Category: Behind the Byline

Get the Lowdown on Kiama Council’s Akuna Street Dilemma and How We Got Here?

Kiama Council is again facing the courts over the Akuna Street site, with mediation between Council and developer Level 33 collapsing in August. A three-day Land and Environment Court hearing is now scheduled for 10–12 December 2025.

This is no ordinary block. It is the largest redevelopment parcel in Kiama’s town centre, sold to Level 33 for $28 million in 2022. For years, it has been a decaying eyesore, attracting vandalism and complaints. What gets built here will set the tone for the town centre for decades.

Many will remember that this is not the first time Akuna Street has been at the centre of developer disputes.

From Daoud to Level 33, a site with history

  • 2016 to 2018: Developer Nicolas Daoud, trading under Traders in Purple, pursued a mixed-use proposal including a supermarket and apartments. When Council refused a final extension to secure approval, the sale collapsed.

  • 28 June 2022: Council ran a new selective tender process for the Akuna Street land. Both Level 33 and Traders in Purple (led by Charlie Dowd) put in bids. An alternate motion to negotiate with Traders in Purple was debated but lost. The tender was awarded to Level 33 Property Group Pty Ltd with settlement terms of 42 days (Kiama Council, Minutes of the Ordinary Meeting, 28 June 2022, Item 20.1, pp. 36–37).

  • July 2022: Within weeks of that decision, Nicolas Daoud’s company filed Federal Court proceedings against Council, alleging breach of contract and misleading conduct.

  • Late 2022: Level 33 completed the purchase of the Akuna Street site for $28 million.

  • 14 August 2024: The Federal Court matter Nicolas Daoud v Kiama Municipal Council was finalised. Under a Deed of Release, Council paid Daoud a settlement of $1 million. Council also disclosed legal costs of $3.73 million (excluding settlement), bringing the total cost of the case to $4.73 million, equal to 16.9 percent of the $28 million sale price (Kiama Council, Agenda of 20 November 2024, Item 14.1 p.146 and Item 15.8 p.604).

Why the DA is stuck

The state government planning panel has already said Level 33’s design does not fit the site rules. The main problems are simple. The building is too big, too bulky, and it blocks views.

Council’s Director of Strategies and Communities has been clear on this point. The design is not in step with what Kiama has agreed should be built in the town centre.

Could this have been avoided?

Looking back, there are two lessons.

  1. With Daoud and Traders in Purple:
    Clearer timelines, a stronger dispute-resolution process, and more transparency could have avoided the Federal Court. Instead, councillors were left making rescission and tender decisions midstream, which frustrated both sides.

  2. With Level 33:
    A design-led settlement, shaped by independent review and supported by a planning agreement for things like streetscape, laneways, and heritage, could still produce a better outcome. Mediation is designed for compromise. If used well, it could save years of delay and large legal bills.

What a VPA could do for Akuna Street

A Voluntary Planning Agreement (VPA) is a tool that lets Council and a developer agree on public benefits as part of a development approval.

A VPA can include:

  • Streetscape works, laneways, and public spaces

  • Contributions to affordable housing or community facilities

  • Heritage protection or conservation works

  • Design commitments that go beyond the bare minimum rules

Why it matters here:

  • When Council sold Akuna Street to Level 33, there was no chance to negotiate a VPA, because VPAs can only be tied to development approvals, not land sales.

  • Now that a DA is on the table, a VPA could still be used to settle the dispute and guarantee public benefits.

The win–win would look like this:

  • Council secures design improvements and commitments to protect views and heritage.

  • Level 33 gains certainty of approval without the risk of court.

  • The community finally sees the site cleaned up and used, with a development that gives something back.

The bigger picture

There has been talk of Kiama as a possible Transport Oriented Development (TOD) site, with six-storey buildings near the station. But here is the reality.

  • Kiama is not on the official TOD station list. The mapping covers Sydney, the Hunter, the Central Coast, and some Illawarra stations, but not Kiama.

  • Train service is a barrier. With only one train an hour south of Kiama, the service falls well short of what TOD is meant to be built around.

  • Community concerns remain. Without upgrades to the rail line, higher-density housing risks creating congestion and frustration rather than better liveability.

So for now, the rules that matter are Kiama’s own Local Environmental Plan and Development Control Plan, which set expectations for height, scale, and streetscape.

