Very local, state, national and the wider world, in everyday language, for people who haven’t got all day.
From a fired-up Kiama Council saying no to amalgamation, to jobs slipping and the Iran war keeping petrol dear, here’s the local-to-global wrap for 22 May 2026.
Very Local: what our Council got up to this week
A busy night at the Kiama Council meeting on Tuesday 19 May. Here are the bits that caught my attention.
“No to amalgamation.” The big one. Councillors voted unanimously to reaffirm Kiama as a “strong, proud and independent council” and say a flat no to any merger. The clever part: they’re writing to the sitting member for Kiama and every declared candidate for the 2027 state election, asking each one to put their position on amalgamation in writing so it can be tabled in public. Everyone on the record before the next election. Watch this space.
Money is the cloud over everything. Behind the scenes sat a finance and governance improvement plan, a budget review, and a note about Council’s Performance Improvement Order, which is the state government’s “lift your game” notice hanging over Kiama. That pressure is the real reason the amalgamation fight matters. A small council is scrapping to prove it can stand on its own two feet.
Youth services under a question mark. The Mayor tabled a letter from federal MP Fiona Phillips flagging the possible closure of Council’s SENTRAL Youth Services. The Assistant Minister’s reply says headspace Kiama and others can pick up the slack. Reassuring on paper, but if you’ve got teenagers it’s a sign local youth services may be on the chopping block as budgets tighten.
More homes for Gerringong. Two greenlights worth noting: two residential flat buildings approved at 104 Belinda Street, and 48 Campbell Street set up as an “Urban Release Area,” which is planning-speak for land rezoned for new housing. Housing supply is the thread tying the whole region together right now.
A Jamberoo house off to the lawyers. A dwelling and farm shed on Minnamurra Lane got messy. Councillors split four-all and the item was carried on the chair’s casting vote, deferring it for legal advice first. It’s back in June. A tied vote tells you it’s genuinely contested.
Skate park families, take note. Council backed Option 3 for the Kiama Sports Complex. The promise to find a new and better skate park site got softened to simply relocating it “as per the revised plan.” Keep an eye on where it actually finds a home.
Looking after the locals with fur and roots. In-principle support for the “Save the Greater Glider” campaign and a possible expansion of Seven Mile Beach National Park, plus a long-term plan to tackle the asparagus weed choking the Werri Beach dunes.
The bottom line: it all comes back to money. The improvement order, the budget reviews, the stand against amalgamation, and the worry over youth services are really one story. A small council fighting to stay its own boss while the dollars get tighter. The homes, the gliders, the skate park are all happening on top of that.
Across NSW (State)
Cost of living is still the song that never ends. Sydney’s hung onto its title as the dearest city in the land, and the jobs picture just took a knock too (more on that under Federal). The one bit of breathing room remains rents, which after years of brutal rises have finally levelled off, though nobody’s exactly celebrating at the checkout.
And tonight the city goes a bit magic. Vivid Sydney switches on this evening and runs every night until 13 June, lights glowing from 6pm to 11pm. There’s a 6.5km walk of light displays from Circular Quay through The Rocks, Barangaroo and Darling Harbour, and the drone shows are back, though they’ve shuffled over to Cockle Bay this year. It’s free to wander and look, which is the main thing in a year when everything else costs the earth. Rug up if you go. It’s proper winter now.
Across the Country (Federal)
Jobs took a hit. Today’s big home-front number. The unemployment rate jumped to 4.5% in April, the worst it’s been since late 2021. About 33,000 more people found themselves out of work, and nearly 19,000 jobs actually disappeared over the month. It hit young people hardest (youth unemployment is now over 11%), and this month the losses landed mainly on women, who drove the whole fall in employment while the men’s rate held. This means work is getting harder to find, and that’s the kind of thing that worries a household before it ever worries a politician. Oddly, the share market had one of its best days in weeks on the very same day. A reminder that what’s good for the big end of town and what’s good for your kitchen table aren’t always the same story.
The Budget shake-up, still rumbling on. You’ll remember Treasurer Jim Chalmers handed down his big-swing Budget on 12 May. The headline change for ordinary folk: the government wants to limit negative gearing to new builds from July 2027, and change capital gains tax so it’s tied to inflation with a minimum tax on profits. If you already own an investment property, or had one under contract before 7:30pm on Budget night, you’re left alone. The idea is to give first-home buyers a fairer shot, and they reckon it could help around 75,000 people into a home over a decade. The Opposition’s dead against it.
