aftermath

Well, I didn't keep this blog going all the way to the 13 September elections, it got too busy for that and it was not appropriate to run commentary on tactical situations as they evolved. 

I did present policies and reform proposals at www.shoalhaven2020.net

Here is an email that I sent around to tell people what I am doing now. 

On 03/10/2008, at 12:46 PM, Dennis Argall wrote:

After the Sept 13 elections, I sent around an email to many - but discovered some time later that there were a number of key people it had NOT reached. Sorry! Thanks again for the ideas, the support and practical help.

Now is the time to review things again.

It has been an interesting process shifting gear after the result that saw me NOT elected to any positiion.

In a new preface to www.shoalhaven2020.net I have written that
"I am pleased that I made some contribution to achieving [regime change]. I was myself unsuccessful as a candidate... though it is a great honour to find that having come from nowhere into the political debate, thousands of people had confidence to vote for me. And I am in many ways pleased not to have been elected as I am more an agent of change, a provocateur of policy, than a long term administrator."

I have found it interestingly complicated, or complicately interesting, to readjust from the full days and nights I gave to the campaign. A process not complete. A need for personal redefinition, given also changes in personal life during this year.

I have to find time (I want to find time) to catch up personally with many who helped, new friends acquired, old friends relied on, ideas batted, ideas needing development.

I am going to stay away from the council's business till Christmas at least. It is not for me to be there nagging as they get on their feet. I am concerned that others also realise we need to see the council as part of community. It is ours, we are not theirs. They are not just roads, paths and sewers, they are supposed to lead and good leaders empower and inspire community. Leadership breeds leadership, does not suck up power.

I do have one FOI (or LGA Section 12) request in place, for Huscorp related material.

I am concerned that the council shift to routine openness, not routine secrecy - as required by law, See these court cases so you know what should/should not be happening:

Wykanak v Rockdale City Council and Anor. [2001] NSWLEC 65
http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/nsw/NSWLEC/2001/65.html
M & R Civil Pty Limited v Hornsby Council [2003] NSWLEC 13
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/nsw/NSWLEC/2003/13.html
(both are cases where the court held that Council acted illegally in closing a meeting)

I have been pleased that through this process my new (April) back garden continued to supply abundant greens and I am now able (as are the weeds in spring!) to give the garden more attention. I am also in my eleventh year as owner builder here:
http://aplaceof.info/mounteurobodalla/ only just gotten back briefly after months away!

I am also giving proper time now to the Nowra Youth Centre, where I am on the management committee. The NYC is four years old and needs support to sustain itself as a secular institution of value to youth in the city. If any of you are interested in being part of that please let me know. There is need for volunteers in this and that but especially a large need for members of a positive policy oversight board.

I am also working on collaborative projects with my remarkable friend Raul Caceres,
http://www.think-makers.com/ - look at 'Commercials' and the first item - NABUUR Ref: Volunteers profile.
We share a frustration with Nabuur but have continuing commitment to the business of shifting international development towards empowerment rather than delivery of things designed elsewhere.

I have just sent a modest amount of money to Vince of www.easterncongo.net so he can build an income generating project across the border in Uganda.

I am supporting Fred through university. http://aplaceof.info/acoke/

I am hoping that the team of bulls and plough for which I sent his dad http://aplaceof.info/acoke/0705update.htm money several months ago have been trained well and will be able to be used (once again this year Uganda is under a deluge of flood waters) to grow food for the community which has been sent by the government back from their refugee camp to their war devastated village.

I have to find time to visit Uganda and the Congo soon.

Raul is (among lots of other projects - my daughter Liz also now involved as comic writer with his Juarez project at http://www.wecan4peace.org/ ) currently contracted to the NSW Cancer Council to try to get their online support groups to work... the old problem of top down management versus bottom-up community empowerment, in the critical area of the so-called 'cancer journey' where control and empowerment are critical to success for the individual in so many ways. I 'manage' a brain tumour support group I set up in 2000 when my then wife Margaret was being killed by a brain tumour. With a membership of perhaps 500 it is the most inspiring example of community I know.
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/OzBrainTumour/
My model and inspiration, full of life and character, bravery and positiveness in adversity. Raul and I share the empowerment perspective and we will try to build processes for more effective support groups generally. .. oh and um I have to build some new briefing papers for OzBrainTumour members by Chirstmas too.

Amid all that, I do want to find time for personal identity including in art, photography, writing etc. I do regard the creation of policy designs, as over the last few months, as a creative process, but I want some room for self-indulgence too... This is pretty exciting. I hope you are making the most of your year also.

Oh, and an especially big outcome from the whole election campaign is that Cara Longbottom, number 2 on my ticket in ward 2, today began study at the Shoalhaven Campus of U of W - a transition program to BA next year. Cara was an extraordinary candidate, who grew throughout the campaign as she will also grow at university

best wishes

Dennis

Dennis Argall
dennisargall@gmail.com
www.aplaceof.info

updating the web site

I have put up a clearer presentation of policy and commitments now at www.shoalhaven2020.net

Do let me have comments!

Dennis

NOT SO MUCH WRITTEN HERE, BUT LOTS HAPPENING!

I confess I've been running and building pages of commitments and things to be done in a new kind of council, over at www.shoalhaven2020.net

Do go have a look. 

East Nowra Sub-Arterial Road

I made clear at a meeting at the council last night, where the council was presenting its traffic management plans for the extension of the Stocklands shopping complex, that putting traffic through this community was simply unacceptable. This council has allowed the east Nowra community to slip, over thirty years (Mayor Watson first presided over our local government in 1978), to a situation of social disadvantage comparable with western NSW. I have placed background information on East Nowra including links to the Australian Bureau of Statistics' Index of Social Disadvantage among papers supporting my 100 Days document.

This means in practice that the Council should abandon the $4 million pork barrel of election enhancing projects it secretly put in the budget at a councillor 'briefing' two weeks ago. It also means a timing adjustment for the North Nowra Link Road. On the ABS's Index of Social Index the Shoalhaven overall scores 964. North Nowra scores 1004, Bangalee, Tapitallee, Cambewarra 1093. East Nowra scores 826... Only two local government areas rate below Nowra's score — in the far west of NSW - Brewarrina 764 and Central Darling 821. I get this information via the Shoalhaven Council web site. The council knows this situation, it has allowed this situation to develop, it has allowed the Stocklands project to roll forward having in mind simply that they can roll traffic through the most vulenrable community we have. Unacceptable, appalling, I will have no part of that. 

I live in North Nowra, I do drive and walk Illaroo Road in peak times. The problems of traffic demand more fundamental adjustments, including 

• the highway bypass to the west, as soon as possible after Berry to Bomaderry.
  
• another bridge

In that context, the provocative North Nowra Link Road over Bomaderry Creek (not mentioned in the mayor's ridiculous brochure assurances that he a is true greenie) is a ticket to ride to the polls, not to anywhere important to long term design. It will, with increased southbound traffic funnelled from further north onto the highway, irritate people coming from Bomaderry and Bolong Road - their entry will be made more diffcult. Short term, where are the solutions to the traffic jam at Princes Highway-Bridge Road? That traffic jam is what blocks the Illaroo Rd-Princes Highway corner. Where is the right turn traffic going? Is it going beyond the CBD. If so, let's calm the traffic going that way, to encourage vehicles to stay on the highway and turn right further south. 