The six-storey question

In November 2023, Council approved Local Environmental Plan amendments that raised height limits in parts of the CBD. This means six-storey buildings are now possible in selected locations.

On top of this, the NSW Government’s Low and Mid-Rise Housing Policy, which took effect in February 2025, encourages mid-rise housing near transport hubs. On paper, Kiama fits.

But in practice:

  • Land is limited. Only a small amount of R3-zoned land is available within 800 metres of the station.

  • Lot size rules apply. Kiama’s Development Control Plan requires a minimum lot width of 25 metres for residential flat buildings.

  • Costs are high. Construction expenses, compliance reforms after the Opal Tower, and levies that can take up 40 percent of costs make apartments hard to deliver in most regional towns.

  • Community concerns are strong. Overshadowing, traffic, and loss of character remain front of mind.

That is why analysts say Kiama, Byron Bay, and possibly Shell Cove are among the very few regional towns where six-storey projects might actually happen. High land values in these places make it viable where others cannot.

The upshot is that six storeys may be allowed on paper, but the real opportunities are narrow. Without land assembly, high-quality design, and community support, most sites will not reach that height.

Where to from here?

The worst outcome would be to let the Court decide in December, which would leave the community with little say in the outcome.

The best outcome would be for Council and Level 33 to come back to the table, work towards a design that fits Kiama’s principles on size and scale, and guarantee public benefits through a planning agreement. That is the common-sense path.

But here is what we cannot ignore. By November 2024, Council had already spent $4.73 million on the Daoud litigation. That is close to 17 percent of the $28 million sale price. Nearly one-sixth of the community’s return on this land has already been whittled away in legal costs and settlement payments, before a single brick has been laid.

This raises serious questions:

  • How much more are ratepayers willing to lose on court battles?

  • Why is a developer pushing ahead when both Council and the State have concerns about compliance?

  • Should Council bring in independent negotiators to prevent more losses and protect the community’s interests?

The community deserves straight answers  and a future for Akuna Street that does not drain our finances any further.

Thanks to everyone who shared questions and comments on this post. I’ve added extra detail to help answer those and keep the community in the loop.

#KiamaCouncil #AkunaStreet #Level33 #TradersInPurple #KiamaPlanning #CommunityVoice #LandAndEnvironmentCourt #BulkAndScale #ViewSharing #SixStoreys #KiamaDevelopment #PlanningTransparency #IndependentNegotiators

Councillors Can Advocate, CEOs Must Remain Impartial

There’s been a lot of chatter on social media about council staff appearing in photos with candidates. This post is aimed at providing clarity: councillors can openly advocate for the candidate they believe will best serve their community, but council staff, including the CEO, are required by law to remain impartial and avoid any appearance of endorsement.

Councillors are elected to represent their community, not to toe someone else’s line. Their role is to exercise independent judgement and advocate for the candidate they believe will deliver the best outcomes for local people. That’s both their democratic mandate and their duty under the Councillor Code of Conduct.

It is important to note that this freedom applies to councillors, not to staff. The Local Government (General) Regulation 2021 and the Model Code of Conduct for Local Councils set clear rules for council staff, including the CEO (or General Manager):

  • Council staff must remain politically neutral.

  • They cannot use their role or resources to support or oppose a candidate.

  • Appearing in campaign photos, advertisements, or promotional material could be seen as giving improper support.

If a CEO was photographed with one candidate in a way that looks like an endorsement, it could be considered a breach and undermine trust in the election process.

The recent newspaper photo of senior council staff member Ed Paterson standing with Liberal candidate Serena Copley is a case in point. In reality, council staff should know better. The rules are clear. In this photo, it is clear Ed was happy to pose, and the end result is a public image that looks like endorsement. Whether or not that was his intention doesn’t matter, it crosses into territory the regulations are designed to prevent.

This is the key distinction. Councillors are elected representatives. They carry a mandate from the community, and that includes the right to say openly who they believe will deliver. Staff, on the other hand, are employed officials. Their role is to serve whichever councillors the community elects, without showing favour.

The principle is simple:

  • Elected councillors must be free to advocate.

  • Employed staff must remain impartial.

When those lines blur, the credibility of the whole system is at risk.

#KiamaCouncil #LocalGovernment #CouncilAccountability #CommunityVoice #ElectionIntegrity #Councillors #CEOsMustRemainImpartial

At Kiama Council Spin Comes Before Community

“Supporting local sport for 40 years 👏”

That is how Kiama Council captioned its post about the Illawarra Academy of Sport’s 40th Anniversary and Athlete Awards Night. But read on and you will see the focus was on Council itself, not the athletes.

