Dolly did it and other modern defences


When I was growing up one of Mary-Anne Fahey’s characters in The Comedy Company was a mischievous three-year-old named Jophesine.

Whenever she was accused of doing something wrong, Jophesine had her defence ready.

“I didn’t do it. Dolly did it.”

It was funny because she was three. Less amusing is the realisation that absolving ourselves of responsibility now appears to be a key driver of everyday life.

We have developed more sophisticated language than Jophesine, of course. We blame the system, the market, the government, the previous government, consumer demand, inadequate funding, misleading advertising, our parents or the person who failed to stop us.

Dolly has acquired an impressive number of job titles.

A recent opinion article in The New York Times tells the story of Bryce Martinez, who was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease at 16.

Martinez had developed obesity early in childhood. He grew up eating much of what the American food system made affordable and convenient. Sugary cereals, school lunches of pizza and burgers, ready-made meals, juice pouches, chips and ice cream were part of his everyday diet.

At 18, he sued 11 major food manufacturers. He argued that their ultra-processed products had been engineered to encourage overconsumption, marketed to children and had caused his illnesses.

The case was dismissed because the judge found insufficient evidence connecting particular products with Martinez’s illnesses. His lawyers intend to appeal, and similar cases are being brought against food companies across the United States.

The article argues that litigation may succeed where governments have failed. It compares these cases with the decades of legal action against tobacco companies that eventually exposed what the industry knew about addiction, cancer and marketing to children.

It is a powerful comparison. Food manufacturers have enormous resources and an extraordinary understanding of flavour, brain chemistry, advertising and consumer behaviour. If companies have deliberately designed products to override appetite signals and then marketed those products to children, they should be held accountable.

Martinez had very limited agency. He did not buy the groceries, formulate the products, design the school menu, write the advertising or regulate food additives. His parents worked full-time and relied on food that was affordable, available and quick to prepare.

Food companies, schools and governments therefore hold a greater share of responsibility, especially where products were deliberately engineered and marketed to encourage overconsumption.

Greater responsibility, however, is not exclusive responsibility.

The article presents responsibility as though it must belong either to the individual or to the food companies. Once it is transferred entirely to the company, everyone else in the chain can quietly leave the room.

The child can blame the parents. The parents can blame the manufacturer. The manufacturer can blame consumer demand. Retailers can blame price pressures. Schools can blame their budgets. Governments can blame insufficient evidence.

Then we can all go home satisfied that Dolly did it.

Type 2 diabetes also resists a single explanation. Diet and physical activity can contribute significantly, but so can genetics, age, ethnicity, family history and social and economic circumstances. Finding one contributor does not remove every other person or institution from the picture.

Agriculture has its own version of the Jophesine defence.

Farmers regularly tell governments and the community, “You can trust us to do the right thing.”

Then governments introduce laws covering firearms, land clearing, animal welfare, chemical use or environmental protection, and agriculture argues that the entire sector is being punished for the behaviour of a minority.

Sometimes that criticism is justified. Poorly designed regulation can burden responsible farmers without addressing the behaviour that prompted it.

But agriculture also has to confront the question beneath the regulation. What happens when enough people fail to exercise the responsibility they say should be left with them? At what point does legislation become the consequence of our collective failure to govern ourselves?

We cannot ask to be trusted and then insist that every failure belongs to somebody else.

The same question reaches well beyond food and farming. We can hold corporations accountable without pretending consumers have no agency. We can recognise the constraints facing parents without treating every decision as inevitable. We can regulate harmful behaviour without assuming legislation removes our responsibility to make better choices.

Responsibility is not a parcel passed along the chain until it reaches the person with the deepest pockets. Several people and institutions can hold it at the same time, in different proportions according to their power, knowledge and choices.

Perhaps the real test is not, “Who can I blame?”

It is, “Given the power and choices I had, what part of this belonged to me?”

