Category: Community Advocacy and Governance

Are you feeling swamped by the world’s biggest problems?

Source Facebook

Do you feel overwhelmed by the biggest issues shaping everyday life climate disruption, housing pressure, food prices, insurance, government spending? I did too.

For a long time my response lived in my head. Reading more. Arguing better. Feeling frustrated that public debate kept sliding into blame. None of that helped. What shifted things was doing something much simpler. I joined groups. I went to workshops. I put myself in rooms with people who were already translating big problems into practical action.

I have written before about the victim triangle and how easy it is to slip into it when the world feels out of control. What I learned through participation is how people climb out of it. Not by pretending the problems are smaller, and not by blaming others, but by reconnecting with responsibility and control.

One of the clearest examples for me has been Farmers for Climate Action. What works in spaces like this is not ideology. It is community. You learn alongside others. You share uncertainty. You are shown where effort counts. No one is cast as a villain or a victim. People are treated as capable decision makers.

That pattern repeats across other community based organisations like Landcare. Workshops, peer networks, and practical forums all do the same capacity and capability building work. They replace overwhelm with participation. They turn big abstract issues into things you can act on with others.

This is the shift I wish we talked about more. When people feel powerless, blame becomes a coping mechanism. When people feel supported and capable, responsibility returns.

If public debate feels stuck, it may be because we keep asking people to care without showing them how to act. The way forward is not louder arguments. It is clearer pathways and communities that make engagement feel possible.

That was the circuit breaker for me.

HT to Maryvonne Norman whose excellent Fb post prompted this article

If parliament was held to workplace standards

Seen through a corporate leadership lens, the recent analysis by Amplify reads like a board paper titled Why nothing got done.

In a six month period, almost half of parliamentary sitting time was absorbed by point scoring, disruption and theatre, with policy work compressed into what remained. The finding gained public attention through an ABC News report, where the framing was very clear.

“Parliament is wasting our time.”
Georgina Harrison, Amplify CEO, ABC News interview

A board sees executive time diverted from delivery to performance. Behaviour consumes oxygen. Risk and reputation join the discussion. This is the moment directors shift from observation to intervention.

The accountability picture sharpens further when the numbers are spelled out in operational terms.

“In the last six months of parliament, 28 business days were wasted on political point scoring.”
Georgina Harrison, Amplify CEO, ABC News interview

In big business, accountability concentrates at the top. The CEO, the chair and the senior leadership team carry responsibility for how time is used and how people behave in decision making forums. Read through a board lens, this section feels like a leadership issue parked under general business, then left there.

Time spent this way erodes value. Twenty eight business days in six months shows productivity leaking, opportunities missed and direction slipping. In board shorthand, this reads as a performance issue deferred again, while investors circle and analysts mark execution risk.

Governance systems succeed or fail on consequences. Standing rules provide structure, yet boards judge systems by impact. The ABC report captured the long running nature of the issue clearly.

“Decades of criticism about behaviour and limited policy debate have failed to shift the dynamic.”
ABC News, interview summary

A governance committee hears this and recognises a familiar problem. The rules exist. The outcomes drift. That is the trigger for change. Meeting formats reset. Speaking rules sharpen. Incentives move. Performance consequences apply.

Culture sits alongside leadership throughout this analysis. Culture shows how power behaves in daily practice. Persistent dysfunction points to weak authority, incentives pulling sideways and consequence gaps left unattended. On a board paper, this section reads like culture written in the margins of the minutes.

The conclusion arrives without flourish. A corporate organisation facing these signals moves quickly into review mode. Senior leaders face scrutiny. Behaviour links directly to performance. Governance structures undergo redesign with urgency. In business shorthand, this looks like intervention approved, timetable attached.

Politics operates under a different shield. Parliamentary leadership sits apart from the accountability standards applied across big business every day.

To a board audience, the final line reads as risk identified, owner missing.

 

What communities lose when lived experience is ignored.

Psychology shows we feel loss twice as strongly as gain. So when lived experience is not deliberately carried forward, change stalls. Familiar patterns win. Old mistakes return dressed up as new debates.