The photo description says it all: “Photo features < insert council representative name > pictured with award recipients.”

The athletes, the very reason the event exists, remain nameless. Their achievements are blurred into the background while Council congratulates itself on “partnerships” and “commitment.”

I have been reporting on Council for two years now. First as the civic journalist for The Bugle and now as a citizen journalist on my blog. Again and again I have seen the same pattern: Council communications that elevate itself while sidelining the community.

This post is not an isolated slip. It matches what we have seen with legal fees, developer contributions, and financial reporting – moments where the message was shaped to protect the organisation rather than inform or celebrate the people it serves.

The real question is this: who is directing the communications team to think this kind of content is acceptable? These are trained professionals with the skills to put the spotlight where it belongs. So why are they continually pushed to produce material that centres Council instead of the community?

It would have taken five minutes to get the names of the winners. Instead, the communication team kept the spotlight on Council and left the athletes as faceless extras in their own story.

This is not community celebration. It is spin. And the community sees through it.

When our community turns up to honour athletes, we expect them to be the headline, not the footnote.

#KiamaCouncil #CommunityFirst #CouncilSpin #SportsAwards #Accountability

Creative Accounting or Community Gaslighting?

This post is the part of a Follow the Money  series shining a light on Kiama Council’s ongoing failure to even interpret its own spreadsheets.

I’ve been digging into Kiama Council’s legal expenses and what I’ve found is confusing, frustrating, and frankly concerning.

Here are the comparisons that matter:

Council Population (approx.) 2023/24 Legal Costs Spend Per Resident
Kiama 23,400 $3,369,000 $144
Port Macquarie–Hastings 50,560 $250,000 $5
Shellharbour 76,200 $858,000 $11

Kiama, with the smallest population, spent by far the most on legal bills. At $144 per person, Kiama’s costs tower over Shellharbour ($11) and Port Macquarie–Hastings ($5).

A pattern of costly errors

This blowout is not an isolated issue. Council’s financial reporting on major risk areas keeps needing “fixes” after the fact:

If developer levies can be overcharged, and legal costs can be double-counted, what confidence can the public have in any top-line figure?

Meanwhile, “Other Legal Expenses” jumped from $204,000 in 2020/21 to $3.3 million in 2023/24 — a sixteen-fold increase in three years. In the same period, total legal expenses rose from $416,000 to $3.37 million.

Where Council points… and where the money actually goes

Council is very happy to outline where Land & Environment Court (LEC) costs are spent — case lists, updates, outcomes — and it is true that LEC matters account for around 53% of legal costs (excluding the Daoud Federal Court case).

But here’s the catch:

  • Probity/General legal advice soaks up another 37%.

  • When I asked for a breakdown of these “other” costs, the Public Officer refused to provide it.

This is the deflection at play.  Council points to the unavoidable LEC cases, but goes silent on the categories where the blowouts are happening.

Are LEC costs really unavoidable?

Council insists LEC costs are unavoidable. But the record shows many cases should never have reached court at all.

  • Yes, developers have a legal right to appeal to the LEC.

  • But how Council manages those appeals is absolutely within its control. If cases are lost because Council misapplied its own LEP or DCP, or if politically motivated decisions collapse under scrutiny, those costs are self-inflicted.

  • Time and again, matters defended at great expense have been lost or forced into costly conciliation — suggesting they should never have been taken to court.

LEC costs are not automatically unavoidable. Too often, they are the price we pay for poor governance.

Code of Conduct costs

On top of this, $69,080 was spent on Code of Conduct complaints in the past reporting year, even though:

  • 10 complaints were lodged,

  • only 2 reached investigation, and

  • 2 breaches were found (leading to councillor censure).

That is an extraordinary spend for very little outcome.

And the contradiction is glaring: the Mayor has claimed Codes of Conduct are being “weaponised” — yet he himself lodged the complaint that led to a censure later overturned in the Supreme Court, costing the community just over $200,000.

Why this matters

It all beggars belief.

Residents should not need to become forensic accountants to follow the money. When legal spend is this high — and when we keep seeing corrections across legal costs and developer contributions — the only responsible response is radical transparency.

So why isn’t it happening?

