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.