I answer a distress call from my Council

Ask not what your Council can do for you .........

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary a patriot is:

“One who loves and supports his or her country”.

Well, I don’t know what the equivalent term is for someone who loves their local Council but that is where my devotion lies.

Try to imagine my distress at realising our poor Council is in such a desperate situation that it now lacks the resources to record important local events such as Council meetings and talks.

Though they should make the effort, not everyone has the time or the passion that drives people like me to experience the thrill of live Council meetings. Even my attendances are a little spasmodic.

Some residents face physical barriers. Only these recordings guarantee them the joy of seeing or hearing how well their spiralling rates, fees and fines are being deployed

I am not one for scaremongering but squeamish local people might like to turn away for a moment. What if Council’s recording equipment failed and we missed one of our Mayor’s life enhancing pronunciamientos?

3 Black Swan events?

Sadly, it was news of this failed audio equipment that shattered the Council inspired domestic tranquility of my home last Thursday night. I will say more on this in a moment after providing a little context.

Recently, a number of strange occurrences have forced my close engagement with Council staff. The first of these occurred on the 23rd November last year when a fellow named Mark Diesendorf launched his book: “The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation”. This was hosted by Council’s ballooning Blue Mountains Planetary Health Initiative (BMPHI).

The talk proceeded without incident and was followed by question time. My question was the second one asked on that night. As the event was being recorded, I looked forward to enjoying it again. This time in the comfort of my home.

Sadly, I was robbed of the full experience. Something must have gone wrong as lack of recording space, time or a maybe a black swan event resulted in all the questioners along with their questions being cut from the video recording. Only Mark Diesendorf’s talk and his answers remained.

This had the effect of suggesting Mark was suffering some form of dementia as his thoughts seemed to flit from one subject to another with no apparent connection between them.

Clearly, our Council was in trouble. A second was when the audio of this February’s Council meeting failed completely. The previous month, members of the community had started sharing highlights of Council meetings from the Soundcloud recordings. Short pieces from the Mayor and his Deputy were particularly exhilarating.

EMAILING STAFF AND COUNCILLORS:. This is another useful tip. All you need know is their first and surnames to email them. For example Mark Greenhill’s email address is mgreenhill@bmcc.nsw.gov.au or try rhollywood@bmcc.nsw.gov.au. Emailing staff works the same way.

A third incident occurred in the last few days. The recording of the most recent Council meeting was of such poor quality that despite turning up the volume on my laptop to absolute maximum, the Mayor’s eagerly awaited, monthly Welcome to Country was, at best, an inaudible whisper.

I and a couple of colleagues spoke at that meeting but due to these recording mishaps our efforts may never be heard. Thinking that Council almost certainly shared my distress, I wondered how staff failed to recognise the poor quality of the audio.

On Thursday, two days after the meeting, I decided to call Council to find out what had gone wrong.

The first story I was told was that a new fellow was on the job and his continued tenure may be in trouble. I was promised an attempt would be made to boost the audio but I had an uneasy feeling about the level of commitment attached to that promise. So I decided to write to the CEO and reinforce to her the importance of these recordings to the community.

That night, I received this reply:

This looked to me like a cry of distress and a call to action. But what did Rosemary want me to do? What could I do? As a Council patriot, it was my job to come up with something.

So all of these problems were caused by Council’s inability to afford functioning audio-visual equipment. I have a plan to address this but please indulge me. This plan needs a little background before it will makes sense to either of us.

We are racing to net zero

Few Councils can be more committed to the C40 Cities “Race to Net Zero”, the related Rockefeller Planetary Health program and its Resilient Cities agenda than ours. You can see partial evidence of this commitment in the green sidebar below.

It was on these very subjects that my colleagues and I addressed Council last Tuesday night. Next time, we hope to share a recording. In its stead, I’ll give you a brief summary of events.

We were there to help Council with its Net Zero program which we felt had gone a little off track. Based on our questions, debate between Councillors and ultimately their decision, Item 19 on the agenda would either be accepted and subsequently passed by the meeting to be placed on exhibition for public comment or sent back to staff for rework.