And here’s where Michael West earns his cuppa. While the big mastheads chase the Budget headlines, the independents are digging where it’s uncomfortable. Two beauties this week from Michael West Media. First, a coal miner versus the Big Australian: BHP, a $300 billion giant, is taking Michael West Media itself to the Federal Court to try and shut down its reporting on an injured coal miner’s wage-theft case. They tried to rush through urgent orders to pull the stories down, and the court told them to wait their turn. The fact they’re being sued and still publishing the file number tells you what kind of outfit they are. Second, Cricket Australia is running an “independent review” into a $600,000 cloud-computing deal at the centre of “contracts-for-mates” allegations, but the whistleblower who raised the alarm has already been made redundant. Exactly the sort of follow-the-money stuff worth your support if you’ve got a spare dollar. Their whole model is “don’t pay so you can read it, pay so everyone can.”
Around the World (International)
The Iran war is still the one that reaches your petrol pump. The US-and-Israel war with Iran has been grinding on since late February, and a shaky ceasefire brokered by Pakistan keeps wobbling on and off. The latest worry is that US intelligence reckons Iran is rebuilding its military faster than expected and has already restarted making drones during the truce. Pakistan’s army chief has flown to Tehran to keep the talks limping along. The fighting keeps squeezing the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil shipping lane, which is exactly why fuel’s been dear the world over, and why so much of our Budget was built around cushioning petrol prices.
Outrage over the Gaza flotilla. This one’s moved fast. Aid activists who’d tried to sail to Gaza were intercepted by Israeli forces, and a video posted by a far-right Israeli minister, taunting them while they knelt bound on the ground, sparked a global firestorm. At least ten countries summoned Israeli ambassadors to explain themselves, Australia and New Zealand among them. As of today, Israel has now deported all the activists, sending them home via Turkey, after even Israel’s own PM called the minister’s behaviour out of line.
A nasty Ebola outbreak in Congo. The head of the World Health Organization has raised the alarm about a rare type of Ebola spreading quickly in the Democratic Republic of Congo. One to keep half an eye on.
The bottom line
It all joins up, Betty. A war on the other side of the planet pushes up oil; oil pushes up the petrol in the car and the price of everything trucked to the shops; and that’s why the Budget was built around fuel relief while the jobs market softens at home. Closer in, our little Council is fighting the same fight in miniature, scrapping to stay independent while the dollars tighten. And through it all, the watchdogs like Michael West keep poking at the powerful so the rest of us can see where the money really goes. Not a bad day’s reading over one cup of tea.
A note on Betty and Kevin: Betty grew up in Kiama before life took her to Blacktown. Her brother Kevin still lives in their old home town. Keeping up with what’s happening down the coast is partly nostalgia for the place she came from, but mostly it’s how she and Kevin fill those long phone calls she looks forward to all week. That’s what this Catch Up is really for. Not just the news, but the conversations it keeps alive.
Sources: Kiama Municipal Council minutes, Sydney Morning Herald, ABS, Michael West Media, Al Jazeera, The Conversation, CNN, CBC, and others.
As I was reviewing the many hundreds of pages of Agenda and Supplementary Agenda in preparation for monitoring Kiama Council’s 19 May 2026 meeting, I came across a comment by the Council CEO, Jane Stroud, that many Kiama LGA ratepayers will find concerning, as I do.
In responding (on page 161 of the Council meeting’s Business Paper) to a proposal by the Gerroa Environmental Protection Society (GEPS) to expand the Seven Mile Beach National Park, largely to protect its population of the endangered Southern Greater Glider, Ms Stroud writes: “Some of the areas of Council managed Crown Land proposed by GEPS contain Seven Mile Beach Holiday Park assets.”
Then the concerning sentence: “Further analysis should be undertaken as Council has already commenced an expression of interest and request for tender process on its holiday park portfolio.”
The words, ‘request for tender’, in particular, raise the question of whether Council and its CEO is going to take any notice of the current public exhibition process in which the Kiama community is being asked what they think of the 2026 – 2027 Council draft budget and operational plan. In this process, the Council and CEO have asked that the public comments also cover the future of the LGA’s holiday parks.
However, is this just a charade? Has the Council/CEO already decided, without telling us, to dispose of the Council-owned holiday parks? And is it already in the process of doing so?
If so, this would not only be deluding we ratepayers but also defying the latest Performance Improvement Order from the Minister for Local Government, one part of which requests Council not to rush the holiday parks’ matter but to ‘further investigate’ their future.
