A local right wing extremist speaks

Speak up while you still can

On Friday 26th July 2024, just 13 days after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Sally Sara of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) decided to interview Blue Mountains Mayor, Mark Greenhill, on national radio. This is because she found compelling parallels between this event and local residents silently attending Blue Mountains City Council meetings.

You might not make this connection so easily but stay with me. Please listen to this audio which describes the reign of terror inflicted by residents on Councillors and Council staff.

Click link below for audio recording of this event:

It was with the full understanding of the terror we invoke that I attempted to approach the Mayor last Tuesday night, four days following his impassioned national cry for help.

The Mayor will have me “taken out”

At Council meetings, members of the public are allowed a generous three minutes to discuss matters on the official agenda in which they have an interest. I registered to speak on two items regarding coach traffic at one of Australia’s most visited tourist destinations, Echo Point. This sits on the southern edge of my town, Katoomba.¹

When I was called to speak, I knew the Mayor’s self-effacing nature wouldn’t allow him to accept the praise I intended to lavish on him. Instead of waiting till I reached the lectern, I stood and began my tribute to him immediately.

As I wasn’t near the microphone, it may be difficult to hear the recording so I have provided a transcript of our opening exchange. The audio link also contains the two matters I raised.

NB: Some mobile phones don’t allow linking to a specific point in Soundcloud audio so I have provided the exact time below so people can link manually, if they need to.

I congratulate the Mayor on his ABC presentation (starts at 35m 36s)

Me: Last Friday, the Mayor made a powerful presentation to ABC radio.

Mayor: Out of order. Out of order.

Me: I just wanted to check you are not threatened by my appearance.

Mayor: Out of order. Take the microphone or I’ll have you TAKEN OUT.

Me: You’ll send me home again?

Mayor: Take the microphone.

In light of the Trump assassination attempt, the Mayor’s threat to have me “taken out” might have shaken a less extreme right winger but I continued to the mike and took it for my three minutes.

Coaches and Council mismanagement - a 30 year saga

What I learned in preparing for the recent Council meeting was that over one million people arrive annually by coach to Echo Point and this is going to increase. While Council planners have introduced an ingenious local business destroying plan for pay parking in Katoomba town centre, no such disincentive has been placed in the way of coach companies.

I was ONCE one of 4 active members of the Katoomba and Echo Point Planning Advisory Committee. This committee ran from 1996-2001 and was enlisted by the former Deputy Mayor, Jim Angel, to develop a plan for our town not just for the tourist spot on its edge.

While I was on this committee there were plans to impose a $50 fee for coach parking. It was estimated this would work out about $1 per visitor and would cover the use of public facilities, including our roads, by these heavy vehicles and their inhabitants.

A coach-company friendly Councillor argued that fee was excessive and so it was reduced to $20. Council purchased meters to accept this sum but by the time they were installed the fee had been renegotiated down to $10. You will never guess, the machines weren’t designed to take “tenners”.

I lost touch with these brilliant negotiations but soon heard that coach company management had come up with a new plan. Drivers were invited to keep the parking fee if they could get away with dropping visitors at Echo Point and hiding in a back street until pick-up time.

Imagine my amazement when I realised the same scam is operating thirty years later. Ever hopeful, current staff seems to have found a new solution.

It seems during “the 2023 Christmas holiday period there were various occurrences of severe congestion and traffic offenses” and Council has decided it is time to act. Though the report is very discreet, it states under S (Social) in Council’s ESG policy that this technology will improve safety for Council’s enforcement team. Are Council officers being threatened? By whom?

It will be exciting to watch the next phase in this thrilling struggle. Due to start in November, the trial will run for six months and be followed by a cost benefit analysis. What’s another year or two added to thirty?

A night of amusement

In short, it was a night packed with amusement. Best performance in a comedy went to Greens Councillor, Sarah Redshaw.

Her brilliant proposal? That someone should contact staff in the New South Wales Government (NSW) responsible for scheduling rail repairs and ask them not to drive trackwork through our festivals.