Dennis

100 Days- fuel and food crisis

I have added a commitment to convene a Fuel and Food Crisis Summit. Go to the 100 Days page for more.

100 Days update - promise regarding gaol

I have made some additions to my 100 Days document. These include a promise to address urgently the impact on Nowra of the new gaol. Click here to read - the amendments are in red.

map

You can click on the image to enlarge. 

I have placed a map of our electoral wards - derived from the map at the council's web site - alongside an image of the coast from GoogleEarth. 

The lower lip of Jervis Bay is missing from the ward map - the Federal Jervis Bay Territory is not in NSW or the Shoalhaven. 

wikipedia

I have not written much here but have written lots of other stuff in recent days... as well as meeting lots of people. It is an enormous privilege of my situation to be able to listen to many different people and hear their stories and concerns.

I have written a 'letter to the editor', which may or may not be deemed fit for publication somewhere or other. I mentioned to someone that I had quoted the Wikipedia definition of 'Rule of Law' - something we lack around here in certain important regards. I was asked '"since when has Wikipedia been an authoritative resource". I replied that the Wikipedia is a wonderful example of the things that can be done by community, as distinct from things that can be done by an obsessive group of people tucked in a back room exercising power. Wikipedia has these three rules which are monitored by its devotees:

1. neutral point of view
2. verifiability
3. no original research

 For a delightful account of how the process of developing Wikipedia entries works, read this article in the New York Review of Books.

I have made some minor entries in Wikipedia, and made some additions. As mentor to some empowerment projects in Africa, I have been concerned to bring more knowledge of the 'real' world into the 'virtual world' where more and more people seem to live. As for example, needing to connect Amina's project and its arguments for support of women in the Congo to the mainstream of thinking about such things, I added a 'Status of Women' section to the Wikipedia entry for Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since I wrote that, someone else has added a photo and someone has linked to another, more substantial article on the same subject.

You will see in that article reference to a project by women in Bukavu. That links, via the Bukavu article in Wikipedia and more immediately via a footnote, to this project for which I have been mentor (Amina's project).

It will always be my intention to relate local government back to community. 

D

p.s. and when my youngest grandson was named Darliston, for the name of the town in Jamaica where his dad was born, Darli's mother Bindi and I sat down at the computer and put Darliston (the town) into Wikipedia. Someone out there will add flesh and bring that entry up to date sometime!  Small steps, recorded and added to, make the big picture reflect reality rather than run over lesser people and circumstances.

Important developments

The Department of Local Government has decided that there must be a period before the elections where council make no major decisions. Read the statement here.

On Friday 20 June, the Department issued a Model Code of Conduct which provides a positive basis for a new council. 

This fits well with my document issued this morning on how I would seek to shape a new kind of council culture within 100 days.

Quote of the week

I have been to various communities over the last few days. Write to me if you want me to visit your community. Copy and correct dennisargall[at]gmail.com.

I was finishing several points about difficult times ahead. I said: "... but in the end, Council can't solve all the problems." To which the instant response:

"... but it doesn't have to make the problems worse. In the last four years Council may have created enough disgust to make people act. The Council [majority] may be the catalyst in its own downfall."

Finally, though, I have met someone, just one person, who has responded to my offering my pamphlet saying: "we'd better not get onto that." We didn't I took this as support for the mayor. I take note, however, of a comment last night that over several elections everyone seems to want change, but it doesn't happen. 

other ways of doing things

Here is a Canadian paper about ways community can decide on local funds allocation. Can we do that?

And here an Australian paper arguing the importance of diversity for communities to prosper.

The South Coast Register has called on me to come up with specific policy. Among my specific objectives is to avoid pulling specific decisions out of my pocket. This seems an important core concept. Somewhere, in the process, firm decisions have to be taken on projects and on broad plans. But it is not for me to go to an election with a whole bundle of specific commitments invented out of the air. 

Systemic change is a very specific objective. Saying that we must, with communities, find new ways of integrating community with council process is very specific. I do not venture to say exactly how it is to be done. Plants (and people) grow from seeds. This is a seeding idea. I place those links above not to suggest they provide the answers but to make clear that such things are being ventured elsewhere and ought to be ventured here. The worst thing you can do in any innovation process is say -especially for government to say - do this. Which inevitably turns out wrong, because it wasn't developed and agreed in a team environment, there is no commitment to it, it is just another imposition. Which is what we have to escape from...

Wollongong moving on

Interesting to find in Wollongong that a new broom has changed the city slogan, as for example on garbage trucks. Previously it was

• Wollongong Council: Working For You.
  

now it is the much more friendly and equal expression:

• Wollongong Council: Working With You.
  

Much nicer relationship, much more the way local government ought to work!

characteristics of effortlessness

While I was away at the weekend I came upon a piece of paper headed 'four characteristics of effortlessness', reflecting and affirming what I have been trying to do in this campaign. 

...The critical point being that it is important to seek happy and positive outcomes from the election and there is no way to do that with a sour face.

Anyway, I had posted these points on to several people by email and then was reading it to a friend who rang this evening... he thought they were terrific and agreed they should be posted here:

So here they are, four characteristics of effortlessness:

• Focus on how we feel inside rather than on the results we want to achieve
  
• Act from inner calm rather than giving way to anxiety and tension
  
• Refuse to lose composure in the face of external pressures
• Know that performance is intimately connected to pleasure, so keep our attention on finding enjoyment in activities

Ulladulla Sporting Complex and 'Future Park'

I had very valuable discussions in Ulladulla last week with business and community leaders but I chose to stay away from the meeting with council, attended by Joanna Gash MP, at the Future Park on Thursday morning as it is far more important for Mrs Gash and the community to secure a win on this issue than for me to secure any political publicity relating to it. 

You can watch the WIN News coverage here.

I had spoken to the Milton Ulladulla Times two weeks before in warm support of the prospects for securing a major recreational precinct drawing together the Dunn Lewis Centre, Future Park and Sporting Complex. My comment on Friday to the Milton Ulladulla Times added this:

My concern is to move community away from 'zero-sum games' where we all fight for one half empty glass.We have to see that working together, community - everyone, including business - can bring new combined power and fresh ideas. When we fight against each other the whole town goes backwards. Think big. Ulladulla has doubled in about 30 years. It will double again. Plan for 2020 and beyond. I will be 77 in 2020. The people who will be 40 in 2020 need to speak out, build the vision together. It's your town, not the mayor's.

The propaganda juggernaut

I invite your attention to the latest 'junk mail' TV program - the Shoalhaven Mail, 15-28 June, 2008, which was delivered yesterday. 

To understand the background - the pattern of public ownership (your ownership) of this publication - please look in the right column. 

Click on the link to read the transcript [best for dial-up] or the YouTube link [best with broadband broadband] to watch the ABC's Stateline program.

Council has diverted its advertising (and all that advertising revenue) from the newspapers in Nowra and Ulladulla to the Shoalhaven Mail. 

Please turn to page 9.

This is described as an 'advertising feature'. It is very clearly election advertising material. It lacks the necessary information about authorisation. There is no election period in NSW local government elections. Anyone who stood for election in 2004 (obviously existing councillors) is obliged to report to the NSW Election Funding Authority on receipts and expenditure for the whole period between the elections (I am obliged to do so from when I said I would be a candidate). Please note that Councillor McCrudden, who in the last issue scare-mongered about possible privatisation of water (which he knows to be nonsense) now talks about dropping swimming pool fees - is this a promise? Uncosted. He is a member of the Shoalhaven Independents Group, he is the mayor's bailiff in the ruling majority. They have proposed doubling pool entry costs. 