Communities like to think they are good at remembering. They are not.

They remember dates, names, anniversaries. They remember who was on which committee and who fell out with whom. What they forget is how decisions were made, what it cost to get agreement, and who carried the weight when things went wrong.

My previous post dealt  with recognition, the moment people lean forward and see themselves. This one deals with what communities lose when that recognition never makes it into decisions.

Because loss hurts twice as much as gain feels good, change faces a headwind.

When lived experience is not deliberately held and shared, communities lose ground. Quietly at first. Then all at once.

They lose their memory. People leave. Staff retire. Volunteers burn out. Small business owners move on. What walks out the door with them is the why, not the what. New leaders arrive and inherit problems stripped of context. Old decisions are waved away as historic, which often means inconvenient. The same arguments return with fresh language and everyone wonders why nothing changes.

They lose coordination when pressure hits. When stress arrives, and it always does, groups retreat into silos. Councils consult late. Agencies defend their patch. Community organisations scramble beside each other rather than together. Without a shared memory of how cooperation has worked before, decision making turns reactive. Effort duplicates. Public disagreement escalates and trust thins.

They lose credibility with their own people. Residents can smell process a mile off. They know when engagement is theatre. When people are asked to comment after options have already settled, they disengage. Meetings empty. Submissions dry up. Goodwill drains away. Once lost, it is slow and costly to rebuild.

They lose the ability to shape what comes next. When lived experience is absent, others step in. External advisers arrive with neat models that flatten local complexity. Decisions drift away from those who live with the consequences. Communities stop setting the direction and start reacting to it.

They lose time they do not have. Each round of relearning wastes energy. Complexity grows. Resources tighten. Mistakes become more expensive. The risk is not standing still. It is staying busy while falling behind.

They lose people. Capable contributors step back when they see the same conversations replayed with no accumulation of learning. Volunteers burn out. Staff leave. Younger people look elsewhere. Systems that cannot learn from themselves struggle to keep anyone who can.

They lose a closing window. There are still people around who remember when cooperation shifted outcomes and compromise mattered. That knowledge disappears quietly. Once gone, it cannot be rebuilt from reports or minutes.

This pattern has become embedded in corporate culture because modern organisations reward visible movement over accumulated understanding. New leaders arrive under pressure to signal change, legacy knowledge is treated as baggage rather than ballast, and past decisions are reduced to slide headings stripped of context. Speed, novelty, and personal imprint carry more status than continuity.

At the same time, high turnover, restructures, and consultant driven frameworks fracture memory by design, knowledge is modularised, handovers are thin, and learning is assumed to live in systems rather than people. Loss aversion does the rest. Protecting reputation, control, and momentum feels safer than reopening how decisions were made or acknowledging what went wrong. The result is a culture that looks busy and future facing, while quietly discarding the very experience that could prevent repetition and failure.

This is not about nostalgia or heritage.

It is about whether communities choose to keep the knowledge they have already paid for, or keep relearning the same lessons at a higher price each time.

There is still time to hold lived experience where decisions are made, and stop paying twice for forgetting.

Psychology shows we feel loss about twice as strongly as gain. So when lived experience is not deliberately carried forward, change stalls. Familiar patterns win. Old mistakes return dressed up as new debates.

What happens when a letter to the editor meets Cathy Wilcox’s line of sight

Sometimes, you do not need a megaphone at all. Sometimes a cartoonist who helps shape the national conversation sees the point you are making and signals it for you.

Cathy Wilcox read my letter and chose to share it. I value that decision.

This week she has faced sustained scrutiny for a cartoon that names issues many people recognise but feel unable to call out. She put those issues on the page anyway.
At a moment when silence often feels safer, her work shows what it looks like to keep naming structural problems rather than smoothing them over.
I appreciate the acknowledgement. I also appreciate the standard her work continues to set.

This post looks at how arguments travel once they enter public institutions.

It sets out my thinking on influence, media, and leadership under scrutiny.

I wrote a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald this week.

For the first time.

And it was published AND Cathy Wilcox tweeted it with this comment.

