Tag: local government

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

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?

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.

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.

When the question is bigger than blame. Let’s invite our Kiama community to be part of the solution

If you have been following my recent blog posts, you will know how we arrived at this moment. It began with a simple and reasonable question about what will happen to Kiama’s CBD once construction begins on the Akuna Street site. The more people asked the same question, the clearer it became that this is a conversation the whole community wants and deserves to have.

So I set out to explore what good planning looks like, drawing on world leading models such as Singapore where community involvement and long term vision guide every decision.

That work was never about debating the past. It was about understanding the situation we are now facing, because hindsight alone will not solve this. Akuna Street is going ahead, and the CBD will be disrupted for years.

The real question, the one that matters now, is this.

What can we do together to learn from places that have faced similar challenges and come out stronger?

Kiama is not the first town to lose its central parking.
We are not the first community to face a long construction period in the heart of the CBD.
We are not the first to feel let down by decisions made without clear long term planning.

So instead of sitting in frustration, let us shift the conversation to the shared work in front of us. Let us ask what other towns and councils have already learned, and how we can apply that knowledge here.

If we were sitting around the table together, where would we start

If I were a local councillor facing this situation, the first thing I would do is invite the community into the problem solving. Not as a gesture, but as a genuine partnership. Kiama is full of smart, resourceful people who care deeply about this town. We do not need to wait for a single expert to hand down answers. We can build them together.

Here are a few places we could start.

Identify examples of towns that have survived CBD shutdowns
Regional centres, coastal towns and small cities have all faced similar situations. Some handled the disruption well. Others did not. We can learn from both.

Look at temporary parking solutions that actually work
Examples include park and ride systems, business priority spaces, off site options, shuttle loops and temporary decks on cleared land. These solutions already exist. We do not need to invent them from scratch.

Keep the CBD alive during construction
Other towns have protected their small businesses with coordinated activation programs, weekend events, pop up markets and targeted support. Kiama’s traders deserve the same level of care.

Advocate for staged or sequenced construction
Councils elsewhere have negotiated construction conditions that avoid full closures or allow parking to be phased. Could we secure something similar.

Design a communication plan that treats residents as partners
Timely information, plain language updates and clear explanations are not optional. They are essential for keeping frustration down and confidence up.

Build a shared, forward looking vision
Instead of reacting only to the disruption in front of us, we can also ask what Kiama will need in ten years. What will traffic look like. What will our population need. What will businesses need. We can plan for that now.

Why this matters now

The CBD disruption is coming. That is a fact. How we respond as a community is the part still within our control.

We can choose frustration or collaboration.
We can choose blame or solutions.
We can choose to repeat the mistakes of others or learn from the places that got it right.

Kiama deserves a plan that draws on global best practice and local wisdom. It deserves leaders who look outward, learn widely and plan with courage. And it deserves a community that has a genuine voice in shaping what comes next.

Your turn

So I am asking you, as neighbours, ratepayers and people who love this town.

Where would you start.
Which ideas do you want on the table.
Which towns should we study.
Which solutions could work here.

I am listening. I know you are too. And judging by the speed of recent media releases, Council is watching this page just as closely as the rest of us.

#KiamaCBD #CommunityFirst #AkunaStreet #KiamaFuture #SmartLeadership #LearningFromOthers #FuturePlanning #LocalGovernment #CommunityVoice #PublicTrust

“We’ve Already Told You Once:” Kiama Council’s Bizarre Response to CCTV Questions”

You couldn’t make this up……

Last week we were talking about Council silence on the CCTV issue. This week, out comes a media release titled “CCTV in Kiama and Public Vandalism”  complete with a reminder that “we’ve already told you this once.”

Apparently, we’re all meant to have memorised the August business papers.

For those catching up, Council’s CCTV along Terralong Street has been broken since a storm. in 2024 It hasn’t been repaired, and they’re now seeking grant funding to replace it. Meanwhile, vandalism across the LGA has increased, including toilets, post boxes, and disability-access facilities, one repair alone costing $8,000.

So after a week of public chatter about missing cameras and mixed priorities, Council has spoken, by telling us off.

Maybe they’re right. Maybe we should have paid closer attention.
Or maybe, when the community has to raise an issue twice before it’s addressed, it says something about who’s actually listening.

#KiamaCouncil #CCTV #LocalGovernment #CommunityVoice #Accountability #PublicSafety #CivicEngagement #Transparency

When leadership fails, culture tells the truth

As I’ve said before, you can do all the leadership training in the world. It doesn’t always make you a leader. But what it does do, importantly, is help you recognise the difference. It helps you identify real leaders when you see them. More importantly, it sharpens your ability to spot toxic cultures. It teaches you to recognise when someone has enough self-awareness to grow, and when someone doesn’t. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Leadership is hard. Public leadership is harder. But when harm is done, whether through action or silence, real leadership requires something more than defensiveness. It requires self-reflection.

If a CEO were to pause and look inward, here is what genuine self-awareness might sound like.

How did I get here?
I have spent my career navigating complicated political environments. I have seen corruption up close. I have worked in organisations where things went very wrong. I was not charged, but I was part of that system. I saw what unchecked power does. I know what it costs communities. I know what it costs people.

Did I bring that culture with me, even unknowingly?
Did I carry forward habits shaped by survival in a dysfunctional system? Did I seek control where I should have encouraged transparency? Have I mistaken compliance for leadership?

