Crocodiles, Cookers and Consent

What passes for public debate in our Blue Mountains

Last week, Anzac Day bumped our regular Tuesday Blue Mountains City Council meeting to Wednesday. Two agenda items snared my attention. The first was discussion of a new management plan for the North Katoomba Community Gardens. The Gardens opened in 1995 due to the efforts of a few local families, including my own. The second item outlined Council initiatives aimed at acknowledging and supporting transgender members of our community.

Neither seemed to demand any immediate attention from me. Agenda Item 6, the gardens plans, will go on public exhibition before decisions are made. And Item14 called for increased flag waving, $2,000 for an IDAHOBIT day and a plan for local business to “promote environments that are visibly welcoming and inclusive of LGBTIQ+ people”. Will Council and community events soon open with Welcome by Gender invitations followed by the usual Welcome to Country? Other than this shallow reflection, I gave these matters little thought.

A very unusual meeting

Other members of my community gave things a lot of thought. And they decided to attend. Few going for the first time knew just how brave or foolhardy this decision could be. Depending on the significance of the matters discussed, the loquacity and self-importance that Councillors often channel can make for a very long night. Meetings have even been known to run into the next day.

Imagine my surprise on being told by friends that the meeting lasted just twenty four minutes. How? Let me explain.

Proceedings opened with General Manager, Rosemary Dillon, warning the gallery that the public’s opportunity to request to speak had expired and that naughty members of the public could be charged with defamation as the event was being recorded. As a sometime veteran of Council meetings, I found this a charming addition to proceedings.

Our Mayor, better known (by me) as Captain Fear, now took the stage. Most of the remaining 24 minutes were his. He welcomed locals to the country of the Dharug and Gundungurra people and told attendees what this included: everything in the cultural, spiritual and physical landscape, landforms, waters, air, trees, rocks, plants, animals, foods, medicines, minerals, stories and special places, cultural practice, kinship, knowledge, songs, stories and art as well as spiritual beings and people past, present and future. Unfortunately, insects did not get a run. He rounded up with the usual respect to elders past and present, present and past. Please let the good Captain know if he left anything out. According to his office, redundancy is welcomed.

The real show begins

Anyone waiting for Item 14 might reasonably have expected the evening to test their patience.

As part of item 1, Mayor Greenhill forewarned us of future rate rises of 50-100% and made it VERY clear that none of this was his or his Council’s fault. He was very angry. The NSW Valuer-General should resign. Can someone check whether it has happened? I remember going through a similar process around 10 years ago. Three rate options were offered by Council which pretty much amounted to lose an ear, lose an eye or lose a leg. After a series of consultative public meetings run by the current general manager, holding a more junior role, we were told the community had chosen Council’s preferred option that we give up a leg.

The unusually large gallery continued to wait, commendably, with no sign of agitation. Discussion of item 2 ensued. This is known locally as the Crocodile Park development. Plans have been submitted for this to be built in the mountains most conservative town, Wentworth Falls. We understand the facility will include fresh and saltwater crocodiles (not mentioned in the Mayor’s Welcome to Country), dingoes, koala breeding, emu and cassowary exhibits. We have to hope good money is spent on fencing. Otherwise, visitors might find themselves sharing the Charles Darwin Walk with a “salty”.

The remaining agenda items were strung together and passed as a block. All except for agenda Item 14 which was drawn out to stand alone by Councillor Fell, after a brief stumble.

With just 2 minutes left of the meeting, the big moment had arrived. Item 14, Councillor West’s Notice of Motion was moved (see clarification of voting on Notices of Motion in comments below), voted on, passed with the only Councillor Sage voting against. It took about 15 seconds. What followed? Nothing. There was no hint of revolution that seems to have stoked timidity in the Mayor, Councillors and fraught staff.

The public had been denied the opportunity to speak to this matter and the justice or injustice of this will be found in Council’s Code of Meeting Practice. An initial reading of this code failed to reveal which facts were operating here. An email I have just sent to the General Manager should clear this up.

Were there any members of the transgender community there? If they were, they could only have been disappointed at being denied the opportunity to speak in support of the motion. I heard of at least one member of the L part of LGBTIQ+ alphabet who was there on the night and would have shared this disappointment.

Why were they there?

So what drew this big crowd at this time? There has been much talk in media about drag shows in libraries, gender education programs in schools and transgender as an option for young people. Are these events of relevance to our community? Many thought they were and Item 14 might have been part of them.

What their concerns actually were we may never know. I know some who attended were quite ignorant of Council processes and were simply going to inform themselves as to how Council works. Concern about the profusion of events like this (see below) may have contributed. Yet, people went for a variety reasons and I don’t see it as my role to attribute malign motives to them.