As ever the letter writers bring the wisdom

Within three hours, around 90 people had retweeted it and close to 300 had liked it. I am not on Twitter, that decision dates back to Elon Musk buying the platform. I only know because someone sent me a screenshot.

The Herald is a national paper. Along with The Age, it continues to play a significant role in setting the public frame. What appears there travels well beyond the page.

I have spent enough time around local government to see how power reacts to scrutiny.  When I was reporting on council matters, council publicly refuted my articles on their website . They lodged complaints with the Press Council. It was deliberate, and it wore me down.

Stepping away from that role changed the method, not the issues.

Writing a letter imposes a different discipline. You make the argument, then you step back. The words have to stand on their own.

Letters to the Editor signal where the public temperature is sitting. They show which language is beginning to stick and where the fault lines are forming.

Advocacy through media is often confused with volume. Say it everywhere. Say it repeatedly. That confuses exposure with influence.

What counts is placement, timing, and less is more wisdom.

Say less. Place it better.

A blog gives room to think. Facebook meets people where they already are. A letter to a national paper places an argument inside an institution that shapes public conversation.

You don’t need to say everything. You need to say one thing well, in the right place, and leave it there

That’s strategy.

Old media still matters. It forces clarity, limits excess, and leaves a public record that can’t be edited away.

For anyone thinking about advocacy, the question isn’t where can I speak, but where does this argument belong.

And sometimes, you do not need a megaphone at all. Sometimes a cartoonist who helps shape the national conversation sees the point you are making and signals it for you.

 

Identifying and action on the root cause is how change actually happens

This post is inspired by Melinda Lawton.

While reading about Jackson Katz, I recognised the same discipline she brings to every conversation, start at root cause and address it first.

Jackson Katz campaigns to prevent violence against women by challenging male culture, silence, and the systems that excuse abuse.

Like Melinda, Katz works from this key discipline. He starts at root cause. He asks why violence is learned, normalised, and excused, rather than turning the spotlight onto the behaviour of women who are harmed.

This single discipline changes the conversation. Responsibility moves to culture, peers, institutions, and the systems that allow violence to become ordinary. It forces the question away from personal vigilance and towards cause.

This way of thinking is not limited to domestic violence. You can see it playing out, or being avoided, in other issues sitting close to the surface right now.

Take the Bondi massacre.

The media response followed a familiar cycle. Click bait headlines set the frame. It shifted rapidly, from Islamophobia, to gun control, to demands for a Royal Commission. Attention moved faster than understanding.

Public grief was converted into competing explanations and visible demands for action, without staying with the harder question of what would actually reduce risk.

Into that noise stepped NSW Premier Chris Minns, treating the moment as an opportunity to move against large peaceful protests. He used claims about social division and policing pressure to restrict large pro-Palestinian protests, despite no evidence linking those protests to the attack.

This is the same short-term logic that makes Royal Commissions feel irresistible. They look decisive. They feel serious. They create motion. They rarely deal with root cause. Outrage is absorbed. Responsibility is delayed. Governments appear active while avoiding targeted action.

The pattern is consistent. After shock, we reach for spectacle. Media amplifies it. Politics exploits it. Prevention slips out of frame.

Climate Action sits in the same pattern, though it is often approached sideways. The conversation is kept at the level of personal behaviour, resilience, and adaptation. That framing feels practical, even responsible, but it avoids harder questions about policy delay, economic incentives, and systems that reward risk while spreading the cost. Starting at root cause shifts the conversation out of individual adjustment and into collective responsibility.

Across every issue there is a unifying pattern

  • Surface framing individualises blame

  • Root cause framing interrogates systems

  • Silence is rewarded where power is concentrated

  • Speaking up carries social cost unless culture shifts

  • Language determines where action is allowed to land

The same question keeps surfacing. Where do we begin.

This is where Melinda Lawton stands apart.

When she meets with people who can drive change, she starts at root cause and keeps the conversation there. The focus is on what produced the problem, what incentives are operating, and what systems allowed it to take hold. From there, the work turns to what needs to change and how to do it.

This is Melinda’s key discipline.

It is strategic. It resists distraction. It keeps responsibility where it belongs and pushes the conversation toward action rather than explanation.