Councillor Kearney - under the  photo of Councillor Wilmott - has used an unusually large number of words, but I can't find policy really.

Please turn to pages 22 - 27, These are the pages of council notices. They no longer appear in normal newspapers, only here. These provide an enormous subsidy to this junk mail TV program.

Please turn to page 39. A curious advertising feature with Councillor Wilmott (under the photo of Councillor Kearney) appearing directly under a tendentious statement by the Huskisson Chamber of Commerce. This chamber, it says, has "had enough of the 'we-are-not-a-political party' Shoalhaven Action Group, known as SAC, working hand in glove with the South Coast Register." What an extraordinary statement. The Huskisson Chamber of Commerce, since its last AGM dominated by developers, is in the middle of a prolonged and open debate in the letters page of the South Coast Register with local community groups. It is definitely the case that the South Coast Register is in recent years, perhaps because it has come under Fairfax ownership, a vastly more independent paper than it may have been in the past. Where is the evidence for the alleged collusion with SAC, an allegation made also in the last Shoalhaven Mail. (Please note that I am not associated with SAC. I stand as an absolute independent.) This is pretty serious stuff — it will be interesting to see if Fairfax lawyers take an interest... 

At a recent council discussion of the need for closed 'councillor briefings' the extraordinary statement was made that things were good in the days when you could rely on the Register's journalist, their journalist could be admitted to briefings because she wouldn't report anything! This is not my concept of an open society and a free press. There is a dangerous onslaught on press freedom developing in the council and in what has become a propaganda outlet financed by Council money (your money).

Councillor Wilmott curiously entitles his piece: Ulladulla a basket case? "No"

Are his remarks paid for by the Huskisson Chamber of Commerce? Who did pay for this ad? Regarding Councillor Wilmott's question, I admit that I have on radio twice quoted the Mayor's private remark to me: "Ulladulla's hopeless. They have to go to Nowra or Batemans Bay to shop. They clutch at straws." 

Councillor Wilmott advances simplistic argument for development. My view is that Ulladulla contains many fine minds with great visions for the future — also many people impatient for support from council for projects.. and there is division because the council 'leadership' pit people against each other. The Ulladulla community as a whole needs to work together, not shout slogans. 

Ulladulla is in a crazy situation of now needing to comment on Council's draft Development Control Plan [DCP56] for its central business district. The conclusion of this process, however, runs unacceptably close to the elections. 

The reality also is that this DCP will then be overridden in 2009 by a city-wide Local Environment Plan, which the council must produce to meet State obligations. So what Ulladulla (and other communities) can most usefully do is focus on their long term strategic perspective (e.g. what do we want our place to be like when the population doubles?) and work back from a common vision for the long term to the tactical situations arising in the context of DCPs and LEPs, etc. Not get themselves tangled in fighting at the mileposts. 

Councillor Wilmott is one of those I had in mind when I referred on radio this week to the elected council acting like an adolescent boys' imitation of Macquarie Street (the NSW parliament, the 'bull pit'). With a decent council we could be rid of that adversarial community destructive nonsense.

Who paid for this ad? Indeed, has anyone paid? 

So, the context.

We have a situation in which the majority (the Watson gang) in the council have wanted or secured these things in recent weeks:

• keeping councillor briefings closed, seeing no need for the public to be informed.. an approach entirely at odds with how state and federal inquiries and hearings run
• two grants of $6000 each (double for the mayor) for an allowance to fund their communication before the elections in September. Reluctantly stopped only by the intervention of the Department of Local Government - and the law.
• Mayoral access to the council computer system in ways entirely at odds with proper practice in all open democracies and in the conduct of the chairpersons of boards of public companies. Stopped because illegal. 

....... none of these matters are reported in the Shoalhaven Mail.

In each of these two last matters Councillor McCrudden was most active in damning any decision to give in to the advice from the General Manager and the Department of Local Government. 

This is the same Councillor McCrudden who, at a P&C Meeting in East Nowra on 11 June 2008, told the audience that they had made an error going to the media and that they needed to learn that if you want something you go to the people with the power. He made this extraordinary speech after an even more extraordinary remark which puzzled me at the time (and has been explained to me since)... saying he had to go to another appointment and he had to go before the effects of the jab he had had began to wear off... I see it now what he meant, now that the words are on the page. This man, who is obliged under the Local Government Act to provide leadership, has gone to a fine meeting of sensible and articulate community leaders, in the most depressed corner of the Shoalhaven, with too many social problems and makes a joke about drug taking? 

Had I understood what I heard at the time I would have called for him to be stopped immediately. This is the same kind of labelling and hateful remark as the Mayor's "be a good Jew" remark last month, which McCrudden then told the press was OK because it was a commonplace.

We are dealing with people who have had power too long, who grasp to retain power by controlling information, by distorting the way the council operates, by picking and choosing among community groups, fomenting local hatred. They usurp authority and abuse it.

It is inappropriate for leaders to believe they have all the power. It is time for fundamentally new approach to how our local government is conducted and interacts with community. I will be setting how we do this out in meetings and in writing in coming weeks... I am hearing views of many and these I take on board as I build my concepts. We can make the change, but first people have to believe we can oust this regime.

southern communities

Well received in several places in the southern end of the Shoalhaven yesterday. Constructive discussions. I don't plan to place details of such here. My focus is on encouraging people to discover their community's capacities and design their own visions, rather than be dependent. This seems to strike chords with people.

The nature of the beast

At the East Nowra P&C meeting yesterday, Council McCrudden had the audacity to lecture those present before the meeting, then left. He said it was inappropriate for the community to approach the media, they should approach the people in power. 

This kind of performance is deeply puzzling until you realise how profoundly the Watson team are dedicated to the notion of feudal government, where they have the power, they have the right to control and shape public information, they have the right to access information on the council computer system, they have the right to interfere in the operations of the council and... if you don't go to them and suck up, you have no chance.

Time for fundamental change. 

... now off to the southern Shoalhaven for the day.

another inspiration

My belief in the power of community is not just in the head. It reflects extraordinary experiences. One with which I continue to be involved - sending emails many times a week is OzBrainTumour, a support group for Australians dealing with brain tumour diagnosis. 

I set OzBrainTumour up in 2000. 

My wife of 26 years, Margaret, then diagnosed with the worst kind of brain tumour. She with psychlogy and counselling training and many skills, I with a history of research and policy on all things in the federal arena, found ourselves on the most extraordinarily difficult learning curve, with death at th elbow. The learning had to be shared, so we built this web site for Margaret, then OzBrainTumour. 

With the Margaret site I learned the skills for web site building, going on to many projects at aplaceof.info.

From OzBrainTumour I have learned the power of community. With hundreds of members in the deepest, deepest holes of threat and difficulty, bad stuff is chucked aside and mutual support wonderful. 

Never despair, find community, build. 

Never hate, life is too short and too good for that...

See Change and Get Change

On Monday I wrote of inspirations I experienced in places and with people over the weekend.

I wrote to Robyn [Oliver] Williams, the Director of the Lady Denman Museum to say how wonderful the events were there, on Saturday - the usual markets, plus See Change's opening. 

Robyn wrote back with names of all those who contributed and I have placed the email exchange here [click]. Such community teamwork.

Kevin Browne, the President of Jervis Bay Arts, has urged me to come to the closing event of See Change, next Sunday. I have sent my regrets - my plan is to take a personal break, nothing more important than staying human! 