 

Devastated Cathy Wilcox fangirl is grieving because she is leaving

I am an unabashed Cathy Wilcox fan girl, so I was devastated to hear that she is leaving The Sydney Morning Herald after 37 years.
Earlier this year, I wrote my first ever letter to the editor of the Herald. Cathy spotted it and shared it on Twitter with the words, “As ever the letter writers bring the wisdom.” I wasn’t on Twitter, but someone sent me a screenshot.  It is something I will always treasure.
Her departure comes after a bruising period. The Australian Press Council ruled against Cathy over her “Grass roots” cartoon about calls for a royal commission into antisemitism, finding that the imagery could evoke an antisemitic trope. The Herald apologised for the hurt caused.
Cathy later spoke about what she feared that decision could mean for political cartooning. Her concern was that editors, faced with something provocative or controversial, may increasingly decide it is “simply not worth the trouble” to publish it.
Political cartoonists question power and expose contradictions. Sometimes people will disagree strongly with them. That argument is part of public debate. Cathy’s concern is what happens when editors become so wary of the consequences that the cartoon never gets published and the argument never begins.
After 37 years at the Herald, Cathy leaves an extraordinary body of work behind, and one very grateful fan girl with a screenshot she will treasure forever. See the blog post I wrote about her acknowledgment of my letter here

Before we explain One Nation voters, perhaps we should listen to them

 

Yesterday I wrote about the extraordinary enthusiasm political parties have for studying unhappy voters rather than themselves. This morning the Sydney Morning Herald delivered me an article about researchers studying 1,000 One Nation voters. Sometimes the universe is unnecessarily helpful.

In my living history interviews with people in their late 80s and early 90s across my local government area, I often ask what has changed in their lifetime. I am hoping for the broad sweep, social change, physical change, how the place has changed around them.

The most common answer I get is: too many people.

They are talking about people moving into the area from somewhere else in Australia. Sydney gets mentioned a lot. Immigration does not.

So when I read Paul Sakkal’s article in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning on what 1,000 One Nation voters say is driving them, I smiled.

The headline finding is immigration. Of the One Nation supporters who believe Australia is heading in the wrong direction, 39 per cent name immigration as one of the reasons. Fifty-seven per cent fear Australia’s culture and identity are changing too quickly. Forty per cent point to pressure on housing and infrastructure.

Then you read what people actually say.

One supporter says the issue is arithmetic. You cannot bring in that many people without building the houses. Another says the issue is who comes and whether they want to become part of what is already here.

Suddenly “immigration” is being asked to explain quite a lot.

We do love a complicated explanation. Apparently understanding something counts for less if it doesn’t require a consultant.

The research into One Nation voters comes with focus groups, voter segments, demographic differences, loyal supporters, newer supporters and analysis of what might persuade people to change their vote. All useful.

But perhaps people are also saying exactly what they mean.

There are more people than there used to be, and they do not like some of the consequences.

People do not experience population growth as a percentage. They experience another housing development, another traffic jam, another doctor’s books closed to new patients, another paddock covered in houses and another place that takes longer to get to.

Ask someone in their late 80s in my LGA what has changed and I may hear “too many people”.

Ask a One Nation voter what is wrong with Australia and I may hear “too much immigration”.

Before deciding those are entirely different conversations, it might be useful to ask what each person is actually describing.

The Scanlon Foundation’s long-running social cohesion research adds an important clue. In 2024, 49 per cent of Australians thought immigration was too high. Yet 85 per cent said multiculturalism had been good for Australia, 82 per cent said migrants were good for the economy and 83 per cent rejected excluding immigrants on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion.

The 2025 research is equally interesting.

Among Australians who thought immigration was too high, 58 per cent nominated the economy or housing as the country’s biggest problem. Only 9 per cent nominated immigration itself.

That does not make concerns about race, culture or identity disappear. The One Nation research itself shows a difference between newer supporters worried about migration numbers and parts of Hanson’s traditional base who are more concerned about the background of migrants.

But it does suggest that “too much immigration” can sometimes be shorthand for something much broader.

Too many people for the houses.

Too many people for the roads.

Too many people for the services.

Too much change, too quickly.

In my interviews, the people causing all this pressure can be Australians who moved down the highway. Scale the same experience up from a town to a country and suddenly the new arrivals have passports.

This takes us straight back to the leadership question I wrote about yesterday.

Political parties confronted with dissatisfied voters have an extraordinary appetite for studying the voters. Who are they? What do they want? What are they angry about? What message will bring them back?

Now we have research into 1,000 One Nation voters.

To its credit, the research reaches an important conclusion: One Nation’s rise is as much a story of Liberal failure as One Nation success.

That is more interesting than another voter profile.

Because the real question may be what happens when population grows faster than people’s confidence that governments can manage the consequences.

Housing, roads, hospitals, schools and infrastructure are experienced locally. So is change. People notice the paddock disappearing long before they read the population statistics.

Then politics arrives with an answer. Immigration.

That is a powerful word because it can turn a collection of complicated experiences into one problem with one number attached to it.

