Tag: Kiama Council

When democracy means more than Council making the decisions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Governments created the trust crisis feeding far right politics

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

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

That is democracy reduced to voting day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Elected people created this trust crisis.

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

Remember the “pinkie” campaign could it fix our e bike problem

Remember this campaign? Will it fix our e-bike problem?

Watch it again and then ask yourself a serious policy question: is this the answer to Kiama’s e-bike problem?

The Pinkie campaign understood something about teenage boys that every threat misses. The whole performance is for an audience,They think they are bulletproof. Fines bounce off them. Warnings bounce off them. The road toll belongs to other people. Could laughter from the girls on the corner be the answer

Kiama has tried the enforcement route before. I mean well before. In the 1880s this town had a big hoon problem. Mobs of forty and fifty boys patrolled the streets from ten o’clock. They damaged everything in sight. Joseph Weston lobbied hard for his solution, “bring back the whip”

Larrikinism, he thundered, was “a social and moral infection which should be stamped out like small-pox”

In November 1883 he got his wish. “LARRIKINS BEWARE! The ‘Cat’ has arrived.” Triangles, a cat-o’-nine-tails and two taws came down from Sydney on Saturday’s steamer, and the magistrate a Mr Connell announced he would happily show the appliance to anyone desirous of seeing it at the court-house. Kiama invented the pop-up exhibition a century early.

In March 1884 the cat made its courtroom debut, produced before three youthful offenders to rattle them. The delinquents smiled. The Bench promised them a taste of it next time. By the close of 1885 the cat was still waiting for its first customer, the most feared instrument in the British penal system reduced to a conversation piece with viewing hours.

This week Council opened a portal where residents can report e-bike incidents. Same recipe, new appliance. Acquire the instrument with fanfare, then wait for the teenagers to reform themselves. The boys on Collins Street will smile at the portal exactly the way the larrikins smiled at the cat, assuming word of it ever reaches them.

Which brings me back to the pinkie. It cost less than a steamer and it frightened more teenagers than the cat ever did. So here is my alternative submission to Council: skip the portal, commission the ad. Or save the money entirely. Collins Street, Saturday night, all of us on the footpath, little fingers raised.

Watch the add again. What do you think?

Here comes Pollyanna

I’ve just had a big birthday. The kind with a zero in it. You move into a new decade whether you’re ready or not.

Walking into the restaurant, half a dozen people I wasn’t dining with wished me happy birthday. That’s a small town for you. I’m noisy in this community. I have opinions, I used to write for the paper, and everybody knows what I think. Every time we have an election, people are convinced I’m standing for council. Apparently I’m just what council needs.

This post challenges that idea. Our community doesn’t need me. One person can’t deliver what this community deserves, and neither can nine. It needs an engaged community working together, not keyboard warriors: informed people with the skills to make sure the bureaucrats are working for us.

Around my own table were Greens, Labor supporters, independents and friends who had stood for council themselves. Between us we had campaigned, letterboxed, handed out how-to-vote cards and argued for change across more elections than any of us cared to count. If anyone in this district believed in democracy, it was us.

For the record, I’ve never voted for a party in my life. I vote for the person. Over the years that has meant I have voted Liberal, National, Labor, Greens and independent.

The talk turned to council. A councillor had resigned, and the by-election to replace him will cost ratepayers about $200,000. Our council is broke. That’s $200,000 it doesn’t have. The question went around the table: what could one councillor achieve when the bureaucrats seem to have the rest under their thumb?

This is how bad it is. I know our councillors. That’s what my year at the paper gave me. They spend a lot of time on social media trying to work out what the community cares about. So they’re hearing the loud voices, and like most communities, we have plenty of loud voices who all want different things.

I said I’d love to see us try what a district in north-east Victoria did. Build the community first. Find out what people want. Learn to solve problems together, and worry about who to elect after that.

One of my oldest friends smiled and said, “Here comes Pollyanna.”

I know her well enough to understand what she meant by that. Her focus was looking after her friend. She knows what twenty years of heart and soul in agriculture, encouraging people to believe we’re all in this together and the win-win is there if we go after it, had cost my mental health. I had witnessed failure first hand, and neither of us wanted a repeat. That’s how much my friends care. So I listen. I came home and had a big think about whether she was right.

