SynergyScape Solutions Archives - Clover Hill Diaries

We Keep Arguing About Grace Tame and Ignore the Real Question

I have watched the commentary around Grace Tame spiral into familiar territory. Some defend her. Some attack her. Some wait for any misstep. The arguments become about slogans, tone, delivery.

Meanwhile, the original political decision sits largely untouched.

Reading through the comments on a right-leaning news site, I came across a thoughtful defence of her right to speak. It reminded me that human rights advocacy does not vanish because someone disagrees with the politics of the moment. Courage is not conditional.

I would have preferred that a particular slogan not be used. It distracted from the substance. Yet focusing only on the slogan misses the larger question.

What was the judgement behind inviting the Israeli president at this time?

Leadership is not only about protocol. It is about reading the room. It is about understanding how divided the public mood already is. It is about recognising when symbolism inflames rather than steadies.

We can debate Grace Tame’s language for days. That is easy. The harder and more necessary question concerns political judgement at the top.

If we are serious about social cohesion, that is where attention belongs.

This is about asbestos. It is also about memory, power, and who gets protected.

Toxic City: Asbestos, Amnesia, and the Collapse of Care lays out a story many in Shoalhaven already recognise. Swift action when risk sits inside council walls. Silence when that same risk sits in a small village, under roads, near creeks, beside homes.

This is collaborative community advocacy at its best, from Spark Shoalhaven in Politics. It opens with a preface by Cat Holloway and centres the long, sustained work of Peter Allison. His work is seminal. It shows what happens when ordinary people keep records, keep asking questions, and keep going long after institutions move on.

This is about asbestos. It is also about memory, power, and who gets protected.

How many versions of this reckoning do we need before we all stand up, in some way, no matter how small.

First they came for a small place.
Then they came for people without power.
Then they came for something they should never have ignored.

If you live in Shoalhaven, read it.
If you care about how councils work, read it.
If you wonder how systems drift away from accountability, read it.

And if you are part of a group somewhere else, watching something similar unfold, this is an invitation. We are learning that shared stories, shared evidence, and shared pressure travel further together.

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

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

The Kath and Kim meme that turned into a sharp little lesson in public disagreements.

Image Source Facebook

I shared this Kath & Kim meme on Facebook as a reminder. It turned into a sharp little lesson in public disagreements.

It’s doing what satire does best. Pointing at a pattern and trusting people to recognise it. Old ideas come back. The language changes. The instincts don’t.

One response I received took it as a literal claim, as if I were saying these moments in history are the same thing. That reaction lingered longer than the disagreement itself.

Public disagreements often split at a deeper point than the issue being argued.

It made me think about how differently people respond when something presses on identity.

Some people can sit with that pressure. They adjust their view. They accept that history leaves fingerprints on the present. Connections don’t feel dangerous to them.

Others move quickly to shut it down. The first move is separation. These things have nothing to do with each other. End of discussion.

That explanation doesn’t fit what I’m seeing. What feels more relevant is how comfortable people are with revising a view.

Ideas don’t disappear. They travel through history, change names, and slowly get normalised.

If you’re able to admit error, patterns become visible. You expect ideas to repeat, to reappear with better branding, to sound more reasonable the second time around.

People who can revise a view tend to treat history as something you learn from.

If that admission feels too costly, history stays boxed up. Each event stands alone. Calling things “unrelated” keeps the present uncomplicated.

What this exchange clarified for me was that we weren’t arguing about the meme. We were talking past each other. One response was about continuity. The other was about containment.

The difference shows up clearly in conversations like this.

That realisation took the edge off.

It reminded me that people arrive at conversations with different limits, different stakes, and different reasons for holding the line where they do.

How do societies notice patterns early if they refuse to look at where ideas come from?

Often the most telling part is not what someone objects to, but what they refuse to connect.

You Don’t Have to Be Angry to Be Brave

This blog is a follow up to an earlier blog “When Advocacy Turns Dangerous: The Moment You Can’t Stay Silent”

Are you like me, someone who wants to speak up when you see or hear something unjust, but sometimes hesitates because you don’t want to make things worse, or make someone feel small?