My focus was on a couple of beautifully presented Council reports: ¹ ²

Speaking in unison in the opening pages of the Community Net Zero Plan, the Mayor and CEO explained:

”But with local councils in NSW responsible for just 1% of energy-related emissions in their communities, Council’s actions represent just a fraction of what is required”.

What a remarkable Council in a remarkable state!!!! Unfortunately, we residents are authors of a different story as told on page 7:

”Local emissions data tells us the residential sector contributes significantly 75% to the overall emissions profile of the Blue Mountains”.

Although the message conveyed by these quotes is a subtle one, I think we can discern where the problem is. With this help I have narrowed it down to you and me. Are we worthy of such a Council? Clearly, we are letting this fine self-effacing institution down. Further, I am willing to bet, based on years of observation, that our Council’s output is close to the lowest in the state.

Is Council’s renowned frugality contributing to these audio-visual problems? If they are, could the state risk pushing New South Wales Councils’ energy emissions to 1.000000001% so BMCC (Blue Mountains City Council) can purchase or hire some recording equipment?

In another extract from the plan, Mayor Greenhill and CEO Dillon amazed us with plans for:

“new carbon renewal projects”.

This prompted my curiosity so during my address to Council I asked what was the precise nature of the carbon they wanted to remove. I am still awaiting an answer and not without trepidation.

Council’s Miraculous Model

I then shared with the meeting my astonishment at the magical powers of Council’s Sustainability Model referred to on page 6 of the Community Net Zero Plan. This is a very powerful SKETCH.

We learn this Model, “established” more than 20 years ago:

“focuses on the improvement of quality of life: both for ourselves AND for the planet.

“emphasises fair and equitable action at all levels, from the individual to a global scale”.

and that there is a:

“fundamental recognition of the inherent connection between the quality of life of people and the life of the planet, also closely accords with the discipline of planetary health”.

The importance of this model and sketch is emphasised by the fact it has its very own PDF file on the Council website.

Who Removed Net Zero from the Community Strategic Plan?

“Council’s commitment to reduce emissions is driven by the Community Strategic Plan”.
p6 Community Net Zero Plan

This part of Council’s Net Zero Plan left me a little confused.

If the Community Strategic Plan (one on right of two documents shown side by side above) is DRIVING Council’s commendable, if frenzied, attack on residential emissions, shouldn’t the Community Strategic Plan mention them?

Yet net zero appears NOT AT ALL in the report and emissions are only referred to once with regard to gas. If you think that drove a hole through Council’s report or gave our Councillors a moment’s pause in their decision to endorse the plan, you don’t know our Council. They simply relied on people not noticing.

With full confidence in their staff, Councillors voted unanimously to ignore what appeared, to an untrained eye, a glaring omission. I only mention this because if I don’t some malign member of the public may do so while lacking my constructive intent.

Meanwhile, our Council wants people to know it is open for climate change business. Who could doubt it?

Our Council is Open for Business!!! Who could doubt it?

The last area in which I sought to give Council a little assistance was community engagement.

NSW LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACT 1993 - SECT 402A

402A Community engagement strategy

“A council must establish and implement a strategy (called its "community engagement strategy" ) for engagement with the local community when developing its plans, policies and programs and for the purpose of determining its activities (other than routine administrative matters)”.

In recognition of the importance of community engagement, I thought I would look at how well council had engaged with us over net zero. When Council first made this commitment to zeroing our emissions and much of what we currently know as our lives, it did so as part of its Operational Plan for 2022-2026.

In an accompanying document to the plan (see Council Response image below), we were provided a SUMMARY of public submissions. 6 of 18 raised concerns related to Smart Cities, United Nations, World Economic Forum and Rockefeller overreach.

As these 18 are a summary, do you think Council would have understated or overstated the degree of public concern in deciding which submissions to display?. I’ll leave you to back a side.

Concealed in this little known document were assurances such as may be found below:

This was a question I ran out of time to ask at Council last Tuesday so I ask it here: To COUNCILLORS - “You appear to be involved in a large public grooming program on behalf of people who you say offer you no reward.  Why is that?”