I did ask Kevin if he could encourage members of the arts community to take these elections seriously.  Community values require participation, not alienation or disillusion.... as does art. 

I can't do what I am trying to do without community energy and commitment. And I can't be dragging people to their feet, we are all adults. The affluent, the committed, need to come forward and find their voices. 

I have also drawn Kevin's attention to my email exchange with Teh Francis, in Cameroon - (look down just below this entry). Pastor Francis asked for further mentoring on the subject of transparency. I set out the principles that should apply in the Shoalhaven. 

If I were to speak next Sunday at that arts event, I would speak of the application of those same ideas to beauty and art: transparency, accountability, integrity, community and leadership. Art's meaning, for most of us, is in communication... what gives it clarity and impact? 

volunteer opportunity in Cameroon (West Africa)

I have received a swift reply from Rev. Teh Francis in the Cameroon. You can download a copy here. As well as wishing me well for the September elections, he asks if I can find any volunteers for his projects at the Goodness and Mercy Mission. I wonder whether there is someone out there who knows someone who would be interested in spending time in community building - empowerment, organisational capacity, accountability, transparency - everywhere they say transparency. Very important. Everywhere. Please consider... if you won't be a candidate for these elections please please consider going to Africa. Far more congenial than Shoalhaven City Council.

the same principles apply generally

Long before I began this campaign I was involved in community issues here and also via the internet in other places, especially in Africa.

A community leader in Cameroon in West Africa, Pastor Teh Francis wrote to me last night for my advice on the subject of transparency. My response to him this morning sets out all those things important also here in the Shoalhaven: transparency and accountability, integrity, community and leadership. You can download a copy of my email to Teh Francis here.

inspirations

I have been encouraged by many but inspired particularly by five moments and circumstances in the past few days.

This page of the program of the Sydney Writers Festival does not name all those who read their work at the Shoalhaven Campus evening of 'Indigenous Voices' on 5 June. The South Coast Writers Centre's blog may eventually catch up with news. Along with well-established writers one local writer, Josh Black, of East Nowra, read some of his powerful, masculine poetry. Josh has been a friend and adviser to me on many things, from horticulture to life in Nowra, for some time and I was proud to be there with his mother Sue to listen to Josh find his voice and discover appreciation and support for his work from other writers. When we get to assemble a Shoalhaven 'Next After Sorry' Committee the work of such Aboriginal writers will be of immense value to inform people, uplift spirits and find new directions. 

On Saturday, I attended the opening of the SeeChange Festival at the Lady Denman Museum. I had had the opportunity to look at the Little Archies entries a week before, without the crowd. I little misty eyed, not so much at seeing friends in the paintings, but at the wondrous openness of much of the work, the peeled off revelation of subjects and the articulation of viewpoint and feeling in the work itself. This can only happen in a real community, a community of trust. Arty-Farty stuff there is out there in the world and it can jar and irritate, but art heals, art binds, art delights and arouses us to feeling. How good to have it at the core of community. We may be getting a grand entertainment centre in Nowra... but I do hope the management of it understand the miles of distance between entertainment and engagement, between being alive and sitting and consuming.

In the late afternoon, out at Wreck Bay, I met with a young writer in his beautiful home, his wife and children shyly away with neighbours while we met. A place of astounding beauty and calm. I was dazzled by ideas and imagination. I came away with some fiction and also some local social and environmental ideas. This morning, Monday, I have been reading the fiction and found myself again in the state of entranced calm this writer projects. I knew suddenly earlier today that I have a book of ideas to produce myself, quickly. They rise to the surface as I do the household chores. I must get away to a bright space of my own to write.

Saturday night was real fun at the Ecobeat gig and it was nice to tell people who asked how I was coping with this campaign that I was happy and the process is fun. I was inspired, though, more than anything else, but the 19 year old who came to me later in the evening and asked me what he could do about participating in these elections. I asked him if he could talk with friends at the university about the importance of being involved, of shaping the future - and I offered to come and talk about that any time.

Sunday cold and wettish, so gardening off. Instead, great surprise opportunity to go with a friend and her daughter and two other schoolgirls to Minnamurra Rainforest. Nice walk, great fun... You know, we spend so much time embogged in adult negativities, we can lose perspective and hope. It can be really really good to spend time with the young and see how positive about the world they can be if their lives are filled with love and imagination. 

Murky issues coming to council Tuesday

If you look at the business paper for the meeting of Council on 10 June [click to download], you will see how unreal or perverse the situation now is. 

The CIR bites back!

At the front is the Mayoral Minute in which the recalcitrant continues to defy the Department of Local Government and wisdom by not withdrawing but seeking to postpone the $6000 slush fund for councillors and $12000 for himself. 

Remuneration of elected councillors is sensibly established by the Local Government Remuneration Tribunal. To cry that councillors are underpaid and need an extra allowance for 'communication' is deceitful, an attempt to get around state regulation and an attempt to pervert proper public information with propaganda.

Note that on page 6, at the front of the Report of the General Manager, the General Manager determinely and properly recommends that the Council simply abandon this grubby plan for a so-called Community Information Reimbursement (CIR) allowance.

In the next section, the FINANCE AND CORPORATE SERVICES report, beginning at page 4, you find discussion of the proper processes of remuneration of councillors. 

At the end of all the papers, Councillors Ward, Finkernagel and Green move to rescind (reverse) the silly resolution of 27 May, granting the CIR against all advice. 

The Department of Local Government will be watching.

Dates for new council, briefing new council

At pages 6 and 7 the council proposes new dates for meetings beyond the elections. These will, of course, sensibly be reviewed by the new council. On page 8, discussing the programs of development training for councillors by DLG and by this council it is proposed that Council send the Department information on its councillor induction program. 

Council does have comprehensive programs to explain its business operations to councillors after elections. There will need to be a profound change in that part of this program to establish a new and proper basis for the elected council to work as a board, to understand the meaning of keeping your finger out of the pie, to understand there are many matters within council management to which elected councillors and mayor have no right to information. The new council needs to establish a proper new basis for ethical conduct, a complete break from the past. If this does not happen and the council is divided and disputing issues of proper conduct, we can expect the council to be placed in administration by the Department of Local Government. 

Beyond comprehension - perversion of government

The most amazing report begins next, at the bottom of page 8 of this report. The thing that the Watsonias do best is have one of their number slip in a little resolution which they all swiftly vote on. On 13 May, Clr Kerr got the job of proposing that "for administrative purposes the Mayor be regarded as having the same status as a Divisional Manager". In his advice on this, the General Manager patiently explains that this is blatantly improper. The elected council and the elected mayor have roles comparable to the boards of companies. To offer a comparison (my comparison, not the General Manager's) it is not the business of the Chairman of QANTAS to be the person people to go to get a better place in a queue for tickets. It is not the place of the Chairman of QANTAS to desk in a place deep and powerfully inside the company, accessing information and shoving his power around. 

If council reaffirms the Kerr resolution, it will be time for intervention by the Department, before any implementation as this is, by definition, improper. 

ULLADULLA TOWN CENTRE DRAFT CONTRIBUTIONS PLAN

This subject is of enormous importance. There is a Development Control Plan [DCP56] for the Ulladulla Town Centre currently on exhibition. The 'Contributions Plan' is the document relating to what developers should pay as contributions to council to enable infrastructure, environmental, amenity and such asset development so that the future development of the town is effective.