Pivotally this is project management 101 which is Melinda Lawton’s professional background.

Start with diagnosis. Identify root cause. Map incentives and systems. Then decide what needs to change and who owns it. These are core principles taught in leadership courses, management training, and governance frameworks everywhere else.

What is striking is how often this discipline is missing in local government. What should be standard practice is treated as optional. Conversations drift to response, optics, and containment instead of staying anchored in cause and decision. That gap is not about capacity. It is about whether discipline is applied.

And that is why Melinda’s approach stands out. Not because it is novel, but because it should be normal.

If you open this link  you’ll find a PDF with more examples that apply this same discipline across other current issues.

A shout out to Melinda Lawton for modelling an approach that moves from diagnosis to decision. Imagine if change conversations started here every time.

 

The nobility is in the fight even when the fight does not look noble

We hear the phrase the nobility is in the fight often enough for it to sound like a consolation prize. Something offered when things stall, drag on, or fail to resolve cleanly. Inside real systems, it can feel thin.

Once you strip away the romance, “it’s the journey” looks suspiciously like a long way of saying stay engaged, even when fixing it outright would be faster, tidier, and deeply satisfying. It asks fixers to resist the urge to wrap things up and instead keep showing up. That may sound like a downgrade, but inside real systems, persistence is often the only lever that moves anything at all.

In local government, and in most public institutions, change rarely arrives with a ribbon cutting. Wins are partial. Progress is uneven. What shifts first are the conditions around the issue. The quality of the record. The clarity of the questions. The awareness that someone is paying attention.

It leaves me with a harder question. Am I too old to change, and can I take this on as practice rather than observation.

The work shows up in asking the same question again, calmly, after it has been deflected.
It shows up in documenting what happens instead of performing outrage.
It shows up in staying present without demanding immediate validation.

There is also nobility in restraint. In learning how to challenge without being consumed by the fight itself. In refusing shortcuts that promise speed at the cost of clarity. In knowing when to press and when to pause, guided by judgement and a clear sense of what matters.

This is where the bystander effect begins to weaken.

When one person stands, the moral landscape shifts. Others watching see that engagement is possible. They may hesitate. They may wait. But silence changes shape. The sense that nothing can be done no longer holds.

This is often when pushback becomes louder. Sometimes it arrives quietly through process. Sometimes it comes publicly and with force. The volume itself is information. Loud responses usually mean the challenge has landed.

The nobility, then, is not in winning. It is in staying present long enough to make avoidance harder. In leaving a trail others can follow. In making it clear that someone noticed, someone cared, someone stood.

Institutions forget. Records remember. And people watching learn what is possible.

 

What we choose to record shapes what future generations believe

This image I shared on Facebook talks about blame, the habit of pointing elsewhere so we do not have to look too closely at ourselves. It struck me because at the moment I am immersed in recording local history. Old farms, family stories, council decisions, moments that felt ordinary at the time but now explain how a place became what it is.

History has a quiet power. What is written down gets repeated. What is repeated hardens into truth. What is left out quietly disappears.

Working through local archives has reminded me how selective memory can be. The stories that survive are often those that suited someone at the time, those that deflected responsibility, those that made complex decisions look simple and inevitable. Over generations, those shortcuts become culture.

We are seeing that play out again now.

As my Facebook post says I am uncomfortable with how responsibility keeps being pushed onto Anthony Albanese, or onto Australians more broadly, particularly Australian Jews, as if proximity equals culpability. That misdirects the conversation and lets those making the decisions step out of frame.

If accountability matters, it has to sit with alleged war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, who repeatedly claim to act in the name of all Jews. Many Jewish people around the world have said clearly that this is not true. Ignoring that distinction does real harm.

What also sits beneath this moment is something older and far more corrosive. Millions of prejudiced ideas about Jewish people were written down, taught, repeated, normalised. Those ideas travelled across borders and centuries. They did not arrive by accident. They were documented, handed down, and rarely challenged.

We cannot change millions of people’s prejudices overnight. But we can change how we tell the story now.