This post is the big think. It ends in an electorate nobody at my dinner mentioned.

In December 2012, a small group from north-east Victoria got eleven minutes with their federal member, Sophie Mirabella. The meeting ended when she told them, “The people of Indi aren’t interested in politics.”

Her district knew her by then. She had boycotted the Apology to the Stolen Generations. She had stood beside Tony Abbott in front of the “Ditch the Witch” signs. Neither time did she ask her community what they thought. They had a member who didn’t speak for them.

They went home and proved her wrong.

The push had started with two young people who grew up in the district and moved to Melbourne for work, because they believed there was nothing at home for them. They decided to do something about it. The generation who had stayed backed them: young people with the idea, older people with the networks and the skills. Between them they ran hundreds of kitchen table conversations, asking what people wanted for the region.

And they argued. Some of the group wanted a seat at the table in Canberra. Others wanted the focus on the community itself. It was the same argument we had at my birthday dinner. Then they did what makes this movement so smart. They agreed to disagree and kept working, until they were confident the community was engaged and that a tilt at the seat was what the community wanted.

Before the 2013 election they wrote down what success looked like: engaged community members turning a safe seat into a marginal one. Winning came last on their own list of aims.

They won anyway. They unseated a frontbencher. They kept meeting between elections. When Cathy McGowan retired, the community chose Helen Haines, and the seat has now been theirs across five elections.

Hardly anyone in New South Wales has heard of Indi, and I’ve come to think that is the strength of it. They did it for the district, not for the fame.

My friend is right. People are hard to organise. Indi is proof that hard and impossible are different words.

It also helped me work out what all the council talk is about. When my neighbours decide I’m standing, it’s the habit we’ve all fallen into: find one noisy person, hand them the problem, and wait. Indi swapped that habit for a better one: believe you can do it yourselves.

We’re already proud of where we live. Imagine being proud of what we build together. Our dry stone walls have stood for a hundred and fifty years. They’re under threat and the reason they’re still standing is our community made it clear it cares about them. What we love survives because we stand up for it. That is true of walls, and it’s true of towns.

The people who wrote Indi’s story down ask a question.

“Have you wondered who is hearing your voice, listening to your community?”

My answer is the power is in your hands, too

So Pollyanna has a question of her own. Why does organising ourselves sound less realistic than spending another $200,000 on another election?

Daily News Roundup – 4 June 2026

Very local, state, national and the wider world, in everyday language, for people who haven’t got all day.

From a council meeting where nothing happening was the good news, to the women flocking to Pauline Hanson, to a Congress telling Trump to stop his war, here’s the local-to-global wrap for 4 June 2026.

Betty from Blacktown and her brother Kevin from Kiama, making sense of the world’s chaos the only sensible way: over toast, a strong cuppa, and a good long natter on the phone. That’s what this Catch Up is for.

Very Local: the extraordinary meeting where nothing happening was the good news

Here are the bits that caught my attention.

Council held an Extraordinary Meeting on Wednesday 27 May, and the headline is that nothing much happened, which in this case is the good news. Councillors voted unanimously to accept the variation to the Performance Improvement Order that Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig had offered. The State has given Council an extra twelve months to balance its budget, pushing the deadline out to the end of the 2027 to 28 financial year. CEO Jane Stroud was to write to the Minister confirming Council will work towards the new requirements.

Mayor Cameron McDonald welcomed it, and his framing was that it means Council will not have to cut community services or staff, at least not on the timetable that the original draft budget had been threatening. That is a real reprieve for the people whose jobs were on the line a few weeks ago.

The extra time does not make the underlying problem go away. The Minister was careful to say the order remains necessary because Council still faces serious financial sustainability challenges, and that the order does not make Council’s decisions for it. Council still has to do the hard work itself, just with more breathing room. So the unanimous vote was less a moment of drama and more everyone agreeing to accept a longer rope.

