Rally to voice poll outrage

By ROD WISE

A PUBLIC rally in the Wollongong Mall on Saturday, September 13 – local government election day – to mourn the death of local democracy in Wollongong and Shellharbour will be the most visible result of the Making Community Democracy Work conference held last Saturday at the Fraternity Club in Fairy Meadow.

More than 150 people, reflecting a cross-section of opinion, political and non-political, gathered to hear John Hatton, the former State MP and anti-corruption campaigner, Jack Mundy, former building union official and organiser of green bans against anti-social development, and John Mant, a former ICAC commissioner. They also came to launch a new charter on citizens’ rights in the controversial area of local govern-ment development processes.

Attendees came from as far as Eurobodalla, Shoalhaven, the Blue Mountains, Newcastle, the Central Coast and Sydney. While there were ALP members there, no ALP councillors from the two dismissed local councils were present.

Graham Larcombe, secretary of Wollongong Against Corruption (WAC), the grass-roots organisation which organised the conference, said there had been positive feedback to the initiative from across the State. He said the conference had resolved to launch the proposed Charter for Ethics and Good Governance, which defines the rights and duties of all the interested parties to the planning process, and that this would be distributed immediately through NSW to raise awareness of the issues at stake.

The conference also carried a strongly worded resolution criticising the Independent Com-mission Against Corruption for the delays in bringing its Wollongong Council inquiry to finality and for failing to investigate adequately matters whose subsequent revelation rocked the Illawarra region.

The conference also called for a Royal Commission into corruption in NSW planning, and specifically called for the repeal of Part 3A of the Planning and Assessment Act which allows the Minister for Planning, Frank Sartor, to take development consent out of the hands of local councils where he deems an overriding interest may lie.

Andrew Anthony, a former Independent Wollongong councillor (Ward 4 – Unanderra, Cordeaux Heights, Figtree, Keiraville) told the Lake Times that he was “encouraged” by the conference.

“I felt, before the weekend, that people were not taking seriously enough the Government’s decision not to hold an election in Wollongong until 2012,” he said. “Now I am encouraged that there are many other people who feel the same way. The resolution of the conference calling for an election in March next year is a good one, because March is the month when we normally hold State elections so there would be nothing unusual about it.”

Asked whether Wollongong would be ready for elections then, given the scale of corruption revealed by ICAC, Mr Anthony said, “I think a lot of the staff who were involved in corruption have moved on and that for the system of local government to work effectively, we need elected officials to have the final say.”

Former Shellharbour councillor Helen Stewart (Ward B – Oak Flats) said the conference restored to the Illawarra a sense of community spirit that had been “sadly lacking”.

Unlike Wollongong, she said, the problem at Shellharbour was not one of corruption but one of party politics interfering with proper, open-minded decision-making.

However, she cautioned that the problems were not all one-sided, adding that everyone should be accountable, not only councils for their performance, but also residents themselves. “They should be more active if they want local democracy to work,” she said.