We can challenge media narratives that look for someone to blame and promise quick fixes. We can refuse lazy conflations that confuse governments with people, criticism with hatred, complexity with disloyalty. We can insist on context, on history, on evidence.

Most importantly, we can defend the public’s right to make informed choices. That requires more than outrage. It requires resisting the urge to absolve ourselves of responsibility by pointing elsewhere.

As someone recording local history, I am learning this: the stories we choose to document today will shape what feels possible tomorrow. Getting that right matters, not only for our towns, but for the world we hand on.

#AccountabilityMatters #WhoWeBlame #HistoryAndMemory #WhyDocumentationMatters #ChallengePrejudice #MediaResponsibility #Antisemitism #CollectiveBlame #InformedChoices #PublicJudgement #PowerAndResponsibility #TellingTheStoryDifferently

When the paperwork ends and community democracy really begins

If you’ve ever read a council document and thought, that doesn’t quite say what it’s pretending to say, you’re not imagining things.

This is what my experience working with local government has taught me, first as a civics reporter and now as a citizen journalist. My aim is to help people feel confident engaging, asking questions, and standing up for the places they care about.

What’s unfolding in Kiama right now isn’t unique. Communities everywhere face the same challenge: decisions shaped by process and reassuring language, while the practical implications sit just out of view. What matters is how communities respond. This moment offers a clear example of community democracy in action, residents staying engaged after submissions close, asking informed questions, and drawing on institutional knowledge that often sits outside formal reports.

As the conversation around the Shoalhaven Street site continues, attention is turning to the fundamentals.  The basics.

First, process is not the same as truth. When councils say something has been reviewed or assessed, it usually means procedures have been followed. It does not mean all relevant questions were asked, all consequences examined, or all voices heard. A process can be tidy and still leave critical gaps.

Second, reassurance is not the same as accountability. Statements like “it’s only a rezoning” or “these issues will be dealt with later” sound calming, but they rarely explain what decisions are already locked in, what assumptions are being made, or how much room for change actually remains.

Third, councils work hard to control the narrative. Key decisions are often framed as minor or procedural, wrapped in technical language, or buried in attachments released late in the process. This is sometimes described as a shell game because attention is constantly shifted. The details are present, but they don’t sit still. By the time the implications are clear, momentum has already built. Once you recognise this pattern, you start reading past the headlines and paying closer attention to what’s being moved, when, and why.

This is where community advocacy matters. Formal processes move behind closed doors. Advocacy stays visible. It keeps questions alive, brings expertise to the table, and applies pressure at the point when it still matters.

In Kiama, that work is now focusing on a very simple question:

Where does the water from this site go?

Beneath the Shoalhaven Street site sits existing drainage infrastructure and an underlying watercourse. Water moves through this area during heavy rainfall via a system shaped over decades, not just by recent plans. Understanding how that system works, how it has been modified over time, and how it behaves under pressure is central to understanding what the site can realistically support.

Residents are now asking for clarity:

  • how water currently moves through and beneath the site

  • how engineered drainage interacts with natural water pathways

  • and how those systems would function if the site is excavated and built over

These are practical questions grounded in how infrastructure actually works. These questions simply ask for clarity before major planning controls are locked in.

Our investigation continues. What’s happening here shows how effective community democracy works when people stay engaged beyond the submission period, share expertise, and ask the questions that paperwork alone doesn’t answer. For background on how reassurance and process can obscure meaning, see When council reassurance isn’t the same as explanation:

Once you understand how these systems operate, you stop being a bystander to your own future. And that changes everything.

#CommunityDemocracy #LocalGovernment #PlanningTransparency #CivicEngagement #CitizenJournalism #InfrastructureMatters #FloodRisk #PublicInterest #CommunityVoice #Governance

 

Why integrity matters in Kiama, and who pays when it doesn’t

 

In this guest blog post former Kiama councillor Karen Renkema Lang reflects on integrity, accountability and the cost borne by communities. ……

Every now and then, life offers a flicker of hope. My evening with the Centre for Public Integrity in Melbourne last week was one of those moments. Because it told the truth about what happens when integrity fails, and why that truth matters locally.