In the 30th year of the Winter Magic Festival, one of the biggest community events in the country and the 29th of the Blue Mountains Music Festival, this innovation has to be accounted a Council triumph.

As the longest running director of Winter Magic, I can recall visiting NSW rail head office in Sydney with a colleague and discussing this problem with staff in the late 1990s. From then I would call Jeff at State Rail every December to ensure our event wasn’t interrupted. This allowed us, on occasion, to schedule the 3801 steam locomotive, a great favourite with families.

So wonderful to see Council spring into action so promptly in 2024.

We then heard from our Deputy Mayor who had just returned from the Australian Local Government Association Annual General Assembly in Canberra. She enthusiastically explained what she learned about plans to “Build Back Better”. ²

We’ll let Romola tell the story (starts at 51m 57s)

She told us that other places with high visitation were facing housing problems made worse by AirBnB and about inchoate plans to do something about it. Council has lots of those.

Why is the Mayor calling us right wing

Why am I sharing all of this? Because it provides the context for our Mayor’s mischaracterisation of any opposition he receives. This is part of a much bigger game which we discussed in the recent article on “Strengthening Australia’s Democracy”.³

What he calls right wing extremism is really coming from people challenging his competence, his results and his ludicrous ambitions.

He is rallying troops across the country and there is no greater insult he can sling than to call someone a right wing extremist. This traducement is echoed by mainstream media and is designed to make someone with leprosy more attractive company than anyone you can stick with that label.

Anyone called an extremist must be one. This is a comfort to pseudo-left supporters who need regular convincing that they made the right vax decision, Ukraine needs more military aid and Albo is doing a great job.

The cameo from Australian Catholic University’s Rachel Busbridge at the end of the ABC radio interview was a great example of how our media works. She needed no evidence to smear people she doesn’t know. I wrote to her so she knew a little more about the extremist she was smearing.

But let’s get back to Mayor Mark Greenhill. That’s where the real action is. In a remarkable coincidence, on same March evening that he spoke in defence of Council’s uneven management of our towns, I and others addressed Council’s Net Zero life-stunting plan for mountain families.

That isn’t the coincidence. This was the second month in a row that Council’s recording equipment had failed. I made an open offer of assistance to Council to avoid future repetition of this failure.⁴

At the time of the Mayor’s lament (below), over thirty shops were empty in our town centre. Some, like the old Mountain Ridges, have been empty for 5 years. He tells us it is not his fault but waiting till just before an election to try to do something about it is a little cute. ⁵

The link to the Mayor’s deflection from his own performance is provided here but you have to turn the volume up very loud to hear what is said. For those who don’t have a graphic equaliser, you’ll have to rely on my summary.

Mayor’s town centre lament (3 minutes 35 seconds).

The Mayor pointed to online shopping, the state of economy, high rents and AirBnB as the cause of our towns’ sorry state. In truth, this is most evident in our main town, Katoomba. You know, the town that had the parking meters installed that encourage coaches and many visitors to bypass it on the way to Council’s Echo Point shop.

As usual, he was far too modest. His contribution to the state of the local economy must be given its due recognition. Katoomba hasn’t recovered from Covid. There was his taping off of benches in the hilly main street and strapping down of children’s play equipment in local parks. And his zealously embraced role as Covid Marshall of the West which helped to make visits to the mountains less than inviting.

There was also his abuse of local people who questioned his vast medical knowledge and his notorious slandering of people from the Australian Vaccination-risks Network. Volunteers from this organisation sought Council cooperation in recording the experience of people injured and the families of those killed by vaccines.

His remarkable performance is recorded here as is the support he received from fellow Councillors who displayed some top shelf ignorance.⁶

A September 2021 interview with the Mayor has been linked to a few times but it testifies to his zealous certainty that the Blue Mountains needed some vaccine hubs of our own.

These were part of a brilliant strategy to prevent Covid escaping through the mountains to the west and infecting the rest of Australia. Such responsibility. It aimed to prevent people stopping here too. This continues to work well.

From the interview:

”If people are thinking of sneaking through the Blue Mountains against the orders you’ll get caught”. ⁷

Marketing genius.