These two tandem documents are fundamental to the future of Ulladulla, as a centre physically, socially and commercially. Ulladulla has a choice to be a beautiful seaside place to live and work or to be as mucky as Nowra's centre has become.

The Minute to council notes that a bill in the state parliament will affect future contribution plans, it notes that contributions should be in relation both to the area covered by DCP 56 and also provide amenity and intrastructure beyond that zone. It notes demands developers might make to diminish contribution, and it offers suggestions that 'council might consider' as to how that burden might be reduced. 

The total of funds indicated may look grand at $9 million (with council covering 70%) but there have been some questions raised about quality or cost of council works in Ulladulla. $9 million may not go far...

Council is asked to put this on display for comment and also seek views of the Ulladulla DCP Working Party. 

All this is coming to a crunch, with a history of community disputation. 

DRAFT NSW HOUSING CODES [DES p7]

Discusses new standards coming from the state government, alongside council's existing standards. There is concern that these new codes do not come up to our existing standards. Staff seek approval for a report outlining those concerns be submitted to the state government.

Campaign office!

The Milton-Ulladulla Times reported today that I am contemplating taking my camper-trailer, or tent-trailer, down to smaller coastal communities to meet and listen to people - and perhaps also walk on the beach. I may also take the kayak, if there is an inviting creek! 

Hard work if you can get it!

:-)

my candidacy now confirmed

This is the report in today's South Coast Register.

Report also in Milton Ulladulla Times.

poison and octopuses

Please look at the adjournment debate speech last night by Lee Rhiannon MLC (when you click on that link, go right to the end, the last speech) with serious allegations, apparently carefully documented, of more irregularities in funding of the Mayor's political campaigns in 2003 and 2004... also reflecting a pattern of burying the electorate under distorted information. The situation is much worse this year and I am far from sure of our capacity to move the electorate to achieve change at the ballot boxes.

Mayor Watson's Birthday today

I discover that the Mayor turned 66 today. He is older than me! But only by a whisker. I turn 65 on 7 July this year. 

This is a wonderful age at which to strike out and do something new, to change perspective, to refresh the mind and love life. 

I commend such a life change to the mayor, while wishing him no further returns to office.

The NSW Budget

The NSW Government's Budget, presented to Parliament on 3 June, can be downloaded here.

The Shoalhaven attracts nothing special. Even in regard to highways, the top priorities are elsewhere. 

We have high population growth, large infrastructure problems with 49 villages and towns over nearly 5000sq/km. We have high tourist numbers. We have unemployment at double the state average. We are very badly placed on the index of socio-economic disadvantage. So far as attracting either government or private investment is concerned, we are on the nose because of the conduct of our local government.

The economic outlook is grim (see Chapter 9 of the Budget Paper 2). We need as a community to be led positively and encouraged to work together or we will be at our throats.

As anticipated, there is funding for construction of a 500 inmate gaol at South Nowra. Yes, there will be jobs associated with construction and operation. My broader focus is on integration of the gaol into our community. It will have wide social impact. We can treat it either as some kind of ghetto problem or we can be inclusive and seek to support associated families and rehabilitation. 

Mental health gets a nice mention at the front, with commitment to "additional frontline service numbers, including additional mental health professionals..." but that gets smudged in detail sections and it is unclear whether the dense bureaucracy of the Area Health Service can save the Community Mental Health Services, with backbone roles, from their present desperate crisis. I said this on Monday on this subject.

The pinning of salaries will make it hard to attract staff good, as also it makes it hard for workers to cope where they have to commute great distances by car. The price of food and fuel will be way ahead of the salary increase of maximum 2.5%. The price of mortgages already way up. 

The Mayor seems angry

I am delighted that the mayor has today joined me in asking people to get up, come out and fight.

Thank you Mr Watson. It is of enormous importance that we build a field of good candidates to provide people an alternative to your "administration".

Mr Watson today said he is fed up to the neck with the criticism.

...... Not a lot of room left then, as the muddy waters get deeper.

..... Very important that people NOT sit waiting for the Council to be placed in the care of a public service administrator. For a sustainable democracy, we need a democratic process of change and that requires people to commit to candidature for a council of decency.

focus of media discussions

In talking with the media today, I have focused on these points:

• ONE TERM
  
• FOUR YEARS
  
• SEVEN GOOD COUNCILLORS
  
• CHANGE THE ROTTEN CULTURE, GET A DECENT SYSTEM IN PLACE
  
• WILL YOU BE IN IT?
  

- as now posted in the top corner of the web site. I was asked if one term was enough. I emphasised that I must prove my dispensability, that the point was not me, but to build a way of dealing decently ... see especially these points... within the elected council, have that also pervade the council organisation and the engagement of community with decision processes and also have it at the core of leadership by the community.

In discussing particulars, especially in Ulladulla, I emphasised that I could not be an expert on projects and must not try to pull projects from my pocket or play the Godfather. My concern is and will be to see proper consultative mechanisms to ensure community contribution to plans. This will be a big culture change from what happens now.

meeting with Shoalhaven Business Chamber (Southern)

I also had a good meeting in Ulladulla with Glenn Rowen, President of the Southern Division of Shoalhaven Business Chamber.

Ulladulla Sporting Complex and 'Future Park'

Because there had been such extensive concern about the council's decisions regarding the sporting complex and 'Future Park' at meeting on 21 May at which Council presented the Draft Management Plan, and because there have been continued representations to the effect that council does not understand the issues and for a delay in any action to enable more community discussion and consensus building, I was pleased to have the opportunity to walk over these two sites today. They together would enable, if sensibly developed, magnificent active and passive recreation and community education spaces at a walking distance from the CBD and schools. And there do seem to be some practical issues (especially whether it makes sense to plan playing  fields on a hillside) that could be re-thought.

Ulladulla

In Ulladulla I then met with the editor of the Milton-Ulladulla Times, Stuart Carless.

media interviews

I met today for the first time with the editor of the South Coast Register John Branscombe and reporter Katrina Dal Molin.

web site update

Click on the link at the top of the right column to see how I have clarified text at the web site over the weekend. The presentation of ideas is as creative as their development.  Your comments welcome here or by email or to 02 4421 3840. 

I will be in Nowra and Ulladulla Monday. 

The risk of complacency

There is an emerging view among some good people that the Watsonia Gang may become 'unelectable' either because of actions by the State Government or by growing public distaste. The problem with this is that public alienation is with politics generally. 

People actually have to stand up and become involved for the political landscape to change. My views on how we do this are in draft now on the web page www.shoalhaven2020.net - comments welcome, please post them here or write to me. 

the council's budget and the economic outlook

I do not want to make a habit of public exchange with senior officers of the council but an abbreviated account of my views in the South Coast Register and a no-doubt abbreviated account of words of Peter Dun, Finance and Corporate Services Director, calls for some elaboration of my position - here, not in the newspaper.

This was the newspaper report of our views.

I am of course well aware, as Peter is also aware, especially from questions I asked him at the briefing on the draft management plan in Ulladulla on 21 May, that council doesn't budget with lumps of money for fuel, bitumen, etc. Of course there is a program budget. 

I was recommending program budgeting and strategic planning to the Coombs Royal Commission into Australian Government in 1974 when such ideas seemed odd. 