The detail I am keeping an eye on sits underneath all the calm. The revised timeline gives Council more flexibility to look at the long term future of its five tourist parks, and there are reportedly three unsolicited partnership offers from large operators already on the table. That is the holiday parks question we have been circling for a while, and it is the kind of thing that gets decided quietly while everyone is relieved about the budget extension. The strategic business case for Blue Haven Terralong is also written into the varied order, so that thread is still very much live.

The next one to watch is the Extraordinary Meeting on 30 June, where the actual budget and the planning documents get adopted. That is the one where the real numbers land.

Across the State (NSW)

The PIO variation is the local face of a wider NSW story, which is what happens to small councils that cannot make the sums work. Hoenig has chosen the patient path with Kiama rather than the heavy hand, more time and a Strategic Finance and Governance Improvement Plan rather than administrators. It is worth watching whether other councils in similar trouble get the same latitude, because that tells you whether Kiama is being treated as a special case or as a template.

Across the Country (Federal): the Hanson surge, and the women driving it

A Redbridge Group and Accent Research poll published by the Australian Financial Review put One Nation’s primary vote at 31 per cent, ahead of Labor on 28 and the Coalition on 20. Two years ago One Nation was sitting around 7 per cent. That is not a wobble, that is a genuine shift, and it follows real electoral results in South Australia and in the federal seat of Farrer rather than poll noise alone.

According to an April study by the same pollsters, Hanson is the most popular party leader among women voters, ahead of the Prime Minister, and One Nation is women’s leading first preference party. On net favourability, her approval minus her disapproval, Hanson came in at zero, which sounds unremarkable until you see that every other leader was in negative territory. Anthony Albanese was on minus 19. So Hanson is the least disliked leader in the country, and she is doing it partly on the strength of women.

That cuts against decades of assumption. Far right parties have traditionally been thought of as men’s parties, both in who votes for them and in the very masculine image they project. The Conversation ran a good piece making the case that what we are seeing here is not a local quirk but part of a global pattern. Across Europe, parties of the hard right are pulling in more women than they used to, and a striking number are now led by women. Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Marine Le Pen in France, Alice Weidel in Germany. Hanson belongs in that company now, not as an oddity but as part of the trend.

So why women, and why now? The pollsters point at mood rather than ideology. Around 63 per cent of respondents said the country is heading in the wrong direction, and Redbridge’s read is that this pervasive sourness is what is feeding anti establishment support. When people stop believing the major parties understand their lives, especially on cost of living and housing, the protest vote has to go somewhere, and One Nation has positioned itself as the somewhere. The voters switching are not all lifelong believers. The coverage is full of former Liberal and former Labor voters, including women in their thirties working in sectors like aged care, who say the old parties no longer speak for them.

It is tempting to read a 31 per cent poll as the country falling into the sea, but keep some perspective. On a two party preferred basis Labor still leads One Nation 51 to 49, our preferential voting system makes it very hard for a minor party to convert a big primary vote into actual power, and Hanson sits in the Senate, which means she cannot be Prime Minister from where she is. Some commentators argue, fairly, that the surge is being over read and that One Nation remains more brand than government in waiting. I think that is partly right and partly wishful.

A party does not need to win government to reshape what the major parties say and do. The Coalition’s troubles and Labor’s negative numbers are exactly the soil this grows in, and the women’s vote is the signal that it has broken out of its old, narrow base. That is the bit I would not wave away.

The deeper point, and one we have talked about before, is that the conventional remedy of voting people out does not seem to be producing the policy change voters actually want. The cost of living and housing pressures that are driving this have not been fixed by changes of government, so the frustration keeps looking for a new outlet. Hanson is the current outlet. If the conditions do not change, the outlet will keep finding voltage. I have had more to say about this on Substack here

Around the World (International): Congress tells Trump to stop the war

The Sydney Morning Herald has been fairly thin on Trump and tariffs lately, while the American press is consumed by something our papers are barely touching, which is the war with Iran and the political revolt it is now causing inside Trump’s own party.

The United States, alongside Israel, struck Iran in late February. More than three months on, the war is still going, six American servicemembers have been killed, and it was launched without Congress authorising it. That last point matters constitutionally, because under the American system only Congress can declare war, and there is a War Powers Act designed to force a president to either get authorisation or withdraw.

