Randwick City Council: History
The City of Randwick was first proclaimed the Municipality of Randwick on 23 February 1859 in the New South Wales Government Gazette and under the provisions of the Municipalities Act 1858. The municipality was officially proclaimed the City of Randwick with effect from 1 July 1990 by the Governor of New South Wales, Rear Admiral Sir David Martin on 27 June 1990.
The area was home to a few wealthy landowners and the poor residents of several shantytowns until the 1880s, when the coming of trams from Sydney brought extensive suburban development. The New South Wales University of Technology opened at Kensington in 1949 on the site of Kensington Racecourse, eventually becoming the University of New South Wales. The Randwick City Library service began in 1952, the municipality being one of the earliest to adopt the Library Act 1939. The city is home to the Malabar Wastewater Treatment Plant, which was opened in 1975, and is one of the largest wastewater treatment facilities in Sydney.
A 2015 review of local government boundaries recommended that the City of Randwick merge with the Waverley and Woollahra councils to form a new council with an area of 58 square kilometres (22 sq mi) and support a population of approximately 274,000. Following an independent review, in May 2016 the NSW Government sought to dismiss the council and force its amalgamation with Woollahra and Waverley councils. Woollahra Council instigated legal action claiming that there was procedural unfairness and that a KPMG report at the centre of merger proposals had been "misleading". The matter was heard before the NSW Court of Appeal who, in December 2016, unanimously dismissed Woollahra Council's appeal, finding no merit in its arguments that the proposed merger with Waverley and Randwick councils was invalid. In July 2017, the Berejiklian government decided to abandon the forced merger of the Woollahra, Waverley and Randwick local government areas, along with several other proposed forced mergers.
== Demographics ==
At the 2016 census, there were 140,660 people in the Randwick local government area, of these 49.2% were male and 50.8% were female. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people made up 1.5% of the population; significantly below the NSW and Australian averages of 2.9 and 2.8 per cent respectively. The median age of people in the City of Randwick was 34 years. Children aged 0–14 years made up 14.9% of the population and people aged 65 years and over made up 13.4% of the population. Of people in the area aged 15 years and over, 38.5% were married and 9.1% were either divorced or separated.
Population growth in the City of Randwick between the 2001 Census and the 2006 census was 1.10%; and in the subsequent five years to the 2011 census, population growth was 7.59%. When compared with total population growth of Australia for the same periods, being 5.78% and 8.32% respectively, population growth in Randwick local government area was lower than the national average. The median weekly income for residents within the City of Randwick was higher than the national average.