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.