  • Why isn’t Kiama Council publishing legal spend by category, with clear totals, every quarter?

  • Why aren’t the Office of Local Government and the Audit, Risk & Improvement Committee (ARIC) demanding answers on the developer contribution overcharge, the double-counting of legal costs, and the “Other Legal” blow-outs?

  • Why is it left to community members to do the oversight work that should already exist?

The bottom line

Transparency in legal and developer-contribution accounting is not optional — it is a core measure of good governance. Until figures are itemised clearly, corrected promptly, independently reviewed, and made public without community pressure, trust in Kiama Council will continue to slip away.

Disclaimer

I am a community member, not a forensic accountant. This post reflects in-depth analysis of Kiama Council reports, combined with concerns raised by community members and councillors. It is a genuine attempt to understand and explain how and why Council’s legal expenses have escalated.

I look forward to Kiama Council’s response.

#KiamaCouncil #Accountability #Transparency #Governance #LegalCosts #CommunityVoice #LocalGovernment

Getting to the Root Cause of the Wicked Problems at Kiama Council

This post is the part of a Follow the Money  series shining a light on Kiama Council’s ongoing failure to even interpret its own spreadsheets.

I am not an accountant. I am a community member, like the majority of our residents, reading the same public reports and trying to understand where our money goes. We should not need a crystal ball to interpret basic financial information. We deserve numbers that make sense.

The last Council agenda included a “quarterly update” on legal costs that, when added together, came to $12 million. Days later, Council issued a media release saying the number was wrong, that the real figure was $2.275 million.

But that is not what the agenda papers said, and not what any reasonable resident would have understood.

And here is the deeper issue:

🙋‍♀️Why did the error have to be picked up by the community?

🙋‍♂️Why was it not identified earlier? Why was it not raised in councillor briefings?

🙋‍♀️Why was it not corrected before the agenda went public?

This goes to the heart of a wicked problem in local government.

The councillor’s impossible workload

Council agendas are released six days before each meeting. Councillors are provided with briefing sessions where they can ask for clarification on complex issues. But how many councillors have the time to attend these sessions? Most have full-time jobs.

And even if they do attend, they face the daunting task of wading through agendas that, once supplementary papers are included, can run to 800 pages or more. How can councillors reasonably be expected to spot errors buried deep in financial tables or misleading cumulative totals?

Why accuracy matters

Councillors can only make sound decisions if they are given timely, accurate, and complete information. When they are forced to second-guess whether the numbers in front of them are right or wrong, they cannot do their jobs effectively.

That responsibility does not lie with councillors. It lies with the executive team. Their role is to ensure the data provided to councillors, and to the public, is clear, concise, and correct.

The wicked problem

This is why the $12 million legal cost debacle matters so much. Not just because the number was wrong, but because it shows how fragile the system is. If councillors cannot trust the information they are given, and if the community has to play watchdog just to keep the books straight, then we do not have transparency. We have a system that is exhausting, confusing, and corrosive to trust.

The financial year before last, Council’s own financial statements showed that 37 percent of all legal costs were grouped into “Other”. With no clear breakdown, ratepayers have no idea what “Other” really means or how that money was spent and when questioned the Council Public Officer refused to answer the question.

Where to from here?

In our next posts, we will dig into specific examples of how these failures in reporting play out:

  • The weaponisation of the Code of Conduct and the hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted as a result.
  • The ballooning of “Other” legal costs and what sits behind them.

Getting to the root of this wicked problem means demanding better.  Councillors, and the community, deserve information they can rely on. Nothing less.

🤑Did you know that for a family of four in Kiama, $576 a year is effectively going straight to Council’s legal bills?

In my next blog, we will unpack what this figure really means, how it compares to other councils, and why residents deserve to know where their money is going.

Stay tuned — because when it comes to Council’s finances, it is time we all started asking tougher questions.

#KiamaCouncil #LegalCosts #Accountability #Transparency #CommunityVoice

When $12 Million Becomes $2 Million, Trust Becomes Zero

This post is the part of a Follow the Money  series shining a light on Kiama Council’s ongoing failure to even interpret its own spreadsheets.

I am not an accountant. I am a community member, like the majority of our residents, reading the same public reports and trying to understand where our money goes. We should not need a crystal ball to interpret basic financial information. We deserve numbers that make sense.

But this isn’t just about numbers. It goes to the heart of governance. Councillors cannot make sound decisions without timely, accurate and complete information.

