Advice for Albo, what our councillors would say…

With return of the National Bush Summit to Dubbo this August with PM Anthony Albanese again in attendance, Australia’s richest individual – and event sponsor, no less – Gina Rinehart offered (in the event’s official media release!), some choice views on how the government treats the good country folk of our fair, wide land.

Following that same theme of candour and frank advice, Dubbo Photo News asked local councillors, what message they would give our elected national leader, if they had his ear for a moment at the event.

Mayor Josh Black said he’d offer Mr Albanese a message he has made previously: that it’s time regional Australia got a fair share of the government spending pie to reflect our national contribution to the economy.

“We in country NSW provide nearly all of the export wealth, through mining and agriculture, for the whole state, it’s almost all from the regions,” Cr Black said.

“Therefore, we need, and deserve, a larger share of the investment in services and infrastructure, an amount that justly reflects our worth to Australia’s prosperity,” he added.

Cr Lukas Butler said he’d tell the PM that “renewables fatigue” is impacting heavily on the local population, economy, and our social cohesion, and it’s now time for others to share the load.

“We really need to pull up on solar and wind farms in this region; we’re really starting to hurt ourselves and it’s way too much for one region to take,” Cr Butler said.

“I’m not against sustainability, but ‘net zero’ is disastrous and will lead us to economic ruin, not just in lost high-value agricultural land, but in disposing of this infrastructure when it’s past its use-by date. We’re going through a fad, and we’re eventually going to pay for it!” he added.

Cr Shibli Chowdhury said that he’d offer the PM the view that it’s time now to plan for our next big drought – not when the dams are all dry and the farmers in despair – adding that the renewables push should be focused on already-built infrastructure in the big smoke.

“I would send him our drought resilience action plan and what needs to be done for the future to protect our regions now, not when the dry is already here and it’s too late,” Cr Chowdhury said.

“I also think that we shouldn’t be putting all these solar farms in the region, why do that to prime farming land when they could go on the roofs of all those giant factories in western Sydney, that are already there?” he added.

Reflecting some of the views of Ms Rinehart, Cr Richard Ivey says that the Prime Minister needs to understand the importance of empowering people to take control of their own lives, rather than depending on government hand-outs for survival.

“I think there needs to be more reward and recognition of personal effort and achievement. I just mean, we have as a society, tended too much towards ‘the government will fix it’, attitude,” Cr Ivey said.

“We have to make people realise that they have a personal responsibility; country people are resilient and hard-working and do more for their community, we tend not to get privileges that city people expect,” he added.

Cr Matt Wright said he’d emphasise to PM Albanese the social, economic, and cultural impact of pushing through renewable projects into rural and regional areas of Australia.

“A recurring theme in the community is fatigue around renewable projects and the cumulative impact of the large number of these investments on our doorstep,” Cr Wright said.

“We’re seeing a saturation of these projects in the region, but it needs to be balanced, why do country areas have to bear the whole load for net zero?” he asked.

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Council rescinds new meeting rules they were told to pass

Jumping the gun on the eye-glazing issue of “Code of Meeting Practice”, the relevant state minister, Ron Hoenig, earlier this year told NSW 128 local government areas to update their policies to reflect government policy.

Dubbo duly passed the new procedures, before the NSW Upper House (Legislative Council) threw the whole lot out!

To ensure compliance with the new (old) rules, Dubbo held an extraordinary meeting this week, to rescind the regulation they were told to comply with, and to return to the previous meeting rules for the chamber.

Council went through the bother of instituting the new rules, only to have them a few months later thrown out for the previous 2021 regulations.

To show how the issue has captured the public’s imagination, however, exactly zero submissions had been received by Council over the new rules when they went out for exhibition.

To wit, Council did exactly not have to put up the barricades outside of the council chambers and call for police assistance when the meeting was held…

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Getting OFF the net-zero train!

One subject, however, that did get some locals interested in the administration of local government, was a recent motion by former mayor (and keen environmentalist), Cr Mathew Dickerson for the region to get “on-board” local Orana REZ projects so as to take advantage of the financial incentives that may arise.

With regional projects ultimately approved under authority of the NSW Minister for Planning and the Independent Planning Commission, he argued that council could serve residents better by negotiating with the developers, rather than taking populist positions against them.

The motion, however, drew a near full house to the chamber, and not to support the proposal, Dubbo Photo News was later told.

“We usually get two people at our meetings, and one of them has usually wandered in by accident,” one councillor said.

“But they were there to oppose the motion, they weren’t keen on it at all,” they added.

For a town in which politics is generally not the first (or second) topic of conversation, this rather unusual act of participatory democracy by a large and somewhat animated cohort of ratepayers, had the desired effect.

The motion to “stop pretending we can effectively oppose them, and instead positively engage in the process to maximise benefits for the region,” as Cr Dickerson said earlier, was defeated in a 6-3 vote.