That hesitation comes from care. Most of us don’t want to hurt people; we want to make things better. But we were never taught how. We were taught to keep the peace, not to have hard conversations with grace.

I recently watched Sarah Crawford-Bohl’s TED Talk How to Speak Up — Even When You Don’t Want To.

She shows that courage and kindness can live in the same sentence. You can hold your ground without pushing someone else off theirs.

The Four Phrases That Can Change Any Difficult Conversation

It doesn’t take a big speech. Sometimes it’s the smallest phrases that shift the whole tone of a conversation:

Instead of “With respect…”, try “I see it differently.”
Instead of “That’s wrong.”, try “Can we look at that another way?”
Instead of “You can’t say that.”, try “That might land differently for some people.”
Instead of silence, try “I’m not sure that sits right with me.”

These simple swaps are powerful. They keep people in the conversation rather than shutting it down.

Why Teaching Kids How to Speak Up Might Be the Most Important Lesson of All

Even after years of negotiation training, I still catch myself slipping into an overly forceful tone when something matters to me. It’s hard to unlearn. But that’s exactly why this work matters, because if we can teach young people how to use their voices with strength and empathy, maybe they won’t have to spend years unlearning the habits we did.

It’s the same truth behind that short film Justice, the moment when a teacher unfairly dismisses a student and everyone stays silent

and the playful How to Start a Movement clip, where the brave first follower turns one person’s awkward dance into a movement.

In both, the real change begins when someone chooses courage over comfort.

Speaking up doesn’t have to make anyone feel small. Done with care, it can make everyone in the room a little braver.

#SpeakUpKindly #EverydayActivism #CivicCourage #RespectfulCommunication #LeadershipStartsHere #EmpathyInAction #TeachThemYoung #ChangeTheConversation #FirstFollower #KindnessIsStrength

When Rupert Gets Nervous. We See Last-Minute Smears in Kiama

If you have followed politics for a while, you know how it works. In the final days before an election, when most voters have made up their minds and time is too short to explain the full story, opponents throw mud. It doesn’t have to be accurate. It just has to plant doubt.

That is exactly what has happened in Kiama this week.

Headlines in the Daily Telegraph , a Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid well known for sensationalism, have suggested that Kate Dezarnaulds praised disgraced former MP Gareth Ward, even as he begins serving his sentence. What those headlines left out was the context and the truth.

What Kate actually said

Kate has always been clear about her views on Gareth Ward. Back in 2023, when he was re-elected while facing serious charges, she said she was ashamed Kiama had returned him to parliament. She was threatened with legal action over that comment, but she stood by it.

More recently, in conversation with voters and journalists, she acknowledged something many in Kiama have said themselves: that Ward had a reputation for being responsive and available when people contacted his office. In Kate’s own words, “both things can be true at the same time” that someone can be diligent in parts of their professional role while also losing all trust because of their personal conduct and criminal conviction.

That is not praise, it is honesty. It reflects what people in Kiama have told her as she has knocked on doors and held conversations across the community. Pretending otherwise is misleading.

Why the story is surfacing now

The timing says everything. This controversy has been dredged up in the final days before the by-election because Kate’s conservative opponents are worried. They know her campaign has momentum, and that voters are tired of party politics and are open to electing a strong independent voice.

When political operatives are nervous, they fall back on the oldest tactic in the book: take comments out of context, make them sound worse than they are, and amplify them through friendly media outlets. The Daily Telegraph is owned by Rupert Murdoch and he is no stranger to running last-minute attack stories when independents or community-backed candidates are gaining ground.

What matters most

The real story here is not about Gareth Ward. It is about Kiama’s future.

Kate Dezarnaulds has:

spoken up with courage when others stayed silent, even when she was threatened legally for criticising Ward’s re-election,
spent months listening to locals about what matters most to them,
and built strong connections with sitting independents in parliament, who are already delivering results for their communities.

This by-election is not about defending the past. It is about who we trust to represent Kiama now and into the future.

A distraction, nothing more

When you see a headline like this in the final hours of a campaign, remember: it is a tactic. It is designed to distract from the real issues, to muddy the waters, and to make voters second-guess themselves.