The speakers were impressive, Harriet McCallum from Mannifera, Dr John Daley from the Grattan Institute, and Dr Catherine Williams from the Centre. The calm, unvarnished way they spoke about integrity made clear who carries the cost when it fails. Sitting there, I kept thinking of Kiama, and of how familiar that sounded.

For several years now, this community has lived with the consequences of financial stress, closed-door decision-making and prolonged state oversight. These are often described as governance issues, but locally they are experienced as something else entirely. Exhaustion. Division. A loss of trust.

Over a short period, Kiama Council sold community assets worth well over $100 million. Some of those sales may have been necessary to stabilise the balance sheet. All of them were permanent.

At the same time, legal costs climbed into the millions. Executive pay rose by more than $75,000, increasing from around $350,000 in 2021–22 to an estimated $428,000 by 2024–25.  Yet the scope of Council’s operational responsibilities narrowed significantly following the exit from aged care and a substantial reduction in staffing.

For residents watching from the outside, these facts did not sit separately. They formed a picture.

That picture raises reasonable questions. About priorities. About accountability. About why the Council recorded a deficit of more than $7 million in the most recent financial year, even after asset sales and years of intervention.

The Centre for Public Integrity talks often about what happens when transparency weakens. Problems build quietly. Early warnings lose urgency. By the time action becomes unavoidable, the financial and social costs are far higher than they needed to be.

That pattern resonates here. People who raised concerns found themselves labelled difficult. Others learned quickly that silence carried less risk. Over time, scrutiny narrowed, decisions hardened, and trust eroded.

The Centre also speaks plainly about whistleblowers.

Integrity systems fail when speaking up relies on personal courage alone. Without real protections, problems remain visible but untouched, because acknowledging them carries a price.

Integrity is about restoring confidence that decisions are made openly, that power is exercised fairly, and that people acting in the public interest are supported rather than sidelined.

That is why integrity matters in Kiama. Because when it is strong, communities hold together. And when it is weak, the cost is always paid locally.

Suggested additional reading – Be Careful What You Wish For by Cat Holloway 

#IntegrityAndAccountability #TransparencyInGovernment #LocalGovernmentNSW #CouncilGovernance #PublicScrutiny #WhistleblowerProtection #CivicIntegrity #AustralianDemocracy

 

Karen Renkema Lang is a former Kiama councillor, public policy practitioner and community advocate. Motivated by the world future generations will inherit, she has worked across local and federal government, community organisations and integrity initiatives, with a consistent focus on transparency, accountability and speaking up in the public interest.

When “It’s Only a Rezoning” Doesn’t Match the Evidence

Source 

“The Kiama community is being treated like bystanders to their own future.”

Over the past three weeks, a small group of Kiama residents ( Kiama Depot Action Group) has achieved something remarkable. With almost no warning, a vast amount of technical documentation, and a submission window that barely lasted twenty days, they mobilised themselves and their neighbours. They read the fine print. They supported elderly residents who couldn’t navigate online documents. They shared expertise, compared notes, and helped hundreds of people lodge informed submissions.

This is what community looks like when people care deeply about their town.

And they did it under conditions that would have defeated most communities in New South Wales.

But here’s what many people don’t realise:

Submissions are not the end.

Submissions are the beginning.

Submissions happen quietly, behind closed doors.

Advocacy happens in full public view and this is where community influence is strongest.

Over the past few days, I’ve spoken with people in my networks, and they’ve spoken with theirs. What’s become obvious is the extraordinary depth of expertise sitting within Kiama. Engineers. Council planners. Senior local government team members. Infrastructure specialists. Flood experts. Communications professionals. People who understand how to challenge flawed processes and how to defend a community’s interests in a system that often feels impenetrable.

Kiama is overflowing with expertise.

And that is why the work begins now.

The window has opened.

The assessment process continues well into 2026. This is the phase where councillors feel public pressure, where MPs take notice, where the Minister monitors community sentiment, and where expert advice from residents can fundamentally shape the outcome.

The idea that “the window has closed” is simply incorrect.
The window has opened.