What happened to the City of the Arts?

Remember that carparking committee I was on back in the mid-1990s. This was at a time when our Council had a plan for its main town. The community had given it one.

At the first meeting, a sub-committee explained that smart towns make a plan for the town first and fit a carpark into it rather than the other way round. This came as a shock to Council staff at the time and their resentment of our impudence turned into quite a battle.

This was in the shadow of the 2000 Sydney Olympics and it seemed to be a good idea to capitalise on opportunity.

Around this time, the NSW Government announced its plans for the revitalisation of national icons Bondi, Manly and Echo Point. It was our job to convince the main players to include the town of Katoomba up the road. We succeeded.

This culminated in an expert team being brought in to build on the early work of this committee in October 1998. It comprised social planners, urban designers, architects, transport engineers and heritage consultants and more who joined with the broader community to shape a vision for the mountains’ main town. The result was a plan that was both inspiring and achievable.

Katoomba Charrette - a wonderful vision

Link to 1999 Katoomba Outcomes Report & Town Centre Revitalisation Strategy

Unfortunately, management of the project was handed to the same Council that had been hostile to community engagement. Much of the money was wasted on consultants’ fees.

Yet, there were a few wins such as a new library, a cultural centre (completed 13 years later), more parking but many lost opportunities. One great omission was the failure to incorporate an information centre into the final design. We used to joke that people’s first experience on arrival in Katoomba is that of being lost. That is still the case.

The development of this plan occurred contemporaneously with the expanding popularity of two large local festivals that drew on community volunteer energy

This was part of a mountain renaissance.

Winter Magic Festival in Katoomba - the weekend when community, choirs, children, dancers, drummers, musicians, artists and joy take over the streets of this famous town. It has been facing innumerable bureaucratic barriers in recent years.

That final report mapped out a key role for Council in protection and resurrection of a number of unique properties.

On the Savoy:

”Action 7.7.10 - BMCC should devise some sensible regulatory structure to enable a private sector restoration and re-opening of a restored Savoy/Trocadero as a performing arts venue, dance hall, and cinema complex, with on-site parking requirements either reduced or waived”.

In turn, the Clarendon, the Savoy, Hotel Gearin, the Paragon, the Renaissance Centre

All of these properties, once a vital part of our town, are now under-utilised or in a state of possibly permanent desuetude. The old Renaissance / Mt St Mary’s held a Winter Magic ball in 1998 with 400 in attendance. The Clarendon was a delightful comedy theatre and performance space. The stunning backroom of Gearins is only matched by something more extraordinary in the Paragon’s room of mirrors.

Central to the 1990s Katoomba revival was a thriving local arts and music culture. This prompted the then Premier Bob Carr to visit and anoint the Blue Mountains as NSW Inaugural City of the Arts. Council acknowledged this by ensuring official events were enriched by local musicians. “Welcome to Country” now fills this space.

There was a second report to the Charrette Outcomes report that disappeared from memory even faster than a Councillor asked to explain global warming. This was the Katoomba Economic, Employment and Visitor Strategy. It emphasised ways of embedding our local creative community into the visitor experience. Had it been followed we would not be where we are now.

All of that is in the past. Now we have a bright new vision.

Enter the Rockefeller Eco-Fascist Dreamtime

There was a third item I intended to speak to at last Tuesday night’s meeting. A new Destination Management Plan was on the agenda. This is a fancy name for a tourism plan. Destinations are a lot easier to manage than people.

Unfortunately, it was withdrawn at the behest of the CEO, Rosemary Dillon. It seems a member of our Indigenous community had either not been consulted or informed about some aspect of the plan. The dozen or so people who turned up for this matter will need to make a return visit next month in the hope it is not behested again.

Plans for the management of where I live or as Council calls it “The Destination” have moved on from any discussion of arts and local culture.

Mention of our towns and the people that live in it are largely absent too. As part of the Delphi method of public consultation, we were given a preview of the report. Any mentions of towns and its people were as a backdrop to Council’s grand post-community plan.