Politics loves a number. Numbers can be cut. Systems are messier.

So before politicians hear “immigration” and start competing over who can promise the lower migration target, it might be worth listening a little longer.

What are people actually describing? Because sometimes when someone in their late 80s tells me the problem is “too many people”, the people causing all the trouble came from Wollongong.

Pauline Hanson did not invent that feeling.

She may simply have become very good at telling people what to call it.

Agriculture wanted better storytellers. Then we blew up the model that made them

 

I am about to spend World Peace Day talking to a group of 10 to 15 year olds about curiosity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration. Which is slightly confronting when you start looking around at how adults behave.

Before the workshop, the students will answer a short survey. They will answer the same questions afterwards. I am interested to see what changes, and I am also realistic enough to know they are unlikely to walk out several hours later transformed into world-class collaborators who calmly interrogate every assumption before breakfast.

That is because people do not change overnight. Oddly, we seem to forget this every time we organise a workshop.

How many times have you spent a day learning some marvellous new way of doing things, walked out thinking, “This is excellent” put the folder somewhere safe and carried on exactly as before? I have.

We have somehow developed a culture where learning is treated as an event. Book the facilitator, find the room, provide lunch, learn collaboration, home by four. Job done.

I learnt the limitations of that model the long way around.

When I came back into agriculture, people decided I did not look like the stereotype of someone they expected to see representing the industry. Apparently that was useful, so I was pushed out the front and into the media.

This was all very new to me, and I was not remotely comfortable with it, so I demanded training. Then more training. Then more training.

It took me about 15 years to feel comfortable.

The other day I gave a presentation and a number of people told me it was the best presentation they had ever seen.

They should have been at my first one.

It had 127 slides.

I wish I were exaggerating.

That experience changed the way I thought about developing other people. When I started the Young Farming Champions program, I wanted people to have what I had eventually learned I needed, time, repetition, feedback and somewhere safe to keep practising.

The Young Farming Champions model was built around ongoing development. Once you joined, you could remain part of the network for as long as you wanted, continuing to build your skills over time. During COVID, we ran workshops every month, so people could say, “I want to feel more comfortable doing this,” and we could focus on exactly that. We brought in outstanding Australian and international experts, then gave people repeated opportunities to practise, get feedback and keep improving.

That is how confidence grows.

Then agricultural bodies looked at what we were doing and decided they wanted something similar. The young people were already there. The Action4Agriculture team was already training them. What changed was the desire to have the program sit inside their own organisation.

This is where I became increasingly frustrated with the way institutions behave. We talk endlessly about collaboration, but the system often rewards the person who can point to something and say, “That was my idea. I built that. That was my result.”

Once that becomes the prize, curiosity becomes inconvenient.

Nobody asks, “Why is this working?” or “What could we add to what is already here?” The question becomes, “How do we create our own version?”

And that is how duplication starts to look like achievement.

The result can be beautifully efficient.

Train them on Saturday.

Face of the industry by Monday.

It is a wonderfully efficient system, provided human beings work like software updates.

Recently I have been spending time with collaboration specialist Stuart Waters, and he has been subtly  dismantling several things I thought I knew. One of them is my GPS model.

I have used it for years. Goal. Problem. Solution. Where are we trying to go? What is getting in the way? What is the solution? Perfectly sensible.

Except Stuart pointed out something rather inconvenient.

If we knew the solution, we probably would not have the problem.

With complex problems, the solution is rarely sitting there politely waiting for someone clever enough to notice it. Stuart talks instead about steps, experiments, things we can try, learn from and adjust.

So perhaps GPS survives. Goal. Problem. Steps.

I rather like that. It removes the requirement to stride into every complicated situation carrying The Answer.

It also exposes another habit we have. We are often in an extraordinary hurry to solve the problem before we have worked out what the problem actually is. Something goes wrong and we deal with the bit we can see.

People are not collaborating. Students are dropping rubbish. A community is not engaging. A candidate loses an election.

Right. Fix that.

Except those things may be symptoms. The interesting questions sit underneath. Why is this happening? What assumptions are we making? Who knows something we don’t? Who sees the situation differently?

And the question I am finding increasingly important in some other work I am doing is this.

Have we actually spoken to the people most affected?

It is astonishing how often the answer appears to be no. Reports get written, programs get designed, conclusions get reached and entire narratives develop. Meanwhile, somebody sitting right in the middle of the experience is thinking, “You could have asked me.”