On Wednesday 3 June, the House of Representatives, which the Republicans control, passed a war powers resolution directing Trump to end hostilities with Iran. The vote was 215 to 208, and four Republicans crossed the floor to vote with the Democrats. That is the clearest rebuke yet of how Trump has handled the war, and it came from his own chamber. The four who broke ranks were Tom Barrett, Warren Davidson, Brian Fitzpatrick and Thomas Massie.

The vote is largely symbolic. The Senate has tried and failed several times to pass its own version, an earlier attempt was blocked 52 to 47, and even if both chambers passed it, Trump would almost certainly veto it, and his administration disputes whether the War Powers Act is even constitutional. So Congress has sent a message rather than pulled a lever. House Speaker Mike Johnson defended Trump and reached for the line that Iran declared war on America decades ago.

It still matters. The reason Republicans are nervous is the economy. American producer prices posted their biggest jump in four years in April, petrol has gone up, and Democrats have made affordability their central midterm message ahead of the November elections that decide control of Congress. Privately, Republicans in tight races are reportedly worried the war could become a political liability if it drags on. Trump’s own answer to that pressure has been to say he is in no hurry to do a deal. So the war, the tariffs and the cost of living are not three separate stories. They are one story about prices and patience, and the politicians who are closest to the voters are the ones blinking first.

This is why it pays to read across. The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Reuters and CBS have all been on the war powers vote and the economic fallout. Al Jazeera has the detail on the earlier Senate blockages. Our own papers, by contrast, have given Trump’s domestic troubles a light touch. If you only read the Herald you would think tariffs were a minor item. If you read the American press you would think the Trump presidency was being tested by its own party. Both are looking at the same man.

The bottom line

It all joins up, Betty. People are unhappy about prices and housing and the feeling that nobody in charge is listening, and that unhappiness is showing up everywhere. In Kiama it looks like a council buying time on a budget it cannot yet balance. In Canberra it looks like a third of voters, women now very much included, parking their vote with Pauline Hanson. In Washington it looks like members of the President’s own party voting to stop his war because they are frightened of what petrol prices will do to them in November. Different countries, different scales, same engine.

 hopeful note, and I do look for one, is that the American vote is a reminder that institutions can still push back.

It was mostly symbolic, but a legislature telling an executive to stop, with members crossing party lines to do it, is the system doing what it is meant to do. That is worth holding onto when the news makes you want to switch it all off. Plenty to chew over with Kevin on the next call.

Sources: The Bugle, Wave FM, Kiama Council, Mirage News, Australian Financial Review, The Conversation, The New Daily, NPR, Washington Post, Reuters, CBS News, Al Jazeera, and others.

A note on Betty and Kevin: Betty grew up in Kiama before life took her to Blacktown. Her brother Kevin still lives in their old home town. Keeping up with what’s happening down the coast is partly nostalgia for the place she came from, but mostly it’s how she and Kevin fill those long phone calls she looks forward to all week. That’s what this Catch Up is really for. Not just the news, but the conversations it keeps alive.

The Kiama We Could Build

 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what kind of town we want Kiama to be in ten years.

The one where our kids can afford to live near us. Where the first responders we count on, the ambos, the police, the SES volunteers, can actually afford to live in the town they’re serving. Where the cafe owner in town can keep her staff because they have somewhere to sleep within twenty minutes of work. Where we still have a working leisure centre, a functioning council, and a community that hasn’t been quietly hollowed out by holiday lets and weekenders.

That town is possible. But it isn’t going to build itself, and it isn’t going to come from cutting another service or raising another fee.

It’s going to come from being smart about what we already own.

Most of us don’t think about it much, but Kiama Council owns some genuinely valuable land. Three pieces in particular keep coming up in my head when I try to imagine what’s possible.

There’s Havilah Place, where the old nursing home was demolished. It sits empty now, right next to our 42 year old leisure centre, in a part of town that already functions as a community hub.