And it raises a bigger question: are governance bodies such as the Audit, Risk and Improvement Committee (ARIC), the Auditor-General, and the Office of Local Government (OLG) fully informed of these matters – particularly in the context of the Performance Improvement Order (PIO)?

🙋‍♀️If they are, why haven’t they intervened?

🤔If they aren’t, then Council’s failures go deeper than poor spreadsheets.

The Legal Fees Debacle

On 19 August 2025, Council tabled its agenda papers showing the following “quarterly update of current legal matters”:

  • June 2024 – $4.50m

  • September 2024 – $5.01m

  • December 2024 – $1.32m

  • March 2025 – $1.20m

Those four quarters alone add up to $12.04 million. That is the figure residents saw in Council’s own agenda papers.

Even when Council later admitted the reporting was wrong , claiming the total legal spend for 2024–25 was just $2.275 million and that earlier figures were “cumulative since 2020”,  the explanation did not stack up.

If the figures were cumulative, they would only ever go up. Instead, they go up and then down again, which looks exactly like quarterly spending, not a rolling total.

But that is not what the agenda papers said, and not what any reasonable community member would have understood.

🙋‍♂️Why wasn’t this identified earlier?

🙋‍♀️Why wasn’t it raised at the council meeting itself?

🤔Why wasn’t it fixed then and there?

We all look forward to these matters being clarified in the next agenda. But in the meantime, councillors, oversight bodies and the community are left making decisions based on faulty information. This is the very opposite of transparency and accountability.

Without corrected figures, councillors, oversight bodies and the community are left making decisions based on faulty information – the very opposite of transparency and accountability.

The Overcharging Fiasco

Lets not forget December 2024.

Council admitted that, between July 2022 and June 2023, around 20 development applications by developers were overcharged a total of $1.5 million under Section 7.11 because of a spreadsheet error.

  • Refunds totalling $625,000 were proposed.

  • Landowners were to be contacted, consents modified, or payments refunded.

  • The overcharges were only identified as part of a later review of Council’s processes.

This is not a minor slip. It is hundreds of thousands of dollars wrongly charged, only corrected after the fact.

The Pattern We Cannot Ignore

Whether it is legal fees or development contributions, the story is the same:

  • Shifting numbers.

  • Confusing explanations, offered only after the community starts asking questions.

  • Major financial consequences for residents and ratepayers.

Transparency is not about cleaning up after the fact. It is about consistent, honest communication in the first place.

Until Council learns how to read and report its own spreadsheets, the community will keep paying the price. And until oversight bodies such as ARIC, the Auditor-General and OLG demand accuracy and accountability, residents will be left wondering: who is really watching over Council, and when will they step in?

#KiamaCouncil #Accountability #Transparency #LegalCosts #PublicMoney #GoodGovernance #Audit #CommunityTrust #Oversight

Lawyers at the Beach !!!!! Why is Kiama Council in Dispute with Gerringong Surf Club?

Yes, you read that correctly Kiama Council is in a formal legal dispute with the Gerringong Surf Life Saving Club — a  volunteer-based organisation that patrols our beaches, trains young lifesavers, and shows up for the community when it matters most.

Council’s own legal report lists the matter as:

“Gerringong SLSC – Licence dispute”
Status: In a meeting held with the club, they confirmed that following advice received from Council, they would withdraw their dispute. To date this hasn’t occurred. Council to follow up.

This post is the part of a Follow the Money  series shining a light on Kiama Council’s ongoing failure to even interpret its own spreadsheets.

I’ve been digging into Kiama Council’s legal expenses and what I’ve found is confusing, frustrating, and frankly concerning.

Why it matters

This is not vague or hypothetical. A community surf club and the local Council are in a formal dispute, with lawyers in the middle. However it unfolded, the fact remains that volunteers and ratepayers are now caught up in a process that should have been solved with better communication and collaboration.

And let’s talk about cost. Council spent more than $12 million on legal matters in 12 months, ( see Item 13.7 Legals Agenda of Ordinary Meeting – Tuesday, 19 August 2025), including nearly $5 million in a single quarter. If that doesn’t tell us it’s time to upgrade our negotiation skills, I don’t know what does. (Maybe TAFE should run a course called How Not to Spend $12 Million on Lawyers.)

What’s at stake

  • The surf club exists to save lives.

  • Council exists to serve the community.