My questions in Ulladulla also addressed the need for some kind of Zero-Based Budgeting as recently employed in UK local government (and on which I was reporting from the Washington embassy in 1977), rather than simple increment-adjustment budgets. You can't have that sort of thing without coherent performance by elected councillors (not grabbing and distorting priorities), with capacity for incorporating community interests and staff work to build good programs.

... Enough of that, I just wanted to make clear that I do not have a child's view of the budget.

The real issue is whether energy and fuel prices will be limited to 4% as the budget proposes. However counted, fuel costs run through the budget. I sought on 28 May, but to the best of my knowledge did not get, some idea of the size of the fuel bill in the budget overall. When fuel is an element in program items, if prices rise, the project moves right in your action plan - out to later months or years... unless you have some more sophisticated way of dealing with energy and fuel price rises. Or do we simply dip into reserves?

Ross Garnaut is going to release a draft Climate Change report on 30 June and a final report on 30 September. These are likely to herald significant increases in energy costs. Regardless of the fact that this council has declared in its wisdom that Climate Change is rubbish, Garnaut will happen. The increasing price of oil is currently buffered by the fall of the US dollar. This will continue at least for some time, with wider messy global economic consequence if other governments move to shed the US dollar. But the idea of limiting to 4% would seem to most families overly optimistic and some preparation for budget juggles seems sensible... 

The macro-economic situation is likely to defeat the Federal Government and Reserve Bank, with money (and investment) flooding into Australia from China (for which buying RioTinto and BHP-Billiton is easy in money terms if hard politically), as a result of the resources booms north and west... While southeastern Australia is in a sluggish economic situation, more comparable to the weak economy traps of the United States... the problem of a level playing field in our own country. The squeeze will stay on, or increase. Food and fuel harder for all. We are a potato chip on the edge of politico-economic seas. As of right now, the Iraq war has cost the United States enough money to run the Shoalhaven City Council (on its quarter billion budget) for more than 2000 years.

It is useful to read George Soros's global perspective. Do not expect recovery or more income to local government soon, do expect energy and fuel prices to rise by more than 4%. We have rates rises locked in; the number of people with difficulty paying their bills and paying their rates may increase. I am not alarmist. I just want to talk about these elephants in the room, not pretend they are not here. 

major developments

It has been a busy week. Attendance at meetings between community and council and some press coverage, partly here, here, here. Wonderful expression of support here.

A number of actions by the mayor and cronies are under investigation now.

 

I am planning news for next week. Watching the skittles jump and rattle for now.

have a good weekend. See you at SeeChange!

Council's plan presentation

Council's third presentation to community of its three year plan will be in Nowra at 7pm on Wednesday 28 May. Presenting such a complex document in such final form to community is not an entirely constructive process. Few can wade through it. Do try to come to the meeting and remember that there are few wrong questions. Ask questions which get to facts, which build knowledge, which open the system up.

food garden: Sunday relaxation

Sunday a friend came and worked with me in the back yard, which we tore up with a rotary hoe a few weeks ago. Since moving into a new house in April I have been concerned to get an organic food garden under way - looks good, especially when you put ornamentals and fruit and veg together; provides exercise in a varied and constructive way and most importantly provides food of incomparable quality. Ponds for frogs and lizards and birds (for ecological complexity and to manage the bugs), and to grow water chestnuts and lotus. 

How nice it was to go out last week to dinner and take a salad half of which was from the garden... I will be self-sufficient in lettuce from this week, after a month and a half.  Broccoli and broad beans are looking strong, though I got them in a bit late. The rhubarb is doing brilliantly... I left the hose dribbling among them and they got 4000 litres of freshly collected rainwater!  One strawberry in flower already in a sunny corner. I've put a net up on poles over the yard, against the bower birds and parrots — a net with holes big enough for smaller insectivorous birds to come in. Not much for the big birds to destroy yet, but I needed to get the net up before building underneath. 

For mulch, I have made a couple of Monday dawn forays to the local newsagent, for dead newspapers. The weekend papers make a stack three or four feet high. Newspaper to put under woodchip - friendly chat with the arborist who did some pruning for me and he emptied his truck of wood chips. So the paper goes under the woodchip to make paths and reduce the grassed area — I am now able to use a hand mower. Council did a trial of a prunings mulching service last year and say they plan to continue it, with a sensible desire to leave mulched material at your place rather than carry away green waste. Existing council services and information here.

The compost bin is doing well, warm against a sunny wall. Ev contributed some old compost with masses of worms to get it started. Compost will add complexity (humus, worms, worm castings, bacteria and fungi) to the garden into which I ploughed (with the rotary hoe) blood and bone, chicken manure pellets, coconut peat (for organic mass and moisture retention) and dolomite. Dolomite is a kind of lime containing magnesium as well as calcium. Most of our commercial food has the potential to be magnesium deficient as most Australian soils need their acidity reduced and in broad acre farming calcium lime is generally used, high doses of calcium driving out magnesium and lack of magnesium preventing proper retention of calcium in animals. The ground is also full of grass chopped by the rotary hoe. Some of the kikuyu and couch re-shoots, but shoots are easy enough to pull out at this stage, as the rotary hoe chopped the grass into short lengths before burying it.

Many people already have difficulty paying to get to town to buy food. A home food garden adds fun, exercise and top quality eats. And you really only need a few square metres for intensive gardening. Keep the food garden close to the kitchen where you can run out to get something; remember too that the shoes of the farmer (visiting and caring) are the best fertiliser. When you can, get the best of strong traditional plant types from the Seed Savers stall at the Tomerong Markets. And you can take seeds from your successful crops there to share with others... it all goes around, with smiles. Whatever you do, DON'T MAKE IT BORING!!!

Yesterday's work had the added impulse of inspiration from my step daughter Bindi, who went to Shoalhaven High from Tomerong and nowadays works as a teacher in Darwin. Bindi had written on Saturday with the happy news that on Friday the ABC's Country Hour chose her school farm (Bindi is the farm teacher at Alawa Primary) to celebrate Farm Day, broadcasting from the chicken pen. Hey, look also at the links on the right of that page at the ABC - see the comments from kids and also read about local volunteers involved with the school farm.

We can use the backyard to learn with the kids about healthy food production. As every street contains someone who is a handy gardener (and someone who has difficulty doing physical work) we also have potential to share and build community. 

Out at the Dog Track Markets early Sunday I asked a stallholder (from whom I had bought the hand mower last month) about getting a tool to make more verjuice this year. Last year I found the grapes very hard to crush, even by hand, because they are so hard and green when you want to make verjuice. The stallholder came up with the world's biggest potato masher, what a great idea. Hope I can remember where I put it half a year from now. I will have to find an old porcelain tub to do the crush in... and must soon plant the grapes!

cheers

Dennis

p.s. writing early, woken up by rain... how good is that after working in the garden on a dry and sunny day... :-)

web site

This blog is a 'news feed'. I have begun the construction of a web site at shoalhaven2020.net 

You can also find the web site as shoalhaven2020.com, or shoalhaven2020.org but the concept is of a 'network', not a commercial [.com] thing or an organisation [.org].

This means building a 'web presence' much as I have developed in other community projects:

• the web site to contain a relatively static statement of principles and objectives – like a billboard
• this blog to keep a running account of things happening – news and comments.

A third element may be appropriate soon:

• an email news feed.

Have a good weekend!

cheers

Dennis

Stolen Generations exhibition

There were wonderful happy family scenes at the official opening of an exhibition of photographs from Aboriginal missions at the Shoalhaven Art Centre tonight. 

The Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Local Government, Paul Lynch MP, noted in the course of a very warm speech reflecting his real, historical, extensive engagement with indigenous issues, that 77% of Australians supported Kevin Rudd's Sorry statement. 

I said later, talking to an Aboriginal friend, that 77% of that 77% had never shaken an Aboriginal person by the hand and did not know how to. 

I am sure that we have close to that 77%/77% in the Shoalhaven, including in corners well off and skilled. So, it seems to me we will need a Shoalhaven Next After Sorry Committee which could bring the people of goodwill, with intellectual and material means but lacking contact, into direct opportunities to assist empowerment projects in indigenous communities. Some ideas about 'Next' were in this article I wrote in February.

Note that the highest proportion of Aboriginal people on the south coast live in the Shoalhaven.

Do drop into the Arts Centre, next to the Nowra Library, to see this exhibition (currently also two other excellent exhibitions)

Mrs Gash's response

The editorial in today's South Coast Register, under the headline "Regime Change requires Candidates" begins by referring to my letter to Ms Gash last Sunday:

... an appeal to Member for Gilmore Joanna Gash to put herself forward as a mayoral candidate in the upcoming local government election.

While honoured by the suggestion, Mrs Gash said she intended to see out her term as Federal Member and therefore she wouldn't entertain the idea. However, she did encourage others to come forward and offered to give them a few tips if they wanted them.

Likewise, State MP Shelley Hancock... Several callers suggested Mrs Hancock would make an excellent and formidable candidate but she, too, is committed to represent the community at a different level of government. She, too, had words of encouragement for any erstwhile candidates.

I welcome this and will certainly find an early opportunity to take up Joanna's and Shelley's offers of tips and encouragement. As also I look forward to discovering what candidates they can coax forward. As I said at the beginning of this process, I don't care where they come from, I only care that we build a council of people committed to openness, accountability and community.

We will all need to work closely, at Federal, State and Local Government levels in the next four years. No level of government seems to comprehend or be prepared to speak aloud about the maelstrom of social and community problems that will rush at us when petrol gets to $3 and $4. This is the elephant in the room which has capacity to destroy lives, families, businesses, nutrition, recreation and happiness. The broad and simple levers of the Reserve Bank and budget policy will not do the job.

We are going to have to build community ways of working on solutions, attacking the issue of which level of government is responsible AFTER we build the ideas.

cheers

Dennis

The week...

I have had a number of valuable meetings this week. I was formally welcomed as a member of the Nowra Youth Centre Management Comittee on Monday and am much impressed by programs they have and resources they have which could prosper greatly with more community support. There is a new manager, David Anthoness, who brings immense experience, notably with sporting organisations, plus managerial ability. My commitment to this Centre reflects engagement with community and is not a political matter.

On Tuesday I travelled north to meet privately with a very sharp, intelligent and politically savvy group of people who wanted to look me over. It was a good meeting and reinforced my expectation that there would be strong community support for good local government. 

On Wednesday I attended the Council's second briefing session on its Draft Management Plan for the next three years, this time in Ulladulla. There are clearly local issues of great substance, aggravated by a sense of us versus them between Ulladulla and the Nowra based council.

Some of the misunderstandings and misdirections in relation to projects could be readily dealt with with more constructive and open processes of involving community with development of plans and projects. 

I was warmed and delighted to listen to this very articulate community - people from different perspectives, different interests - present very intelligent and constructive ideas about consultation as well as concrete plans. I hope that there can be swift quality consultations between community and senior council officers. I have indicated that I am more than happy to come and look more carefully at things of concern but that [a] the urgent need is to achieve constructive outcomes with the existing council and staff and I have no desire to politicise that and [b] my concern in general is not to become someone with solutions in his pockets but to work to get systems of community engagement with decision making that work. Ulladulla would seem to have potential, both in community strengths and in urgent projects, to model such new processes ... if council can tolerate moves to new, transparent and constructive process.

Councillor john Willmott took the prize for unparliamentary language at the Ulladulla meeting. Having given a big speech railing against Nowra-centric government, he later shouted out in response to comments of the mayor. I confirmed with John later that he had intended to say something like "codswallop".. but in fact he shouted "trollop!" I note for the record that Councillor Willmott was not asked to withdraw this remark.

Thursday I went to the State Electoral Commission's briefing for potential candidates at the September elections. A modest turnout from the Shoalhaven. We cannot achieve change if people do not stand up for it. There is no point in my standing if there is not an array of good candidates who want real change. It is not too late to consider being a candidate... to sit in a council which works in an orderly and cooperative manner. 

I am building a domain which will be www.shoalhaven.net (don't try that yet) where I will place platform material, retaining this as a news column.

Last Sunday I wrote an open letter to the Member for Gilmore, Mrs Gash, regarding the need for the conservative side to repudiate or be seen to identify with the present council majority. I also said to Mrs Gash that if she were to be a candidate for mayor, I would support her. I sent copies of this letter to the South Coast Register and the Milton Ulladulla Times, not to be difficult but to be open. I know that the second issue, of candidacy, is not one on which I am owed a reply, and is complex. However, advice to the community on the first - repudiation or complicity with shoddy local government - is urgent.

cheers

Dennis

healthy versus unhealthy conduct

People pay more attention to news which is divisive, but divisiveness also blocks progress.

Getting attention to the problems of governance in the Shoalhaven has required divisiveness, but such matters having been made clear, we have to find positive new directions.

Elections are themselves divisive; we have to focus on getting a positive team from them. 

... To move ahead, to diminish alienation, to achieve constructive outcomes and engage people with community, we have to take positive steps. 

I have used this one page document [click] for some years to point to healthy versus unhealthy ways of dealing with issues and working with people. I commend it to all, also as an indicator of my view of the way a healthy council could work. You can find this in future also under 'Key Documents' on the right.

The conservative side

While I am pleased to have received some very warm support, I believe that the initiative to create a new standard of governance in the Shoalhaven rests with the conservative side.  The Shoalhaven has an established reputation as a conservative electorate at the Federal and State levels and the Mayor's 'Shoalhaven Independents' are clearly identified, including among the supporting workers on polling day, with the Liberals. 

So the question arises: what do the leading Liberals think of our council situation? Do they support or repudiate? I have taken an initiative today to seek clarification. 

Dennis

But where is the community?

The mayor, two councillors (Anderson and Willmot) and senior council staff were only narrowly outnumbered by community (10, eventually) at the Vincentia presentation of the Draft Management Plan tonight. 

Undoubtedly there will be complaints about rates and other local issues, demand for local maintenance and so forth, from people. Without concern for or awareness of the overall pattern of investment and maintenance of infrastructure.

It will be interesting to see if Ulladulla attracts a better crowd next. 

Apathy breeds bad government. 

The council staff are to be commended for their politeness and patience and persistence with this kind of consultation. In Ulladulla I may ask the cost of this consultation process with shadows. And also about better ways of consulting.

[sigh]

Dennis

the status of community v. the council

Have you wondered what the status of the community is supposed to be relative to council.

The diagram herewith - click on it to enlarge - is not some fantasy object drawn in Manyana, nor is it a bureaucrat's fancy. It is from a note attached to Chapter 2 of the Local Government Act [click to see the Act]. 

In simple words, the community is supposed to be ON TOP.

Shoalhaven Draft Management Plan

I am going to try to be at Council's briefing meetings on the draft management plan, tonight in Vincentia, next Wednesday in Ulladulla and the week after in Nowra, to learn not only about the plan but also about what people want to say about it. I will be there as a listener.