Have I confused being right with being in charge?
Leadership is not about managing perception. It is about creating space for accountability and trust. When people around me challenged decisions or asked difficult questions, did I see that as threat instead of engagement?

What role have I played in the harm others say they’ve experienced?
When people say they felt targeted, silenced, or undermined during my leadership, do I hear that as a personal attack or as something to sit with? Have I considered that harm does not require intention, that impact matters more than defence?

What am I afraid will happen if I admit I got it wrong?
Is it fear of looking weak? Fear of being held to account? Or is it fear of stepping into the unknown, into a space where control is replaced by vulnerability?

What would it look like to lead differently, now?
It would mean opening space for truth. It would mean commissioning an independent review. It would mean picking up the phone to those who were hurt and saying, “I want to understand.” It would mean listening, not defending. Owning, not spinning. Rebuilding, not retreating.

Because surviving a broken system is not the same as transforming one.

And if we do not break the cycle, we become it.

#LeadershipMatters #ToxicCulture #CouncilAccountability #TrueLeadership #CommunityWellbeing #EthicalGovernance #PublicTrust

When Kiama Council stops listening, the community steps up

In Kiama, we pride ourselves on being engaged, fair-minded, and not afraid to speak up when something feels wrong. So when members of this community take the time to submit formal complaints to Council -backed by evidence, dates, and clear requests for action – it’s not done lightly.

It comes from a belief that our local democracy still matters. And that someone, somewhere inside the system, will listen.  to put their concerns in writing, cite documents, ask for a review  – there’s a basic expectation: that someone, somewhere, will respond.

 

A simple acknowledgement.

A record of receipt.

A sign that the system is functioning.

But that didn’t happen here.

 

I submitted a formal complaint to Kiama Council about the handling of the ICAC referral. So did others. We raised questions about process, timing, and accountability. We asked for a review.

 

The response? Silence.

Not even a note from the Public Officer to confirm the request had been received. No response from the CEO. No indication that the concerns were being treated with the seriousness they deserve.

And this is what makes people give up. Not disagreement. Not debate. But the sense that no one is listening.

 

So let me say this clearly:

We are listening to each other.

We are keeping records.

We are not going away.

The community sets the standard.

We expect better.

 

We expect that when three councillors are referred to an anti-corruption body and then cleared, someone in Council will have the decency to correct the record — not leave a misleading notice online for months, casting doubt long after the facts are known.

 

We expect that formal requests will be logged, replied to, and dealt with transparently – not ignored.

 

And we expect that those tasked with upholding the integrity of the system will do more than protect it when convenient. They will protect it when it’s hard. When it’s messy. When it means holding powerful people to account.

The question is not whether councillors or community members are brave enough to raise these issues.

 

We already have.

The question is whether Council is willing to deal with the answers.

 

#KiamaCouncil #LocalDemocracy #CouncilAccountability #ICACReferral #GovernanceMatters #CommunityVoice #TransparencyNow #PublicTrust #LeadershipStandards #CivicEngagement

When silence becomes complicity in local democracy

If you are new here, welcome. I write about issues affecting local democracy, governance, and accountability in the Kiama local government area, with a focus on asking the questions others might avoid.

Three councillors. A high-stakes development vote. A referral to the Independent Commission Against Corruption. An election three months away.

These are the facts. What followed was silence.

It is now publicly known that three Kiama councillors were referred to ICAC after a unanimous vote to reject a controversial development application. That referral became public knowledge not through formal channels, but through the media. The councillors themselves say they were not notified by Council. ICAC has since dismissed the referral.

No action. No investigation. No findings.
And still, no public correction.

For those watching closely, the timing felt less like coincidence and more like interference. A reputational blow landing just as the election campaign began, targeting councillors who had been vocal on governance, transparency, and community rights. If that was not an attempt to influence the election narrative, then what was it?

And yet here we are. New councillors have been elected. Fresh mandates have been claimed. And not one formal effort has been made to review what happened or ensure it never happens again.

This raises a harder question: why?

Why would any incoming councillor, elected to represent the interests of their community, not want to investigate a potential misuse of process? Why would they not want to protect future candidates and colleagues from the same kind of political weaponisation?

This is not about loyalty to the past council. It is about the future of local democracy. If elected officials can be referred to an anti-corruption body without due process, then left to wear the reputational damage even after dismissal, something is deeply wrong.

And if that damage can be timed to land just before an election, we are not talking about governance. We are talking about manipulation.

The community deserves better. Not in whispers, not behind closed doors, but in public.

If there is nothing to hide, there should be nothing to fear in a review. Silence may feel safe, but over time it corrodes trust. And trust, once lost, is difficult to regain.

Local democracy does not fail overnight. It fails when decent people say nothing because speaking up feels too risky. The real question now is not what happened then, but what our current leaders will do with what they know now.

This article reflects my personal views and interpretations, based on publicly available information and in the interest of fostering open and accountable local government. It is not my intention to accuse any individual of wrongdoing, but to encourage reflection and action on matters that affect trust in our democratic processes.

#Kiama #LocalGovernment #CouncilTransparency #DemocracyMatters #PublicTrust #AccountabilityNow #ICAC #Governance #CivicEngagement #CommunityVoice #LeadershipMatters