  • Neither should be wasting time and money battling each other.

A Pattern of Escalation

The Gerringong Surf Life Saving Club isn’t the only example.

Council’s legal report also lists:

“KMC v Morgan Lewis – Failure to comply with terms of DA, Fillmore’s Manning Street, Kiama.”
This case went all the way to a contested hearing, with a fine of $3000 recorded. Council spent $88,000 plus to the end of June that only resulted in a $3000 fine.

Yes, rules need to be enforced. But when so many disagreements between Council and the community ends up in front of lawyers, something’s broken.

Instead of being solved across a desk, these matters are being fought across a courtroom.

And that’s how we end up with Council spending more than $12 million on legal matters in 12 months. 

Disputes can happen. But when they escalate into legal wrangling rather than being solved face to face, the community loses twice, first in trust, and then in money.

It’s time to get serious about collaboration. Because if we can’t negotiate with our lifesavers, what hope do we have on bigger challenges?

See previous post “No lease, no answers. What is Kiama Council hiding?” for backstory

#KiamaCouncil #Gerringong #SurfLifeSaving #CommunityFirst #Accountability #Collaboration #GoodGovernance #LegalCosts #Negotiation #CivicLeadership

From Bare Floors to Barely Affording. Why Getting Rich in 1870 Was Easier Than Buying a House Today”

In 1870, the Kiama Independent ran a piece titled How to Get Rich. The advice was breathtakingly simple:

Work hard. Spend less than you earn. Save a few hundred pounds. Buy a small farm on the edge of town. Build a modest house. Marry a prudent woman (the sexism was free). Live happily ever after.

And the best part? Don’t worry about furniture. As the newspaper sternly advised, “If the average colonist can have a carpet and fine furniture without taking another man’s money to pay for them, let him have them. But if he cannot afford it, bare floors will not hurt honest men’s feet.”

In other words: buy the farm first, worry about the carpet later.

And here’s the thing, it wasn’t a joke. Back then, this advice actually worked. You could slog for a few years and end up with a farm. Land ownership was within reach of an ordinary labourer.

Fast forward to 2025, and you’d be laughed out of the bank for suggesting such a thing. Today’s version of How to Get Rich might read something like this:

Work hard. Spend less than you earn (if that’s even possible). Save for a decade while rents chew through a third of your income. Watch house prices climb faster than your wages. Cry into your smashed avo (because it wasn’t the avocado that broke the bank). Apply for a mortgage that will consume 50% of your household income. Repeat until retirement.

Here are the hard numbers:

  • The house-price-to-income ratio in Australia now sits at about 8 times annual income (9.5 times if you’re in Sydney, 10-12 times if you live in Kiama). In 1870, it was closer to 1:1.

  • It takes the average household more than 10 years just to save a deposit—and that’s without the market leaping ahead while you save.

  • If you’re lucky enough to secure a mortgage, expect half your income to vanish into loan repayments. If you’re renting, a third of your income disappears into someone else’s mortgage.

In short: in 1879  “getting rich” meant a few years of thrift and sweat, and you could end up with your own patch of dirt. Today, thrift and sweat mostly buy you the right to complain about real estate agents and doom scroll Domain listings at midnight.

The truth is, our ancestors may have lived with bare floors, but at least they could afford the walls around them. Carpets were optional. Houses weren’t.

#HousingCrisis #CostOfLiving #KiamaHistory #ThenAndNow #BareFloors #HomeOwnership #AustralianDream #LocalHistory #RealEstateReality

Why I’ve Become an Advocate for Shining a Light on Abuse of Power

What hill are you standing on for your community?

I didn’t set out to become “that person” who keeps calling out the wrongs. But over time, I’ve seen too many examples of how silence enables harm. Whether it’s in local government, community organisations, or the workplace, abuse of power doesn’t arrive with a fanfare. It seeps in quietly. It hides in closed-door decisions, half-truths, and carefully managed narratives.

At first, it’s tempting to tell yourself it’s not worth the trouble. That someone else will speak up. That surely, if the problem was as bad as it looks, the system would correct itself. But time after time, I’ve seen the opposite. The people with the courage to speak are often punished, while those in positions of power close ranks.

I’ve also learned that abuse of power is rarely a single, dramatic event. More often, it’s a pattern of behaviour: bending rules for friends, silencing critics, hiding information the public has a right to know. It’s intimidation dressed up as “process,” and retaliation disguised as “policy.” And while these tactics might be effective in the short term, they corrode trust and weaken the very institutions they claim to protect.