There’s the leisure centre itself, which everyone agrees needs replacing. Council’s own advisory committee has already said as much, and has recommended building something bigger and better in its place: not just a pool and a gym, but a proper community facility with services, retail, maybe even council offices.

And there’s the Council Chambers on Manning Street. Two minutes from the ocean. In the middle of town. Possibly the single most valuable piece of land Council owns. But we can’t sell it while we still work from it.

Look at those three things side by side and a question almost asks itself. What if they aren’t three separate problems but three parts of one solution?

Imagine this. We build a new civic and community precinct on the Havilah Place and leisure centre site. Modern, well designed, locally appropriate. A new leisure centre at the heart of it. Council offices on an upper floor. A cafe at street level. Underground parking that makes the whole quarry function properly for the first time. Apartments above, a meaningful share of them set aside as affordable housing for the workers Kiama needs but currently can’t house.

Then, once Council has somewhere to operate from, we bring the Manning Street site to market at its full potential and use that capital to help fund the precinct that made it possible.

A precinct like that doesn’t need to be ugly or out of scale. It doesn’t need to look like every other coastal redevelopment from the last twenty years. Done well, it could be the thing visitors actually come to see. Done badly, it could be a disaster. The difference is in who designs it, who delivers it, and who Council partners with.

The best argument for getting the affordable housing piece right is sitting half an hour up the road in Wollongong. The Housing Trust opened a development on Crown Street in 2024 called Northsea. Fifty four homes in one building: some social housing, some affordable rentals, some private apartments. The principle behind it, the thing that makes it work, is that no door looks any different from any other.

You cannot tell, walking past, who lives where or how. A door is a door. A neighbour is a neighbour.

That’s what good mixed tenure housing looks like when it’s done by people who know what they’re doing. Several Kiama councillors have already been through Northsea. The reports back, by all accounts, were positive.

If we got a precinct like that built here, in partnership with an experienced Community Housing Provider, two things happen at once. We start meaningfully addressing our housing crisis, and we unlock state and federal funding streams that are not available to a normal council asset sale. The money is there. It just follows the right delivery model.

Kiama Council is still under a Performance Improvement Order. The deadline for a balanced budget has been extended to 2027/28, but the underlying problem hasn’t gone away. Costs keep rising. The fee debates over the holiday parks this past month show how politically painful the alternative looks: trying to plug a structural revenue gap by squeezing residents and ratepayers a little harder every year.

There is a better way out of this. Council already knows it, in fact. The Finance and Major Projects Committee is already looking at the catalyst sites. The question is how ambitious we’re willing to be about what we do with them.

If we sell the land raw, we get a one off cash injection, and a developer captures most of the long term value. If we instead establish planning certainty for these sites first, whether through rezoning or a site specific plan or a concept approval, then partner properly, that value flows back to Kiama ratepayers. The principle is well established in public asset divestment around the country. The closer Council gets a site to a deliverable approval, the more of its value Council captures rather than handing it to the next buyer.

This what smart councils do with land like this.

The honest version of this is that Kiama has a narrow window. State and federal policy is currently more supportive of mixed tenure housing delivery than it has been in twenty years. We hold the land. We have a council under genuine financial pressure that needs sustainable revenue. We have a working model just up the road. We have councillors who have seen it and understood it.

Windows like this don’t stay open forever. In five years the funding programs will have shifted, the political climate will have moved on, and the catalyst sites will either have been sold off in pieces for short term cash, or we will have done something genuinely transformative with them.

I know which version of Kiama I want to live in.

The draft Council budget is on public exhibition until 24 May. If you have a view on how Council uses its strategic assets, this is the moment to say so. Submissions can be made through Council’s website. Even a short submission helps, because what councillors hear from the community shapes what they feel able to consider. Here is a step by step guide

You can also speak to your councillors directly. They are accessible, and most of them genuinely want to hear from residents who are thinking constructively about the future of the town.

Kiama has been given a difficult hand to play. But we are not without options. We own real things, in real places, at exactly the moment when doing something visionary with them is most possible.

Let’s not waste it.

Kiama Council had the playbook. Five councillors voted not to use it. The union did it anyway.

Council voted not to ask the Minister. The union asked anyway. Nobody thanked Cr Cains.

