Tag: youth services

Daily News Round Up – 22 May 2026

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

From a fired-up Kiama Council saying no to amalgamation, to jobs slipping and the Iran war keeping petrol dear, here’s the local-to-global wrap for 22 May 2026.

Very Local: what our Council got up to this week

A busy night at the Kiama Council meeting on Tuesday 19 May. Here are the bits that caught my attention.

“No to amalgamation.” The big one. Councillors voted unanimously to reaffirm Kiama as a “strong, proud and independent council” and say a flat no to any merger. The clever part: they’re writing to the sitting member for Kiama and every declared candidate for the 2027 state election, asking each one to put their position on amalgamation in writing so it can be tabled in public. Everyone on the record before the next election. Watch this space.

Money is the cloud over everything. Behind the scenes sat a finance and governance improvement plan, a budget review, and a note about Council’s Performance Improvement Order, which is the state government’s “lift your game” notice hanging over Kiama. That pressure is the real reason the amalgamation fight matters. A small council is scrapping to prove it can stand on its own two feet.

Youth services under a question mark. The Mayor tabled a letter from federal MP Fiona Phillips flagging the possible closure of Council’s SENTRAL Youth Services. The Assistant Minister’s reply says headspace Kiama and others can pick up the slack. Reassuring on paper, but if you’ve got teenagers it’s a sign local youth services may be on the chopping block as budgets tighten.

More homes for Gerringong. Two greenlights worth noting: two residential flat buildings approved at 104 Belinda Street, and 48 Campbell Street set up as an “Urban Release Area,” which is planning-speak for land rezoned for new housing. Housing supply is the thread tying the whole region together right now.

A Jamberoo house off to the lawyers. A dwelling and farm shed on Minnamurra Lane got messy. Councillors split four-all and the item was carried on the chair’s casting vote, deferring it for legal advice first. It’s back in June. A tied vote tells you it’s genuinely contested.

Skate park families, take note. Council backed Option 3 for the Kiama Sports Complex. The promise to find a new and better skate park site got softened to simply relocating it “as per the revised plan.” Keep an eye on where it actually finds a home.

Looking after the locals with fur and roots. In-principle support for the “Save the Greater Glider” campaign and a possible expansion of Seven Mile Beach National Park, plus a long-term plan to tackle the asparagus weed choking the Werri Beach dunes.

The bottom line: it all comes back to money. The improvement order, the budget reviews, the stand against amalgamation, and the worry over youth services are really one story. A small council fighting to stay its own boss while the dollars get tighter. The homes, the gliders, the skate park are all happening on top of that.

Across NSW (State)

Cost of living is still the song that never ends. Sydney’s hung onto its title as the dearest city in the land, and the jobs picture just took a knock too (more on that under Federal). The one bit of breathing room remains rents, which after years of brutal rises have finally levelled off, though nobody’s exactly celebrating at the checkout.

And tonight the city goes a bit magic. Vivid Sydney switches on this evening and runs every night until 13 June, lights glowing from 6pm to 11pm. There’s a 6.5km walk of light displays from Circular Quay through The Rocks, Barangaroo and Darling Harbour, and the drone shows are back, though they’ve shuffled over to Cockle Bay this year. It’s free to wander and look, which is the main thing in a year when everything else costs the earth. Rug up if you go. It’s proper winter now.

Across the Country (Federal)

Jobs took a hit. Today’s big home-front number. The unemployment rate jumped to 4.5% in April, the worst it’s been since late 2021. About 33,000 more people found themselves out of work, and nearly 19,000 jobs actually disappeared over the month. It hit young people hardest (youth unemployment is now over 11%), and this month the losses landed mainly on women, who drove the whole fall in employment while the men’s rate held. This means work is getting harder to find, and that’s the kind of thing that worries a household before it ever worries a politician. Oddly, the share market had one of its best days in weeks on the very same day. A reminder that what’s good for the big end of town and what’s good for your kitchen table aren’t always the same story.

The Budget shake-up, still rumbling on. You’ll remember Treasurer Jim Chalmers handed down his big-swing Budget on 12 May. The headline change for ordinary folk: the government wants to limit negative gearing to new builds from July 2027, and change capital gains tax so it’s tied to inflation with a minimum tax on profits. If you already own an investment property, or had one under contract before 7:30pm on Budget night, you’re left alone. The idea is to give first-home buyers a fairer shot, and they reckon it could help around 75,000 people into a home over a decade. The Opposition’s dead against it.