The truth is simple. Kate Dezarnaulds has been consistent: she was ashamed of Kiama’s re-election of Ward, she acknowledges the reality of what locals have said about his work ethic, and she has always been clear that his actions have disqualified him from trust and public service.

What her opponents are really afraid of is not her words about the past. It is her commitment to the future.

#KiamaVotes #MurdochMedia #Independents #CommunityFirst #MediaPower #DoingPoliticsDifferently #PeopleBeforePolitics

Independents put housing at the heart of the conversation in Kiama

On 4 September the Grand Hotel in Kiama was packed for an Independent Forum hosted by Kate Dezarnaulds, the independent candidate contesting the Kiama by-election on 13 September. To frame the discussion, Kate invited two sitting MPs, Alex Greenwich, Independent Member for Sydney, and Judy Hannan, Independent Member for Wollondilly, along with former South Coast MP John Hatton AO. Together, they brought the past, present and future of independence in NSW politics to the table. The night was about showing how independents can shape politics differently, closer to community and outside the party machine.

“It’s not a housing crisis, it’s an affordability crisis.”

That line cut straight through the noise. It was not a talking point, it was lived reality, and it landed in a room full of people who know exactly how deep the problem runs on the South Coast.

Speaker after speaker circled back to the same truth: the problem is not simply the number of houses, it is whether people can afford to live in them.

Alex Greenwich was blunt.

Short term rentals are swallowing up affordable stock. Nurses, teachers, hospitality staff, even a homelessness caseworker he had met, are being forced out of the towns they serve because they cannot find anywhere to rent. His solution was inclusionary zoning, where every new development must deliver social and community housing in perpetuity, not just fifteen year “affordable housing” deals that quietly expire.

Judy Hannan brought it home with local grit. In parts of her electorate, sewer is still being trucked out of new estates every day. Families have moved into houses without buses, schools or water infrastructure in place. Her message was clear: housing without services is not community.

It is government chasing stamp duty dollars while locals are left to live on construction sites.

Kate Dezarnaulds named what many in the room felt but rarely hear said aloud:

“The market will not deliver social housing because there is no profit in it.”

The major parties, she argued, have lost the courage to invest in vulnerable people, one side clinging to market ideology, the other afraid of looking anti business. That has left a vacuum where independents can speak the truth plainly. We need government backed social housing again, at scale.

And the audience pressed the panel further. Kiama local Mark Bryant asked why young families are still hit with crippling stamp duty, locked out of ownership once land prices pass $575,000. His question cracked open a bigger conversation about how NSW funds itself. Alex called out the state’s addiction to stamp duty and pointed to alternatives such as Victoria’s levy on short term rentals, higher mining royalties, and fixing poker machine loopholes. Judy and Kate agreed that housing reform cannot happen without revenue reform.

By the end of the night, the story was clear. Housing is about more than bricks and mortar. It is about courage to fund social housing, integrity to tie development to infrastructure, and clarity to stop calling unaffordable rentals “affordable housing.”

The independents did not promise easy answers. What they offered was honesty.

We can build houses forever, but unless we change how we fund, plan and protect them, our kids still will not have anywhere to live.

Serena Copley has Strong Roots in the Community, and a Focus on Small Business and Youth

Serena Copley, the Liberal candidate for the Kiama by-election, speaks of herself as someone shaped by deep community roots and a lifetime of civic involvement. She has lived in the Shoalhaven since 1989, raised her family there, and now counts four generations living in postcode 2541. Her children were educated locally and her grandson was born in the region.

“My roots run deep and my dedication to this community is enduring,” she told me.

For the past 14 years Serena has worked as a trainer and assessor in the vocational education sector. It is work she describes as “extraordinarily rewarding,” training unemployed young people and helping them build life skills and confidence, while also working with local businesses through traineeship programs. She sees this as a natural extension into politics:

“It’s about working with people and helping people solve their problems and making our community stronger.”

Youth issues are central to her story. Serena speaks with conviction about the young people she has trained who have discovered confidence and purpose.

“It’s about reminding them that they are valuable and have something to contribute,” she said. “When you see someone realise their own worth, it’s inspiring. They are our future.”