A check of the record shows that no Councillor expressed any interest in these public concerns. As described above, at no point during last Tuesday’s address to Council did the matters we raised cause the slightest perturbation for our elected representatives. An admirable blitheness characterises their response to the most harrowing of dilemmas. This was about as blithe as things can get.

It is almost as though they had conducted a meeting to sort out any differences before facing the public. There probably weren’t any differences anyway. This is a united Council. They know who the enemy is. One of my favourite examples of Council’s deliberative processes occurred two years ago. I’ll leave you to research it.³

At the end of my Council address, I drew a comparison of Councillors attention to other matters they perceive as of more urgent public interest such as IDAHOBIT celebrations. ⁴ It is clear that Council sees the latter event as more pressing than the major restructuring of our lives being planned under net zero thinking.

I stated:

”Had it been Idahobit week, half of you Councillors would have been in the Gazette giggling in front of a rainbow flag.  Yet, there was not even a press release alerting the community [to net zero]”.

This was offered, merely, as an interesting observation and without a hint of judgment.

IDAHOBIT DAY, one of our Councillors’ favourite events

Were you acknowledged?

Finally, we move to another example of the type of community engagement that this Council welcomes. It is here we learn whose counsel Council sought. The net zero planning document provides a wonderful example of community consultation on page 21:

”Community consultation including:

- Stakeholder research to identify interested climate active community groups and individuals in the LGA.

- Contact with over 120 stakeholders to gauge interest and to determine appropriate methods for engagement around devising a pathway to net zero”.

So, it seems, whether we should proceed to Net Zero was never an option. Not that I can claim to be seeing everything that happened from here but the IAP2 protocol is a failproof method used by meeting facilitators to deliver what their paymasters want.

You know the “put your ideas on this butcher’s paper. We’ll (the consultants) go away and compile your scribblings and come back later to tell you what you thought”.

This is taken from the official IAP2 page but a similar file with exactly the same categorisation can be found on Blue Mountains City Council’s website.

This guarantees nothing occurs to upset Council’s well considered plans; certainly not public interest and unwelcome participants. Here, support for net zero appears to have determined a person’s suitability to engage. I think this is how Council IAP2 consultation protocols are supposed to work. And didn’t they work beautifully on this project.

How do I know? Firstly, by how little public awareness there seems to be around this zeroing project. Dissenters dissent and there has been little that I can see. My second reason for calling this a screening success is from seeing who was acknowledged as contributing to the final, glossy report. Here they are:

These are the people who represented your interests in this planning.

It is wonderful to see Blue Mountains Parents for Climate involved. I understand this Facebook group has close links with Parents for Puppies and Parents Who Trust the Science. Great to see Blue Mountain Bags there too but I am not sure what their climate expertise is.

Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute (BMWHI), sponsored by Coca Cola, got a run (see middle of their linked page for sponsors). This organisation also has the support of IUCN , an organisation set up by former UNESCO Directory General and eugenicist, Julian Huxley (here is a fascinating article that displays Huxley’s love of humanity). And it is just one MORE organisation with Rockefeller links⁵. In addition, The Hager Group is also a strong supporter of the United Nations and BMWHI.

Resilient Blue Mountains was invited to participate but there is little evidence of its role in the community. Its website shows no-one taking credit for the work. Only a record of someone attending a BM Planetary Health Strategy Workshop on 31st July 2022 offer any hope of a local connection. Photos of Susan Templeman, our Federal member, don’t count as grassroots activity.

Acknowledged local neighbourhood and community centres, often victims of Stockholm Syndrome, can usually be counted on to support a government cause as we see here. They have not let Council and the Labor Party down.

And no matter how many local permaculturists you use to dress it up, there is no doubt that Planetary Health is a Rockefeller project. Few people would contest this Trillionaire family’s claim to be the modern drivers of this concept.

Now, don’t get me wrong on this. I was something of a permaculturist myself and I still believe many of its ideas can help to make a better world. I know many of the people engaged through the local Planetary Health show do so for excellent reasons. Yet, at its core they should know that what our Council is pushing is more Bill Gates than Bill Mollison.

