Monday 31 December 2007

Some reasons why

Here's just a few reasons to ponder why the Cairns community will throw out this Council in March 2008... and what it's all really about...

  • It's about the systematic removal of community camping grounds over the last 6 years (Woree, Yorkeys Knob, Gorndonvale, Clifton Beach)
  • It's about the lack of respect for what local communities want their community to look like and not consulting.
  • It's about treating our ecological environment and native wildlife as movable or replaceable obstacles.
  • It's about not understanding what the tourism brochures market and why over 3 million visitors a year come to see what we have to offer, yet is disappearing under a Byrne-led government.
  • It's about turning Buchans Point, Woree, Clifton Beach into another apartment block.
  • It's about thinking you're smarter than a professor, calling experts neanderthals and saying that we've never ever had a natural disaster ever hit in the history Cairns.
  • It's about not understanding what residents want as a place to live and what we want our children to inherit.
  • It's about missing the point when it's funny to be funny, and when it's simply a bad call to dress up with a tea towel on your head.
  • It's about realising it not a bad idea to turn up to functions on time as every councillor is a servant of the people, not the other way around.
  • It's about the mass ground-swell of informed educated locals that want to put a stop to plunging our lifestyle and the visual appearance in our town.
  • It's about allowing free and fair debate about how a Council uses public funds, instead of suing anyone who speaks out with a different view.

These are just some of my favourite things....

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

When a drunk in a pub makes fun out of the death of another human being it is distasteful.

When someone who represents a city does this it's downright revolting.

Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery wrote in 2005 that President Arafat was probably murdered. Averny concludes that initial claims Arafat suffered from Aids were discredited; poisoning was a more likely cause of death. The collapse of Palestinian unity since Arafat's death highlights his importance, while alive, as a unifying figure and explains Sharon's brutal and ultimately successful assault on his leadership.

In shorty, our local Mayor mocked the death of someone who also happened to be a national leader and may well have been murdered!

Cairns does have better ambassadors for our good name.

The local sense of humour is generally a notch or two up on this.

Lucky there's an election coming...

Anonymous said...

I guess we'll be seeing the mayor dressed up as Benazir Bhutto at a function sometime soon.

Anonymous said...

Another reason to throw out this deceitful Council, is to open up the decision making processes.

Delegate Authorities (where planning decisions get done behind closed doors instead of at a Council meetings), secret deals with developers (carrot and stick deals), "unhealthy friendships" with developers, and secret meetings that lock the majority out, have seen the loss of green space, loss of caravan parks, loss of public roads, residents locked out meetings and decision making on local issues such as the rock wall at Clifton that have adversely and negatively impacted on and then divided their communities.
We also need local Councillors to attend community meetings!

Anonymous said...

Exactly. There has been precious little interaction between Councillors and the people they are supposed to represent. Yet every suburb has halls or venues where Councillors can hold deputations with their voters. Desley Boyle drives round in a bus every now and then, and I meet up with her to discuss any issue which bothers me at the local Church here.
Why can't Councillors be as accessible? I have given up trying to phone my councillor.