And then I am preparing to stand in front of children and put this on a screen.

Stay curious. Ask before you assume. Understand the problem before you solve it. Listen to learn. Share the thinking. Try something small. Learn what happens. Keep going.

The children are not the only people who could use the reminder.

I am also going to ask them something I have found unexpectedly difficult myself.

Who do you know who does this? Who stays curious when everyone else has already decided? Who asks another question? Who listens because they genuinely want to know the answer? Who can say, “I don’t know”? Who can discover something new and change their mind without behaving as though they have suffered a humiliating defeat?

I can think of a few people. Stuart is one.

What I notice when I talk to him is that having expertise has not made him less curious. Quite the opposite. He keeps asking questions. What is the actual dilemma? Who else sees this differently? What could we try? What might we learn?

Perhaps that is what expertise should look like.

Knowing enough to know that you probably don’t know everything.

There is another uncomfortable question sitting underneath my student workshop. We spend a great deal of time telling young people they will need curiosity, critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration to navigate the future.

Who are they watching do it now?

Because one workshop will not do it. Not for them. Not for us.

A workshop might introduce an idea. It might give us language for something we had never noticed before. It might even make us uncomfortable enough to rethink something.

Then comes Monday.

That is when the learning starts.

When democracy means more than Council making the decisions

In a previous post I wrote about  the difference between community consultation and community engagement. They are not the same thing, no matter how often the words get swapped around.

Community consultation and community engagement are not the same thing, no matter how often the words get swapped around.

Kiama Council has adopted the IAP2 Public Participation Spectrum as its model for community engagement. It is a useful spectrum because it makes one thing very clear. How much say are you actually giving people?

IAP2 level What Council does What it means for the community
Inform Provides information We will tell you what is happening
Consult Asks for feedback We will ask what you think
Involve Works with the community as options develop We will work through it with you
Collaborate Partners with the community in developing solutions We will develop the answer together
Empower Places the final decision with the community You make the decision

IAP2 is about the role the community gets to play before a decision is made, and who decides what that role will be.

IAP2 is not a campaign to abolish elected representatives and hand every Council decision to a show of hands in Hindmarsh Park. It is about the role the community gets to play before a decision is made, and who decides what that role will be.

Kiama Council says it has adopted the IAP2 Public Participation Spectrum. Well, sort of. It has adopted a Kiama Council version of it, particularly at the pointy end. How much say are you actually prepared to give people?

Council explains its approach to Empower in its own community engagement document. In effect, you elected us, so we’ll handle the democracy from here.

Kiama Council is currently recruiting a new Manager Communications, Engagement & Customer Service. I am looking forward to seeing who gets the job.

I am not interested in whether they can run a survey, organise a drop-in session or put something on Your Say Kiama. Those are tools. I want to know what they think community engagement is.

Do they see IAP2 as a way to tell residents what Council is doing and collect feedback, or as a framework for giving the community a genuine role in defining problems, developing options and influencing decisions?

The community deserves to know who gets invited in, when they get invited in, what they can change and what Council promises to do with what it hears.

The appointment will tell us plenty. Good community engagement starts with deciding how much say you are prepared to give the community.

Are councils across New South Wales reclassifying community land by stealth?

Shoalhaven Council’s decision to reclassify land used by a homeless shelter, youth centre and disability services made me wonder whether this was an isolated decision. It is not. Across New South Wales, councils under financial pressure are reviewing the land they own, changing some properties from community land to operational land and creating the legal pathway for sale, redevelopment or longer commercial leases.

The language sounds administrative. Its effect can be substantial. Under the Local Government Act, council-owned land is generally classified as either community land or operational land. Community land has been set aside for public use. It can include parks, sporting grounds, natural areas and buildings used for community purposes. It must be managed under a plan of management and cannot simply be sold.

Operational land has far fewer restrictions. It can be leased commercially, redeveloped or sold. Reclassification does not automatically mean that a property will be sold, though it removes one of the major legal barriers preventing a sale.

That distinction became important in Shoalhaven this week. The council voted to proceed with the reclassification of several properties used by community organisations, including Safe Shelter Shoalhaven, Nowra Youth Centre, Noah’s Inclusion Services and Werninck Craft Cottage.

Safe Shelter Shoalhaven provides crisis accommodation for up to 12 people experiencing homelessness. The youth centre provides a place for young people. Noah’s Inclusion Services supports children with disabilities and their families. These are not vacant blocks tucked behind a council depot. People are using them.