Lastly, where was your input if you weren’t one of the chosen? Maybe it was included in this line at the bottom of acknowledgements:

“Community members who completed the community survey …..”

Sadly for you, that is the part of the IAP2 protocol that gets ignored. You have to be invited to one of the Community Engagement “Parties”, as represented by the boxes on the right, labelled COLLABORATE and EMPOWER to have your opinion matter.

In fact, this protocol appears to have been critical in the initial formation of the Blue Mountains Planetary Health Initiative. I will have more to say on this in a later article. To finish off this point let’s have a look at some of the partnerships the local acknowledged Planetary Health Initiative has formed or plans to form.

The presence of current Blue Mountains Planetary Health Initiative Committee (BMPHI) member Tony Capon at these 2022 meetings suggests an early Council relationship with Rockefeller headquarters. His links with the Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on Planetary Health and other international bodies are extensive.

The presence of Juan Francisco Salazar on Planetary Health Committee brings in the World Economic Forum. As Associate Professor, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University (WSU), he brings in the values of one the world’s great centres of WOKE. Juan is also a media anthropologist. Don’t ask.

⁶
The Net Zero reports show a number of powerful international connections in which Council is very much the junior player: C40 Race to Net Zero, ⁷ Global Covenant of Mayors, ICLEI, CDP, WWF, the World Resources Institute ⁸, Resilient Sydney and the Conference of Parties (COP).

Of these, ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability) is of particular interest. Council has had a relationship with this outfit going back to May 2005. Another organisation getting a special mention in the Net Zero Report and the BMPHI proposed partnerships is COP (Conference of Parties).

Together with UN-Habitat, these three organisations hosted a Multilevel Action & Urbanization Pavilion at COP 28 last year. ⁹ The role of COP meetings is discussed in more details here: ¹⁰ And of course, the Rockefellers have links here too. ¹¹

If you are wondering about Rockefeller links to C40 Cities’ and its funders, I can tell you they are almost total. The Rockefellers feature heavily in these as do major players like Bloomberg and George Soros’s Open Society. In fact, all bar one or two of these supporters link back to the Rockefeller Foundation or one of its many subsidiaries.

At last, my plan to help Council

So I get to my plan. Thanks for staying with me. With such a strong and growing relationship with the Rockefellers, why doesn’t our Council ask for a little support? You and I know why. It can be hard to humble yourself and ask a friend, especially a wealthy one, for help. This is especially the case in the early phase of a relationship.

My solution is that I will ask them for support instead. I will write to these Rockefeller affiliates and tell them their friend is having financial troubles. And then step back.

Council is already touting the work of Sir Andy Haines in its Planetary Health literature. Andy is Professor of Environmental Change and Public Health at the Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health.

This centre is part of Oxford University. You know, the one that gave us the highly successful Astra Zeneca vaccine ¹²

Our other contact is Tony Capon with Lancet-Rockefeller Commission. Damn it, he is on the BMPHI board. That must count for something. His tight links with the Monash Sustainable Development Institute offers another opportunity.

That university receives Gates money and also has a strong link to Moderna and Steve Bancel as a manufacturing site for his injections. The abandonment of Monash’s Ivermectin studies cleared the way for the uni to make some real money. ¹³

In closing, I want to express my amazement at the zeal with which Council has entered into the climate battle in recent years. It is as though it has found a cause.

I remember when there were similar hopes for an arts led revival in the mountains. As I have explained too often before, the Blue Mountains was New South Wales inaugural City of the Arts. In fact, one of the partnerships Council proposes to investigate is with is the arts focused UNESCO Creative Cities. We could probably do better than that but what happened to the Blue Mountains’ arts focus?

In a serendipitous moment, when I clicked on the City of the Arts image, the content is not available came up. It seemed astonishingly apt.

The local hopes attached to this old artistic vision had a vastly different emphasis. Whereas we now dilate on scarcity, we once saw abundance. Whereas we are now encouraged to fetishize notions of net zero, degrowth and denial, we once saw a future world where this abundance would allow more and more of us to explore our creativity and find the courage to conquer self-imposed limitations.