New to this issue?

This post is part of a series covering Kiama Council’s budget, the holiday parks proposal and the Performance Improvement Order. If you want the background before diving into the detail, the earlier posts are here:

  1. Council is counting on you not reading this – submission guide
  2. Ron Hoenig just put Kiama Council on notice. Here is what I said and why you should too.

  3. Kiama Council wants submissions on a dead budget.

Start there. Then come back here.

This is my reading of the public record. Happy to be corrected.

On 21 April 2026, Cr Mike Cains moved a motion that Kiama Council write to the Minister for Local Government asking three specific questions about the budget, including whether the cuts proposed in the draft budget were actually necessary.

Council voted 5 -3 to say no.

For: Brown, Cains, Tatrai

Against: Larkins, Lawton, Matters, McDonald, Warren absent from the vote Draisma

Three weeks later, the Minister answered the questions anyway. The cuts are no longer necessary. The community got an extension. Council didn’t ask for it. The union did.

And the community is still being asked to submit on the cuts-driven draft budget by Saturday 24 May.

Here’s what happened.

Cr Cains’ motion asked the Minister three things:

(a) Whether a failure by KMC to project a balanced budget in the 2026/2027 financial year would trigger the appointment of an administrator;

(b) Whether short-term deficit budgeting, if presented alongside a long-term financial sustainability strategy, is considered acceptable; and

(c) The extent to which KMC is expected to balance immediate fiscal constraints against maintaining essential services, community infrastructure, and economic activity.

The Minister has now answered all three. No, an administrator is not being appointed. Yes, staged deficit budgeting with a long-term strategy is the path. Yes, the impact on services matters and the deadline can move to accommodate it.

The questions Cains wanted Council to ask have all now been answered. Council just didn’t ask them.

Council had been through this exact process two years earlier.

At the same 21 April meeting, two letters from Minister Hoenig were tabled in front of councillors.

A letter dated 30 January 2024 – Hoenig’s Notice of Intention to Vary the existing PIO, sent to CEO Jane Stroud, giving Council 28 days to make submissions.

A letter dated 23 May 2024  Hoenig’s variation of the PIO, issued after Council had formally engaged and made its submission.

The 2024 correspondence is the exact playbook for getting a PIO variation. Council had it on the table on the night Cains moved his motion. Five councillors voted not to use it.

The union didn’t wait.

On 9 April 2026, the Illawarra Mercury reported the United Services Union had emailed its members confirming it was actively pursuing a meeting with the Minister to seek an extension. The email said:

“An extension will avoid the need for immediate cuts, since the losses can be drawn out which means the need to cut positions and services is less immediate.”

That’s two weeks before Cains moved his motion. The union had already identified the path. It was already walking it.

Council sent the cuts out for exhibition anyway.

At the same 21 April meeting where the Cains motion was lost, Council unanimously endorsed the cuts-driven draft budget for public exhibition.

The same meeting also noted, in a separate resolution about the Reflections unsolicited proposal for the holiday parks, that any proceeds “will be incorporated into the draft budget, resulting in the potential elimination of the budget deficit.”

So at the meeting where Council voted not to ask the Minister, Council also acknowledged the cuts might not even be necessary.

And then sent the cuts-driven budget out for public exhibition five days later.

14 May 2026.

3:25 PM  Kiama MP Katelin McInerney issues a statement thanking the United Services Union, staff, community members and her petitioners.

4:26 PM  Minister Hoenig announces the proposed PIO variation.

Late afternoon,  Council “welcomes the extension.” The CEO thanks the United Services Union “for its strong collaboration and partnership in making the PIO request to Minister Hoenig.” The Mayor thanks the Minister for meeting with him at Parliament House.

Nobody thanked Cr Cains.

One more thing worth noting.

The minister also required council to strengthen its financial reporting to the Office of Local Government. Four years into a Performance Improvement Order. The community is entitled to ask what that means for the accuracy of the budget documents currently on exhibition.

What the record shows.

A councillor formally proposed the path. Council voted it down 5–3. The union pursued the same path externally. Our MP Katelin McInerney campaigned. The community wrote directly to the Minister. The extension came through. Council welcomed it.