The ABC reported that the organisations learned their properties were being considered only when the council report became public. The council’s chief executive apologised for the lack of consultation. Shoalhaven Council manages more than 3,100 parcels of land. About 1,700 are already classified as operational. Its property sales program includes isolated and underused land, land with strategic development potential and what it describes as underperforming community facilities. Council says community land must first be reclassified before it can be sold.

The question is not whether councils should ever sell land. Councils acquire properties for many reasons. Some become surplus. A small block may have no public access. A former depot may no longer be required. Selling genuinely unused land can release money for services or infrastructure the community values more.

The problem starts when council looks at a building and sees only the land beneath it. A homeless shelter occupies a valuable site. A youth centre brings in little income. A disability service fails the spreadsheet test. The market calls that underperformance. The people who rely on those places may call it the difference between being supported and being abandoned.

Central Coast Council offers one of the clearest examples of how financial crisis can turn public land into a source of emergency cash. After the council’s financial collapse in 2020, administrators began an extensive asset sales program. Properties were divided into those already classified as operational land and those requiring reclassification before sale.

Council reports openly stated that some community land would be reclassified and sold for no less than market value.

The council knew the process could take up to 18 months, with public exhibition and formal planning approvals along the way. This was not a debate about the future of public land. It was a plan to raise cash.

Kiama followed a different path with Blue Haven Bonaira. The land contained a modern aged-care and retirement complex completed in 2019. It had become community land by default because the council failed to classify it as operational within the required period after acquiring it.

The Blue Haven Bonaira case shows why every reclassification deserves to be judged on its own facts. This was not a neighbourhood hall or a sporting field. It was an aged-care facility built with substantial public investment that also included the heritage-listed Barroul House. The project later became central to Kiama Council’s financial crisis after the Auditor-General found construction costs had been underestimated by around $30 million. Council argued the land had become community land through an administrative oversight and that reclassification corrected its legal status. Community submissions took a different view, arguing that the public investment and heritage value strengthened the case for keeping the land protected. Whatever position people took, reclassification was the legal step that made the eventual sale possible.

Sutherland Shire Council offers another scenario. When it proposed reclassifying land at North Cronulla Surf Life Saving Club, community consultation led to a narrower approach. Only the part of the site containing commercial tenancies was reclassified, while the rest remained community land. Instead of treating the whole property as a single financial asset, the council separated the income-producing area from the part used for community purposes.

Sutherland Shire Council showed that reclassification does not have to be an all-or-nothing decision. After consultation, it reclassified only the commercial section of the North Cronulla Surf Life Saving Club site and kept the rest as community land. That is the broader lesson. Councils can separate the parts of a property that generate income from the parts that serve the public. Reclassification should not become a blunt instrument for turning an entire community asset into something easier to sell.

Shoalhaven’s decision is not just about one council or one group of community organisations. It raises a broader question about how councils plan for the future.

Kiama’s experience is a reminder of what can happen when long-term asset management falls behind. After selling Blue Haven Bonaira to deal with one financial crisis, the council is now facing more than $50 million in identified upgrades at its remaining aged-care facilities, including major fire safety works.

Every council faces ageing infrastructure and rising costs. Community assets will sometimes need to be sold. The question is whether those decisions are part of a long-term strategy or whether they are being made one property at a time as the next financial pressure arrives.

Communities deserve that conversation before their local hall, youth centre, homeless shelter or disability service appears on a list. Once it does, planning has already failed and the community is left fighting to save what council should have planned to protect.

This article is part of a series examining the decisions that shape our communities long before most people hear about them. I am following the stories behind local government decisions to better understand how public assets are managed, how communities are involved and what those decisions mean for future generations. See my first blog in the series here 

The question Shoalhaven has every NSW community asking

Shoalhaven Council has voted to reclassify a group of council properties from community land to operational land, opening the way for them to be sold. Some of those buildings are used by a homeless shelter, a youth centre and disability services. The organisations affected reportedly learned their buildings were on the list only when the council report became public. I have spent years arguing that governments should speak to the people affected before making decisions. So my first question was simple. How does that happen?

If a homeless shelter, a youth service or a disability organisation is using a council building every day, how do they not get a phone call saying, “We’re under enormous financial pressure and we’re looking at every option. We need to talk.”

Maybe there is an explanation. I want to hear it. Yes a number of Councils are under enormous financial pressure. They are expected to deliver more services, maintain more assets and somehow make the numbers add up. I don’t envy them.