And here’s where Michael West earns his cuppa. While the big mastheads chase the Budget headlines, the independents are digging where it’s uncomfortable. Two beauties this week from Michael West Media. First, a coal miner versus the Big Australian: BHP, a $300 billion giant, is taking Michael West Media itself to the Federal Court to try and shut down its reporting on an injured coal miner’s wage-theft case. They tried to rush through urgent orders to pull the stories down, and the court told them to wait their turn. The fact they’re being sued and still publishing the file number tells you what kind of outfit they are. Second, Cricket Australia is running an “independent review” into a $600,000 cloud-computing deal at the centre of “contracts-for-mates” allegations, but the whistleblower who raised the alarm has already been made redundant. Exactly the sort of follow-the-money stuff worth your support if you’ve got a spare dollar. Their whole model is “don’t pay so you can read it, pay so everyone can.”

Around the World (International)

The Iran war is still the one that reaches your petrol pump. The US-and-Israel war with Iran has been grinding on since late February, and a shaky ceasefire brokered by Pakistan keeps wobbling on and off. The latest worry is that US intelligence reckons Iran is rebuilding its military faster than expected and has already restarted making drones during the truce. Pakistan’s army chief has flown to Tehran to keep the talks limping along. The fighting keeps squeezing the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil shipping lane, which is exactly why fuel’s been dear the world over, and why so much of our Budget was built around cushioning petrol prices.

Outrage over the Gaza flotilla. This one’s moved fast. Aid activists who’d tried to sail to Gaza were intercepted by Israeli forces, and a video posted by a far-right Israeli minister, taunting them while they knelt bound on the ground, sparked a global firestorm. At least ten countries summoned Israeli ambassadors to explain themselves, Australia and New Zealand among them. As of today, Israel has now deported all the activists, sending them home via Turkey, after even Israel’s own PM called the minister’s behaviour out of line.

A nasty Ebola outbreak in Congo. The head of the World Health Organization has raised the alarm about a rare type of Ebola spreading quickly in the Democratic Republic of Congo. One to keep half an eye on.

The bottom line

It all joins up, Betty. A war on the other side of the planet pushes up oil; oil pushes up the petrol in the car and the price of everything trucked to the shops; and that’s why the Budget was built around fuel relief while the jobs market softens at home. Closer in, our little Council is fighting the same fight in miniature, scrapping to stay independent while the dollars tighten. And through it all, the watchdogs like Michael West keep poking at the powerful so the rest of us can see where the money really goes. Not a bad day’s reading over one cup of tea.

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.

Sources: Kiama Municipal Council minutes, Sydney Morning Herald, ABS, Michael West Media, Al Jazeera, The Conversation, CNN, CBC, and others.

Kiama Council’s Easter ambush sparks anger over cuts closed doors and police

Kiama Council dropped an extraordinary meeting agenda on the Thursday before a four day Easter break, then set the meeting on for the following Tuesday, the first day back. The agenda carried sweeping proposed savings across community life, including youth, cultural and community services, visitor services, tourism, library hours, Leisure Centre hours, the pensioner rebate, community donations and sponsorships, staff positions, and the proposed relocation of the Pilot’s Cottage Museum and Visitor Information Centre.

People in Kiama understand there is a budget problem. They understand Council is operating under a Performance Improvement Order and that difficult decisions are in front of it.

The anger has come from the way this was handled. Material of this scale was put into the public arena on the eve of a long weekend, when people were heading into Easter, then debated the moment the holiday ended. Councillors had already been through workshops and briefings. The community got a scramble.

The public forum timing sharpened the sense that this was being pushed through rather than opened up. Instead of the breathing space most people would expect before a decision of this size, public access was held immediately before the meeting itself.

People were expected to absorb complex proposals, organise their thoughts, speak, and watch councillors move into debate, all in the same late afternoon.

Then came the access arrangements. On the afternoon of the meeting, Council announced that the administration building would close at 4 pm, the public gallery would be limited to 20 attendees, protest material would not be permitted inside chambers or council workplaces, security would manage access, and NSW Police had been advised of the intended protest. That combination told its own story.

Community anger was being managed as a risk event at the very moment residents were trying to be heard.

This is the part Council seems not to have understood. When you put youth services, community services, library hours, tourism functions, the pensioner rebate, staff positions and local heritage on the table, people will react. When you do it before a four day break and bring it on for the first day back, they will react harder. When you then tighten access and prepare for protest, they draw their own conclusions.

Watch community concerns on WIN4 News here 

The question now is larger than one difficult meeting. Kiama has already seen police called to a tense council gathering in recent years. That gives this latest episode a wider significance. Residents are entitled to ask whether this is becoming a pattern, late release of major decisions, compressed opportunities for public response, and a readiness to treat dissent as a security problem rather than a democratic reality.

No one expects budget repair to be painless. People do expect honesty, time and respect. They expect to see the problem clearly, weigh the trade offs, and speak before the process tightens around them. That did not happen here.

You would hope this is not how Kiama Council plans to handle major public decisions from here. It looks too much like another way of shutting down community voices. And once a council starts hearing community anger as a threat instead of a message, it has lost sight of the room.