My decision to speak out comes down to this: silence isn’t neutral. It’s a choice that helps the powerful, not the vulnerable. By shining a light on these behaviours, I’m defending the principle that power should serve the public good, not personal interest.

It’s uncomfortable work. It can make you a target. But it also builds solidarity. I’ve met others who share this belief that truth-telling is worth the cost. Together, we’re creating a record. We’re showing that people are paying attention. We’re reminding those in power that their actions matter, and that accountability is not optional.

Abuse of power thrives in the dark. My job, as I see it now, is to make sure the light stays on.

#CommunityAdvocacy #StandForChange #AbuseOfPower #SpeakUp #LocalLeadership #CivicCourage #CommunityMatters #AccountabilityNow #DefendDemocracy #TogetherWeRise

Kiama’s All-Women By-Election: Let’s Talk Ideas, Not Insults

The 13 September Kiama by-election is a milestone in more ways than one. For the first time, every candidate is a woman: Kate Dezarnaulds (Independent), Tonia Gray (Greens), Katelin McInerney (Labor), and Serena Copley (Liberal). Between them, they bring decades of professional, community, and political experience, and, I hope, a willingness to run campaigns focused on what they will do for the community, rather than tearing each other down.

Kate Dezarnaulds – Independent

Berry-based businesswoman and community advocate Kate is running on a platform of independent leadership free from party agendas. Her focus is on:

  • Affordable housing – promoting build-to-rent models to ease rental pressures and improve housing availability.

  • Healthcare access – better local health services and specialist care.

  • Climate action – strong environmental protections and disaster preparedness.

  • Infrastructure and transparency – advocating for infrastructure that supports sustainable growth and more open local decision-making.

Tonia Gray – Greens

Tonia, also from Berry, is a former Shoalhaven councillor and educator who champions:

  • Climate justice – a rapid shift to renewables, ideally under public ownership.

  • Public services – increased funding for hospitals, schools, housing, and public transport.

  • Environmental protection – safeguarding farmland, ecosystems, and supporting agritourism.

  • Political integrity – ending “dirty donations” and embedding transparency, alongside meaningful work with First Nations communities.

Katelin McInerney – Labor

When Premier Chris Minns announced Katelin’s candidacy, he described her as “very kind” and having “a big heart.” While kindness is valuable in politics, it’s hard to imagine a male colleague being introduced in quite the same terms. Katelin is returning for a second tilt at the seat after losing to Gareth Ward in 2023. Her platform includes:

  • Housing and cost of living – boosting housing supply, supporting renters, and maintaining local cost-of-living relief measures.

  • Health and education – strengthening public health services in Kiama and improving access to specialist care; investment in schools and training pathways.

  • Transport and infrastructure – improving rail reliability and road safety upgrades.

  • Community engagement – respectful, community-first representation that prioritises listening to constituents.

Serena Copley – Liberal

Shoalhaven local and former councillor Serena is framing the by-election as a verdict on Labor’s record, asking voters if they feel better off after two years under the current government. She is campaigning for:

  • Infrastructure investment – building on the Liberals’ delivery of Kiama’s ambulance station, integrated health centre, and major hospital redevelopments; pushing for faster project delivery.

  • Cost-of-living relief – restoring Active Kids and Back to School vouchers, reinstating the Seniors Regional Travel Card.

  • Transport and health – reversing what she describes as Labor’s cuts to health funding, making train services faster and more reliable.

  • Economic management – strong fiscal discipline to support local jobs and maintain the South Coast’s lifestyle.

Why This Race Matters

This by-election is a rare chance for Kiama voters to compare four distinct visions for the region’s future. The choice is not just about personalities but about values, whether we want leadership that puts community before party, accelerates climate and housing reforms, doubles down on public service delivery, or promises a return to a more traditional infrastructure-first agenda.

The Premier’s framing of Katelin’s candidacy and Serena’s sharp critique of Labor both hint at the tone of the campaign ahead. My hope is that the focus stays on ideas, not insults. Kiama deserves candidates who will make their case on substance, vision, and respect for the people they seek to represent.

#KiamaByElection2025 #KateDezarnaulds #ToniaGray
#KatelinMcInerney #SerenaCopley #KiamaVotes
#WomenInPolitics #CommunityFirst