What I do struggle with is a decision-making process that appears to leave the people most affected reading about their future in a council agenda. That isn’t how trust is built.

My community  has seen this in action. People in Kiama have already watched community land become operational land before it was sold. We know these decisions divide communities because we’ve lived through one ourselves.

That made me wonder whether Shoalhaven is an isolated case, or whether we’re seeing the beginning of a much bigger trend across New South Wales. That’s what I’m going to find out.

This is the first of three articles. The next one looks at other councils that have reclassified community land and asks whether a precedent is emerging.

The third asks the question sitting underneath all of this. Why are councils reaching this point in the first place?

This article is part of a series examining the decisions that shape our communities long before most people hear about them. I am following the stories behind local government decisions to better understand how public assets are managed, how communities are involved and what those decisions mean for future generations. See my second blog in the series here 

Governments created the trust crisis feeding far right politics

Governments have worn people down by asking for their views and ignoring what they hear.

Kiama Council’s draft engagement strategy shows how the pattern works. It uses the language of participation, then says the community will rarely be given influence because councillors make the final decisions.

That is democracy reduced to voting day.

In a true democracy councillors can make a community informed final decision after they have helped the community define the question, examine the evidence and develop the options. Instead, residents are too often invited in after the answer has already been decided..

I have watched this model play out in consultation after consultation. Residents read the documents, give up their time, write detailed submissions backed by evidence and explain how a proposal will affect their lives and their community.

Council thanks them for participating, then adopts a policy that looks almost exactly as it did before the process began.

All we were offered was an opportunity to comment on someone else’s answer.

We elect people to represent us. They set priorities, approve policies, question advice and vote on decisions. They also choose what kind of relationship they have with the community.

You cannot represent people unless you are prepared to have conversations with them.

A conversation begins early. Elected representatives explain the problem, share the evidence, listen to the people affected, test assumptions and ask questions. They explain the competing pressures, show what changed because people participated and give clear reasons for the decision they make.

When that relationship breaks down, the damage spreads beyond council chambers.

People who lose trust in those they elected become more willing to listen to someone promising to sweep the whole system aside.

Their hero on the white horse. Someone who says the institutions have failed, the usual rules are useless and only they have the strength or courage to act. They offer simple answers to complex problems, blame a clear enemy and ask people to trust the person rather than the process.

Calling voters ignorant is easier than admitting elected representatives stopped listening. Blaming social media is easier than examining years of predetermined decisions, staged consultation and carefully controlled public meetings.

People turn towards political extremes because they are desperate to feel represented by someone.

Elected representatives have helped create the conditions in which far right groups grow. They cannot dismiss that rise as a failure of intelligence or judgement among voters.

This is also where government loses one of its most useful sources of information. A trusted consultation process allows elected representatives to read the room, hear what people are experiencing, test whether a proposal will achieve its purpose and adjust before damage is done.

Kiama Council’s Draft Community Engagement Strategy 2026 to 2030 adopts the International Association for Public Participation spectrum. It lists co-design, working groups, deliberative forums, consensus conferences and citizens’ juries.

Then it says the empower level will rarely be used because councillors make the final decisions. What do you make of that?

The methods are listed. The strategy does not say when council will use them. Without clear triggers, councillors can continue accepting another survey, another exhibition and another invitation to comment on a proposal already framed by staff.

In my submission, I asked council to identify which decisions will involve collaboration, co-design or deliberative participation.

I asked council to begin those processes early enough for the community to help define the problem.

I asked council to publish the engagement level chosen for each major project and explain why, set clear triggers for citizens’ juries, deliberative forums, working groups and co-design, and report what changed because people participated.

Kiama also has access to expertise through Twyfords, based in this region. Vivien Twyford and her colleagues helped establish the Australasian chapter of the International Association for Public Participation and build the use of the IAP2 model in Australia.

Twyfords helps organisations and communities explore an issue together, understand competing pressures and define the dilemma before developing responses. That experience addresses the gap in the draft strategy.

Council has named the methods. Twyfords understands when to use them, how early the process should begin and how to design engagement that earns trust.

The organisation also knows Kiama, its history, relationships, tensions and different communities of place.

The draft uses the language around consultation while leaving the existing decision-making model intact.

Elected people created this trust crisis.

They can fix it by returning democracy to what it is meant to be, people governing together through representatives who listen, explain, involve and remain accountable for the decisions they make