Where do you think people like the Rockefellers want to take us? You do know they have a long and sinister preoccupation with racial purity, depopulation and eugenics. I am not saying this is bad. Just sayin’. We might at least have a conversation about it.

You do know that an incredible amount of the shaping of the climate debate over a very long time has been and is being carried out with the backing of Rockefeller money. Yes, they have friends like Bill Gates but he is a mere parvenu.

Increasingly, all levels of government including our Council, seem wedded to this Rockefeller dystopia. I am not saying it is bad. Just sayin’.

Are you looking forward to your Digital Id? Of course you are. You want to be included.

One last thing. Some troublesome friends keep babbling about this video and telling me it is essential viewing. This terrifies me. What if it changed my opinion of government … or even worse, my Council?

How about you watch it for me and tell the rest of us what you think.

1. You can download your own copy of the Sustainable Blue Mountains - Community Strategic Plan.

2. You can download your own copy of the Community Net Zero Plan

3. This is part of the Captain Fear series that features our Mayor. At a Council meeting, he pretended to be completely unaware of Council’s engagement with any of the organisations highlighted in this document and in this article. He also invited fellow grovelilng Councillors to join him in ridiculing anyone who disagreed with his uninformed views. (See YouTube clip contained in the article for a recording of this event).

4. Numerous links on Council’s website telating to IDAHOBIT

5. “In the mid-1980s, Steven Rockefeller became involved with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which had published the World Conservation Strategy, an influential document in twentieth century conservation and the first to introduce the concept of sustainable development. The IUCN’s subsequent World Charter for Nature, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1982, called for a new ethic of respect for nature and sustainable resource use”.
from Rockefeller Brothers Fund - Conservation and the Environment.

6. In the proposed list of partnerships, Councils states plans to “connect with the Rockefeller Foundation” which it has assuredly done. It also wants “to be part of the Australian Government bid to host the next COP”. We now have a very ambitious Council wanting to work with and be part of the manouvering of the world’s biggest financial players.

7. Our Mayor’s connection to C40 Cities is celebrated here:
”“The Blue Mountains community, which is heavily dependent on tourism dollars, has largely been cut off since October 2019. Some people simply cannot afford to rebuild their homes, and many have lost their jobs. We can’t pay the price of inaction much longer.”
These were policies he endorsed. Some excellent endorsing can be found in the YouTube clip linked in this article.

8. “World Resources Institute has been proud to partner with The Rockefeller Foundation to address some of the most important issues of the day. We’re pleased to see the Foundation bringing its deep expertise, innovative funding and convening power to the global fight against climate change through its new strategy. With Rockefeller’s leadership, we can all design and deliver the Big Bets needed to transform communities in favor of people, nature, and climate. We look forward to engaging with the Foundation in the years and decades ahead.”
― Ani Dasgupta, President and CEO, World Resources Institute (WRI) - 15th Sept 2023

9. ICLEI, Conference of Parties and UN-Habitat at COP 28 in December 2023

10. Climate change is depicted as not just an environmental problem but also a financial, social and economic one. “Fiscal Space” must be found within government budgets to meet these related problems. Where these budgets fall short, the biggest financial organisations in world who attend COP gatherings, will happily fill the gap.
see Iain Davis - Sustainable Debt Slavery

11. Projects related to thematic areas of urban biodiversity, energy efficiency, renewable energy, climate change, mobility, built environment, sustainability management, water, green growth etc are executed by ICLEI South Asia through support from several donors (BMUV, British High Commission, European Commission, GIZ, SHAKTI Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, USDOS, USAEP, USAID, etc

12. This is worthy listening. Fran Kelly interviews the creators of Astra Zeneca. It is an hilarious interview not least for Fran’s gushing “What normally takes 10 years, you achieved in 65 days”.

13. One of the great Covid mysteries was the disappearance of Monash University's investigation of Ivermectin as a cure. Dr Kylie Wagstaff and Professor David Jans were quite hopeful of success as early as April 2020 but their work disappeared completely. Next we knew, Monash was a new Australian manufacturing base for the Moderna poison.