The Catholic University academic gave us a hint of what this is about when she said:

”[W]e are seeing that a number of local governments in Australia are starting to tackle, kind of, bigger, more controversial divisive issues. It makes sense that they also start to attract more controversy”.

Our Council is tackling these divisive issues but no-one at any level of government wants to talk about them let alone admit they are divisive. Management just wants to get on with the division.

This new vision is that of a Rockefeller inspired eco-fascist dreamtime farce glued to Net Zero and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The ECO Destination endorsement is a hint. How many of Planetary Health in 2015?⁸

This appears to be the national plan in micro. No need to deal with the bulk of the population. All you need to do is hang your arguments on some vague notion of decolonisation and degrowth. Using the Delphi method, they will pull in close a local activist cheer squad captive to their purposes.

Note how quickly community engagement disappeared from the consultation.

Couple this with constant reminders of the evil of humanity, wrapped up in a Laurance Rockefeller (“Mr Conservation”) mirage of Planetary Health and Rights of Nature fraud all in preparation for Natural Asset Class investment. Am I close, Mark? Is your level privy to this information?

All this happens under the batons of Council’s twin conductors.⁹ What the other ten Councillors are there for is unclear other than to nod assent or to applaud the Mayor’s genius. One Greens Councillor has the key role of being the object of the Mayor’s scorn when a public victim is not available. We notice.

Occasionally, they are called on as bit players in an orgy of self-congratulations over some new initiative relating to domestic violence or Council’s extreme LGBTIQA+ agenda.

People should really look into what QUEER represents and its contribution to mental health issues in young people. What are 12 to 17 year olds being exposed to?

The book “Queering of the American Child” is a wonderful introduction to the subject. ¹⁰ ¹¹

You can also find yourself smeared, ridiculed and demeaned for pointing out the extreme United Nations and World Economic Forum agenda to which our Council is committed.

In October 2018, in one of its many panegyrics to his courage, our local newspaper published this:

Mayor Mark seems to have recovered well enough to see it as his responsibility to test the mental health of anyone in the local community who has the gall to disagree with him. He is actively stoking division. He did so at the height of Covid-19 and he is doing it now.

This includes for people who lost family members due to the mRNA / AZ poison. It includes people caring for loved ones injured by the same cause.

The claims he has made regarding meeting disruptions and chaos are simply a lie. Let me speak to him directly:

Mark, you have repeated this lie many times. Are you a liar? No, then set the record straight. These so-called disruptions have simply not happened and this can be proven by anyone who cares to suffer the audio recordings of meetings.

That there have been NO disruptions is testament to public restraint under his provocation.

Many of us can see the agenda he is committing the Blue Mountains to. He knows we can see it but he has a job. He simply hopes his official name calling will convince enough uninformed residents to accept what he claims without further investigation. Life is easier that way.

The damage his indulgent national radio tirades cause¹² do nothing for the reputation of our local community but this is a cost he is willing to bear. This is a cover for his mismanagement and commitment to an anti-societal big picture agenda that has nothing to do with people he is meant to serve.

I wear his ignominy as a large badge of honour.

People should think very, very carefully about their voting intentions come this September.

The Mayor with friends. I am not in this photograph.

1. Council Business Papers for 30th July 2024

2. Build Back Better is a World Economic Forum agenda

3. Strengthening Australia’s Democracy
by Warren Ross

4. I answer a distress call from my Council
by Warren Ross

5. Enough Talk of Smart Cities. We Need Some Smart People
by Warren Ross

6. We Must Protect the Fear
by Warren Ross

7. NSW Blue Mountains mayor wants COVID vax hub:
an interview with tame ABC journalist Tom Oriti.
Tom started out as a presenter at local station BLU-FM

8. Rockefeller and Planetary Health
and Wikipedia Entry

9. The Natural Capital Handbook
a CSIRO publication

10. The Queering of the American Child
by Logan Lansing and James Lindsay

11. What is Queer?
A short video introduction to the subject

12. Battle for the Blue Mountains
by Warren Ross