The CEO publicly thanked the union that lobbied around her own draft budget.

The Mayor publicly thanked the Minister for the outcome he had voted three weeks earlier not to ask for.

The community is still being asked to submit on that now dead draft budget by Saturday 24 May.

The submission period should be extended. Full stop.

This is all your submission needs to say. Copy it. Send it.

“Given the Minister for Local Government proposed a variation to the Performance Improvement Order on 14 May 2026 extending the budget deadline by twelve months, I ask Council to pause the exhibition period, revise the draft budget to reflect the new timeline, and give the community adequate time to respond.”

Add your name and address. Send it to yoursay.kiama.nsw.gov.au and council@kiama.nsw.gov.au and councillors@kiama.nsw.gov.au  before 24 May.

Step by step submission guide here

A note from me. I’m a community member trying my very best to make sense of this bombardment of information and what it means for our town and our families. If I’ve got something wrong, tell me and I’ll fix it. If I’ve got something right, send your submission before 24 May.

Kiama Council wants submissions on a dead budget

A timeline of the farce. More time for the process, less time for the public.

The federal budget had a good run on the front page. Then Kiama Council kept asking the community to make submissions on a draft budget the CEO had already confirmed was obsolete, and stole the show. You can’t write this stuff. Except they did. In two media releases on the same day. Then again on social media. And again. And again.

This is my understanding of the timeline from the public record. Happy to be corrected.

  • 7 May  Mayor McDonald and CEO Stroud annouce they met Minister Hoenig at Parliament House. Mayor says he is “confident of a positive outcome” on the PIO.
  • 13 May  Council posts on social media that “budgets are officially having a moment” and asks the community to submit on the draft budget by 24 May
  • 14 May  Council publishes first media release of the day. It announces an Extraordinary Meeting on 30 June and mentions a “potential” ministerial extension to the PIO. The reason given for the delay: staff need more time to read community submissions.
  • 14 May, 3:25 PM  Member for Kiama Katelin McInerney issues a statement welcoming the extension and acknowledging the United Services Union, staff and community members who advocated against the proposed budget cuts.
  • 14 May Council publishes its second media release of the day, welcoming the PIO  extension. The CEO confirms the services proposed for cutting in the draft budget will now be retained. This is very interesting and I will give it some more thought. Council CEOs do not, as a rule, publicly thank the union that has been campaigning against their own draft budget. That is not standard practice
  • 14 May, 4:26 PM The Minister’s office issues a media release proposing the extension.
  • 24 May Submissions still close. On a budget the CEO has confirmed needs to change.
  • 30 June  Extraordinary Meeting. Staff get the extra time. The community does not.

Read that again.

The CEO has given herself and council staff extra time to read submissions. She has not given the community extra time to write them on a budget that now reflects the actual situation.

The draft budget on exhibition was built around a deadline that moved on 14 May. The services it proposed cutting are no longer being cut. Council is still asking you to submit on it before 24 May.

The submission period should be extended. Full stop.

This is all your submission needs to say. Copy it. Send it.

Given the Minister for Local Government proposed a variation to the Performance Improvement Order on 14 May 2026 extending the budget deadline by twelve months, I ask Council to pause the exhibition period, revise the draft budget to reflect the new timeline, and give the community adequate time to respond.

Add your name and address. Send it to yoursay.kiama.nsw.gov.au and council@kiama.nsw.gov.au and councillors@kiama.nsw.gov.au

before 24 May.

Want to say more? Step by step submission guide here

Media releases referenced: Minister for Local Government Ron Hoenig, 14 May 2026, 4:26 PM. Kiama Municipal Council, “Kiama Council to hold Extraordinary Meeting for Budget,” 14 May 2026. Kiama Municipal Council, “Kiama Council welcomes Performance Improvement Order extension,” 14 May 2026.

A note from me. I am a community member, not a council spokesperson and not a journalist on a deadline. I am doing my very best to make sense of this bombardment of information and what it means for our town and our families. If I have got something wrong, tell me and I will fix it. If I have got something right, send your submission before 24 May.