My concern is the Mayor and Councillors’ extraordinary response

This is NOT a view shared by our Mayor or two of our Councillors. Before yesterday, I had not heard of the Star Observer with which Captain Fear seems to have strong rapport. Was the journalist there on the night? If not, they may have relied on the Mayor’s unbiased report. I know the Blue Mountains Gazette had a representative. Have a quick read of Councillor Redshaw and Hoare’s analysis. I’ll pick up the story below:

From Facebook:

In the gallery, there were members of the LGBTQI+ community and a solicitor, a doctor, several nurses, artists, community workers, a couple of psychologists, a cafe owner, an educator and an engineer. And that is only what I was told. Our Greens Councillors felt entitled to label these people a mix of confused, misguided, far right and easily influenced.

The Greens support Free Speech except when they don’t

We might also note denying free speech “was not aligned to the Greens’ usual commitment to Grassroots Democracy”. Our heroes sought to “avoid disruptive behaviour” and “to protect the staff” from words. Really? This is like saying I believe in free speech except when I don’t. I invite you to listen to this official recording of the meeting. I have NEVER noted a more respectful gallery. I can’t say heard because they DID NOT make a noise. The level of free speech Sarah and Brent want us to celebrate is that which has characterised discussion of health policy in the past few years.

AND JUST HOW WERE STAFF THREATENED?

I rang both Councillors last Monday. I actually invited Brent, who I know quite well, for a coffee. I am still awaiting his return call. This is the problem. Each day a politician stays in office, they become more distant from their community. This is true at all levels of government. You can’t serve two masters so you have to pretend to one. Sometimes this becomes very obvious.

Will no-one rid [us] of this turbulent Mayor?

But let’s save this last space for Captain Fear, our Mayor. As part of his “We Shall fight them on the mountains” speech we quote from the Star Observer:
“Members of the large group that turned up at OUR meeting told staff that they were there in opposition to the motion”.

Mark, that is what people are supposed to do. It is required to get on the list to speak. Do you want to censor this too? And what is the opposite of freedom? Lockdown? This is a practice in which your party has led the world.
From Facebook:

I was director of one of Australia’s largest community festivals for many years, the Winter Magic Festival in Katoomba. For many more, I was a member of the organising committee. My role in the local Community Gardens is mentioned above. What I didn’t mention is that a key part of my contribution was negotiating with Council in its establishment. Our council was once a more community spirited place. I was head of the Blue Mountains Arts Council that ran the biggest community art exhibitions the Blue Mountains has ever seen. This long-running regular event was destroyed by a Council pricing structure for the hire of halls. Meanwhile, a key example of the Mayor’s contribution to local culture is profiled in an earlier article.

Now, people like me are smeared as far-right wingers.

Part of the reason for this is that important people get annoyed when lesser ones ask questions…and when denied an answer, ask them again. Here, we are expected to submit to the Mayor’s invocation of the ABC and its journalistic staff (see above) as the supreme chroniclers of truth. Yet, since July 2019, the ABC has been part of an international organisation named: “The Trusted News Initiative”.

ABC management owned up to this in November last year. They now take training on handling disinformation from Google, a company with expanding financial interests in biotech innovation through companies like Verily. This might go some way to explain the appalling quality of health debate in Australia.

I might add that the explosion into public consciousness of this growing and very well-funded transgender push is about as organic and grassroots as Roundup.

The worst of the Labor Party has always sneered at the public for getting in the way of their various agendas. They posture as champions of working class values but increasingly their policies reflect those of very powerful interests. Few characterise this trend more clearly than Captain Fear. Mark, you do not know why those people went to YOUR meeting. You didn’t speak to them. A couple of the sycophants that nod when you say nod may have but you didn’t.

One of the “nods” tell me you now refer to people like me as “cookers” which means a drug addict. That is what passes in many official circles for public to Council interaction today. Polite company prevents me from responding in kind.

It is vitally important for a type of politician to have an enemy to demonise. Don’t be gulled by their unctuous displays of devotion to the public interest. They conceal more than reveal.

We are living in an age of Agnotology:
The study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt.

This is reinforced by misology:
The fear of conversation and debate.

We had better find our courage before it is too late.

What is a cooker?
A cooker is the container used for mixing and heating a drug. Some drugs are sold as powder, crystals (rocks), or tablets. To be injected, they should be fully dissolved in sterile water and cooking the drug facilitates this process.

Cooker is a strange label to put on people who resisted the most reckless, officially mandated, drug experiment ever imposed on the world.