– Graham Pike
Jamberoo
Thanks for this. Good on you for wading through all those pages to find it.
One thing worth untangling. They can’t actually sell the parks. Four of the five, Seven Mile Beach included, are on Crown land, so a sale is off the table. What’s really in play is a long lease or management deal.
And the Minister’s letter is softer than it reads. It doesn’t tell Council not to rush the parks. It just says the extra 12 months would give them room to look at the parks’ future over time.
You main point holds, and it’s a good one. If we’re being asked what we think of the parks through the budget consultation while a tender’s already running, what’s the consultation for? That’s the one to put to our councillors before submissions close on 24 May.
Congratulations must go to Cr Lawton (and her three supporting Councillors, including Mayor McDonald for his casting vote on this matter) for her successful motion at Kiama Council’s 19 May 2026 meeting to have a second look – independent legal advice – at the Council staff recommendation to approve the development application for a dwelling and a detached farm building at Lot 6 Minnamurra Lane, Jamberoo.
Cr Lawton said she could not put her finger on exactly why the proposal to approve the DA worried her but it is possible that in the back of her mind was the Council/staff’s increasing propensity in recent years to approve developments that fragment agricultural land – in complete violation of every Council regulation and policy relating agricultural land in the LGA.
The Minnamurra Lane DA appears to involve what, if approved, would be the further fragmentation of agricultural, food producing land. The land in question in Minnamurra Lane is zoned RU2 Rural Landscape and currently vacant. Extensive agriculture is permitted without consent in our RU1 Primary Production and RU2 Rural Landscape zones.
As Councillors will know, Kiama Council’s agricultural land policy is primarily driven by the Kiama Local Environmental Plan 2011 and Kiama Development Control Plan 2020. The core policy is to protect prime agricultural land from urban fragmentation, preserve its viability for long-term food production, and ensure agritourism supports rather than hinders primary production.
For example, the first two Objectives of Chapter 8 (Rural Uses) of Council’s Kiama Development Control Plan 2020 are:
• To protect agricultural land and restrict its fragmentation for purposes other than primary production.
• To ensure that development does not inhibit the use of agricultural land for agriculture.
Moreover, Council’s tourism publicity and policies always point out that one of the main drivers of the LGA’s multi-million dollar tourist economy continues to be the area’s “rolling green hills”.
However, if you take the time to look around those rolling green hills these days, you will see how fragmented and disfigured they are by the quite dramatically increased number of Council-approved houses and sheds of all shapes and sizes. The once rolling green hills now have large zits.
The result of increasing urban development on some of the world’s richest farmland is even more pronounced when at night you look from the Minnamurra River valley up to the escarpments south of Jerrara and west of Jamberoo. In the areas increasingly being cleared of sub-tropical rainforest, it’s somewhat like the festivals of twinkling Christmas lights you see in European cities.
At the May Kiama Council meeting, Council staff had recommended that Council breach its anti agricultural land fragmentation policies and regulations and approve the Minnamurra Lane development on the basis of a 15-year-old precedent – that in about 2011 the same land had received approval for a dwelling but the DA approved then had lapsed without anything being built. Council staff argued that this previous approval could be used to justify the approval of a new DA now.
Cr Lawton’s thoughtful and successful motion will now mean that the DA will be re-examined at least legally and hopefully, in the context of all Council’s planning and land use regulations and policies designed to protect the fragmentation of agricultural land in the LGA.
– Graham Pike
Jamberoo
Hi Graham. The slow creep of sheds and houses across those hills is happening.
You know my hobby horse though. Calling this “food producing land” is a stretch when the block’s sitting vacant and zoned RU2. If it’s not giving anyone a return from food or fibre, it’s not really agricultural land, it just looks the part. And a house and a farm shed isn’t much of a fragmentation when nothing’s being farmed there in the first place.
Doesn’t mean wave it through. Your landscape and thousand-cuts point holds up fine on its own. Good on Cr Lawton for asking for a proper look first either way.
We might not be using the vacant lands or the land in question for food production right now. but most of these lands have been used for farming within the past century or less and, most importantly, we’ll need them for food production again as the human population, even in our area, increases uncontrollably and unsustainably and the resulting suburbanisation sprawls across and fragments this same agricultural/food producing land.
The zoning of the land as RU1 or RU2 is a human construct and immaterial. It is still land that we have used and will in future need to use, if any is left uncovered by concrete and asphalt, for food production.
– Graham Pike
Jamberoo
Hi Graham, 🙏 you’ve made some very important points here that I am going to reflect on in a blog