked: What’s it all for anyway? 

As a family event, the earlier showing makes enormous sense. You’re more likely to get more people going along to watch them, before getting the kids off to bed. 

However, if it’s about Auld Lang Syne and greeting the new year, then we really should be marking the occasion at midnight. After all, who opens their birthday presents a day early?

Even bigger cities like Newcastle have abandoned the midnight festivities in a bid to get families out of the way before the drunken rabble descends, leaving midnight to the multi-million dollar spectacular on the television.

While the literal fireworks are bound to get a lot of the attention, it’s the figurative ones we should be far more concerned about.

They say local government is the closest to the people and perhaps that’s why it warrants such scrutiny on an almost-daily basis. The issues and budgets may be smaller than its state and federal counterparts, but that doesn’t mean ratepayers should be any less concerned with what’s going on.

It’s pretty easy to argue that ratepayers buy a bigger stake in councils than they do in federal politics – rates per person are higher than taxes in most cases.

So when a former senior staffer starts throwing around the “ICAC” word, it deserves attention. To be clear – a report or an allegation does not always equate to something actually being wrong – but it would be prudent for council staff to take another look at the waste management tender process.

If there’s a sniff of something being wrong, maybe they’d be better safe than sorry.