On small business, Serena is unequivocal: “It’s the engine room of our economy.” She believes that when small business thrives, whole communities thrive too. “Small business people are the ones who sponsor the footy jerseys, support the local charities, and keep our towns vibrant. A strong small business sector means strong, connected communities.”

“Small business is the engine room of our economy. When it thrives, communities thrive too.”

Growth, she acknowledges, is part of every community’s story, and she believes Kiama can embrace it in a way that strengthens what is unique about the South Coast.

“How we grow is a choice,” she said. “We can choose growth that is responsible, sustainable, and led by community values. We can choose development that comes with the right infrastructure, schools, parks, and services, so new families are well supported, and our environment is respected.”

On political culture, Serena stresses respect.

“I can disagree forcefully and strongly, but not disrespectfully.” She believes voters are ready for politics that models collaboration, honesty, and listening. “What you’ll get is what you see. There’ll be times my parliament colleagues may not agree with me, but I’ll always do what I think is best for the community.”

Her years in local government have also shaped her views on accountability. As a Shoalhaven councillor, she pushed for council to streamline its operations before considering rate rises. For her, local government matters because its decisions are felt immediately and directly.

“When local government works well, the whole community benefits. It should be efficient, effective, and focused on people.”

In the end, she frames her candidacy as both personal and principled.

“This is not just a flash in the pan thing for me. This is a deep and abiding love of my community,” she said. “I will be the member for everybody whether you voted for me or not, because you are part of the community I care deeply about.”

#KiamaByElection2025 #SerenaCopley #KiamaVotes #CommunityFirst #SmallBusinessStrength #YouthOpportunity #ResponsibleGrowth #NSWPolitics

From State Government Talking Points to Cash-Flow Pressures: A Tale of Two Conversations

“Small business is the engine of our regional economy. If we fuel it properly, confidence and community will follow.”

Kiama By-Election Independent candidate Kate Dezarnaulds has written an op-ed about Monday’s Business Illawarra forum at Kiama Pavilion. She describes a striking contrast.

On one side, the Premier and Treasurer with their polished talking points about hospitals, schools, and long-term reforms.
On the other, small business owners raising the real and immediate pressures they are facing: spiralling insurance, high energy bills, housing shortages, unreliable trains, disappearing support programs.

Kate argues that this is exactly the gap we need to close, between “policy horizons” and the weekly cash-flow reality of the people who keep our communities running. She points to six practical shifts that could make a difference now: fixing insurance settings, lowering energy bills for business, building housing near jobs, reliable trains, tailored business support, and unlocking employment land.

Her message is simple. Small business is the engine of our regional economy. If we fuel it properly, confidence and community will follow.

#KiamaByElection2025 #SmallBusinessVoices #KiamaCommunity #BeyondTalkingPoints #NSWPolitics #LocalEconomy #BusinessReality #Kate Dezarnaulds

The Truth About Pork-Barrelling and Why It Fails the Pub Test.

Pork-barrelling isn’t new money, it’s political theatre and Kiama deserves more than staged announcements.

Major projects like schools, hospitals, transport, and sporting facilities are not launched randomly. They are pre-planned and locked into the NSW State Budget, which operates on a four-year cycle. Each year, an Appropriation Bill is passed in Parliament to authorise spending for the upcoming financial year, while forward estimates forecast funding for the next three years.

This means even if a party wins a by-election, they cannot rewrite those allocations mid-cycle, because budgets are legally set and must follow the budget process, except in urgent, unforeseen scenarios.

What changes is the timing of announcements, not the funding itself. Politicians often delay revealing already-budgeted projects until campaign season, especially in marginal seats. That creates the illusion of surprise investment when, in reality, it is not new money, just political theatre.

That is why this by-election needs more than Band-Aids. We cannot keep mistaking staged announcements for new investment, or allowing political theatre to distract from the deeper, structural issues that remain unaddressed.

#KiamaByElection2025 #KiamaVotes #BeyondPorkBarrelling #PoliticalTheatre #PolicyNotPromises #BigPictureThinking #CommunityFirst #NSWPolitics