Why “It’s Only a Rezoning” Doesn’t Add Up

Residents concerned about the Shoalhaven Street proposal keep hearing the same calming line: “Don’t worry, it’s only a rezoning.”

As if rezoning is harmless.
As if nothing meaningful begins until a DA lands on someone’s desk.
As if the community has been “premature” in paying attention.

But anyone who has lived through a Kiama planning process knows better.

It’s worth remembering how planning issues in our area have been handled before. A recent example was the attempt to reclassify the Gerringong Surf Lifesaving Club land from Community to Operational land. 

It shows how major planning changes can be introduced without clear community communication, and how strongly residents react when transparency is lacking.

Now, when the outcome is likely to be six-to eight-storey towers opposite the Bowling Club, rezoning is being recast as something procedural, something harmless, something to ignore.

Rezoning becomes “just rezoning” only when it suits the narrative.

What the Government’s Own Documents Reveal

The Explanation of Intended Effect (EIE) shows this proposal is not a neutral rezoning. It contains the elements of a fully formed redevelopment.

1. Detailed reference designs already exist

The EIE includes:
• an Urban Design Report
• a Flood Impact and Risk Assessment
• a Traffic and Transport Assessment
• an Economic Impact Assessment

No one commissions this level of study for a hypothetical.

2. A full 450-unit built form has been modelled

The reference scheme demonstrates exactly how the dwellings fit on the site.
The State describes this as the: “optimum built form”

When a government calls a design optimum, they are not playing theoretical games.

3. The rezoning sets the height – 22m and 30m

The proposal lifts the current 11-metre limit to:

  • 22 metres (six storeys)

  • 30 metres (eight storeys)

These heights appear directly in the draft LEP maps.
This is not speculative.

4. Floor Space Ratio increases from 0.9:1 to 2.1:1

This level of density aligns only with mid-rise buildings, not townhouses.

5. The DA stage will not negotiate scale

Once zoning, height and FSR are set, the DA stage fine-tunes the façade, not the form.

This is why calling this “only a rezoning” doesn’t pass the straight-face test.

What Council’s Own Papers Now Confirm

Council’s agenda for 16 December shows they are treating the rezoning as a given.

Council acknowledges eight storeys

From the CEO’s comments:

“While eight storeys is not currently found elsewhere in the LGA, it is generally consistent with the State’s Low- & Mid-Rise reforms.”

This is a significant admission.
If an ordinary resident built a fence 20cm too high, Council would not consider it “generally consistent”.

Council’s submission reinforces the scale

Council confirms the rezoning will:
• raise height from 11m to 22–30m
• raise FSR to 2.1:1
• enable approximately 450 dwellings

These are the controls that shape the outcome.
Not later.
Now.

A councillor’s Notice of Motion assumes rezoning approval

Cr Draisma has moved a motion about community involvement in the future DA.
The DA – not the rezoning.

The motion assumes R3 is already happening.
This is notable given her public support for the proposal and her employment in the offices of the Minister.

The CEO then states the motion is unnecessary, because the DA will be consulted on anyway.

This exchange only makes sense if both parties believe the rezoning is proceeding.

Residents deserve transparency, not minimisation

The Kiama community is full of informed, thoughtful people.
People who understand the planning system.
People who recognise when explanations don’t match the documentation.

The request being made of residents, to treat this as benign, does not reflect what the State has published or what Council has acknowledged.

And because this proposal sits in a flood-affected valley, overlooking a constrained road network, downstream of homes that have already flooded, these decisions carry real consequences.

Communities have power.
And this is where that power becomes visible.

ADDENDUM: Evidence Summary

Use the attachments below (also listed above) to explore the documents referenced in this post. These extracts show exactly how the proposal is framed and why the “only a rezoning” narrative cannot be sustained.

#Kiama #KiamaCommunity #ShoalhavenStreet #KiamaRezoning #PlanningTransparency #CommunityVoice #PublicInterest #NSWPlanning #LocalGovernmentAccountability #KiamaFuture #HaveYourSay #ProtectOurTown #UrbanPlanningNSW #CommunityMatters #AdvocacyInAction