You can see the plan and place/times for meetings here.

cheers

Dennis

infrastructure and community

The Federal Budget provides prospect for major increases in funding for infrastructure: physical, health and education.

What is not clear is what will come through in provision for social inclusion - Deputy Prime Minister Gillard, among all her other hats, is Minister for Social Inclusion.

What is also far from clear is how building infrastructure gets the Shoalhaven forward. 

The focus on highway building (I had an effective role, with others, in getting the Princes Highway-Island Point Rd intersection rebuilt, I know how important the highway is) does not solve the problems and impacts of fuel prices which will double again during the next council's term. 

The focus on hospitals does not solve the problem (may compound the problems) of community health and especially community mental health as those services rust to death by neglect.

We have some rich corners, we have some deprived and troubled corners. 

I have placed a copy of a NSW Electoral Commission statistical snapshot of the Shoalhaven here.

We have well below the state average of young people. We have one third more than state average of the poorest income levels. Over 50% have not gone beyond year 10, one third more than the state overall. Only 30% have finished year 12 - the state percentage is 47%. 

And as Joanna Gash and Shelley Hancock know, we have high unemployment.  

Bickering about such things does not equip us for the future. We have to look for new ways of linking advantaged to disadvantaged communities and empowering especially young people. We have to reverse the alienation from community and government — by example. We have to find ways of making education, training and work, and engagement with community relevant and worthwhile.

Dennis

Greg Watson: entrepreneurship, ethics, canes and whips!

Kiama Council voters had simplified electoral choice when Howard H Jones retired and was replaced by Howard R Jones.

I have discovered another Greg Watson we might import!

Hey hey wait! A supporter has kindly sent me a far far more interesting Greg Watson option!! Woowoo...

"Anyone would be better than Greg Watson"

Dear Readers

Conversation with a small businessman this morning:

 "Think of standing, are you? Anyone would be better than Greg Watson."

I guess you have to take the water with the compliments! Gives me room for manoeuvre?

Well, actually there's more needed. Hugh Mackay found at the 2004 federal elections that people would not shift any vote unless their immediate interests were threatened. At the Federal level we have gotten away from the fear-based politics. But not yet in the Shoalhaven.

There are two things to be done (you may recommend more).
• First, for people to stand up and say they will participate in making a change. I am more than happy for my positions to be adopted by anyone sincerely and I myself can go back to private life. A collaborative approach is needed, crossing political boundaries. A shift in values and ways of doing business, by all participants.
• Second, people need to come to terms with the fact that continuing as now is a direct threat to their lives.
- young people are driven away
- honest business and investment is driven away
- we have no community leadership to address critical new issues.

best wishes

Dennis

We cannot win without the middle ground

Thank you to all those who have called and emailed.

Can we focus things this way:

We have to find middle ground.

On one side is the simplistic notion that jobs are needed and are created by cuddling to developers - in ways which clearly suggest to many people that good investors will in fact be repelled. It is unworthy to say that Nowra ain't top dollar to investors, we have to grovel. This whole city is extraordinary.

On the other side are groups seen as anti-development, either because they are that or because they oppose the nonsense of the developer-wooing.

The middle is being neglected and destroyed. It is very hard to get back from such a divided situation. This is a bit like the destructive politics of central America where societies are destroyed. There are crises ahead that may make it more so.

There is a middle ground of thousands of people who want decent government, who love the local environment, who want jobs, who have, I am sure, lots of ideas.

There is the looming crisis of fuel prices. Prices will relentlessly rise. Within the term of the next council fuel may cost $3/litre... if not much more.

This will bring mayhem to our communities, families, businesses, trades, mortgages, homes.

All levels of government are flat footed on this.

The charter for councils in the Local Government Act says 'lead community'.

Let's work to keep communities and find ways through the coming mess. We've lost capacity and enthusiasm to work together, but we have to rediscover it or be in serious and adversarial trouble.

Dennis

Pace of change

We do not have time, we must move to act to deal with future issues.

In 1982, I established part time a small IT business writing, producing and marketing software for the first mass market computer in Australia, the Commodore VIC20, RAM 3.2kb. In 1992, my son in year 11 wanted to set up a small business and we bought a Macintosh LC, RAM 64kb. The computer price, measure as price of RAM per kb in 1982 $75, in 1992 $64. My 2007 computer with 1GB of RAM would, at those prices not so long ago, cost $70,000,000. 

Who saw such dramatic change in this area of technology? Who will say where it will be in 2020?

Cars and trucks will be difficult to fuel in 2020. Already tradesmen, small business people, are feeling the pinch. I think we can expect that within the term of the next council the cost of fuel may double and may double again. The world is not running out of fuel, demand is racing past supply. In a region spread over many towns and villages, everything will change. How do we approach that, then? This is what Stuart Hill suggests:

Most of what is remains unknown - which is what wise people are able to work with - so devote most effort to developing your wisdom vs your cleverness, which is just concerned with the very limited pool of what is known (Einstein was clear about this!)

So always be humble and provisional in your knowing, and always open to the new; take small risks to enable progress and experience transformational learning and development

Devote most effort to the design & management of systems that can enable wellbeing, social justice and sustainability, & that are problem-proof vs maintaining unsustainable, problem-producing systems, & devoting time to 'problem-solving', control and input management.

words of Prof. Stuart Hill

Why call this 2020?

At the Federal level we have had a process of popular participation in defining the issues. I am strongly of the view that we have to put much more energy into building community capacity right there in community and that without that, we have little chance of dealing wisely with big issues coming in the period before 2020, especially Peak Oil.

My experience with encouraging community empowerment and capacity building in recent times has been mainly via the internet and in Africa. As an example (there are others) I have this week been working by email to replace this page with another, to reflect new project priorities in a community decimated by war and AIDS in the Congo. If these friends of mine (via the internet only) can, in that kind of circumstance, be so wise, why should we not go first to our toughest corners to find wisdom, beginning, say, with East Nowra 2020. 

No big organisations called in to advise, instead the local community, with a little help, building a process. 

If I stand and win I would put 20% of first year of mayoral allowance in immediately for East Nowra 2020, encouraging business leaders who care to contribute as needed. With zero strings attached, other than support for good money management. If we succeed in East Nowra, we move the model on.....   Local Government Act; Charter for Councils: 'lead community.' The answers won't all be local government funded, but we take ideas and schemes to state and feds. Get the issue straight, fix the system after. Read Gillard on Social Inclusion.

principles and priorities

In a document sent to the South Coast Register on 7 May I set out important principles and priorities. Click here to read this document.

Please feel free to submit comment. All comment is moderated. Anonymous comment will be removed as will the pointless or potty-mouthed. Comments of substance will not be censored. 

Now to hunt the positives!

Community members across the Shoalhaven have contributed to the unearthing of evidence of manners and style of local government which are at best a joke, at worst deserving of investigation by relevant authorities and general condemnation.

The time has come, in 2008, for candidates to come forward to make a change. There is only one reason why we cannot get an entirely different council, meeting in civil ways, in community places, doing business sensibly, consistently, based on advice from professional officers treated with respect. 

That single reason is apathy, whether anyone cares. 

No sensible person would want to join the present scrum. The elected Council has to be changed fundamentally, in the direction of decency, civility, transparency and integrity. We have only a short time to get there. I have not declared my candidacy at this point, there is no point in my trying to do this without others committed.