Voting in local council elections

closes on November 11 this year. The process begins much earlier than that. 

We need to be on the electoral roll for the council by the 31st of July and nominations need to be in by the 8th of September. Information about the candidates will come a little later.

I am wondering if our current Mayor will stand again. It is almost certain she will. In the past she has tried to use her position as Mayor as a springboard into a seat on North Terrace - the location of the state government. It did not succeed. She has had to satisfy herself with being the president of the state's local government organisation instead. 

It is still a rather powerful position. Being Mayor is quite a powerful position too. It is particularly so in an area where people are can afford to be "environmentally conscious" and concerned with issues which are not the direct concern of local government. 

Under the leadership of our current Mayor there has been a dramatic shift to the left. Concerns about "rates, roads and rubbish" have given away to other concerns. Money has been spent on

(1) renaming areas with what are said to be the names used by local tribes and

(2) running classes in what is said to be the local indigenous language and

(3) sessions on how to play a didgeridoo and

(4) classes in traditional basketry.

All these were "indigenous" initiatives which, along with the proposed donation to the Voice to Parliament referendum, have been intended to bring about some sort of "reconciliation". The renaming of areas has been expensive and there is no evidence that the names being used are correct. People find them difficult to remember. The library complex in the hills is consistently referred to by the name of the suburb, not the indigenous name. The supposed local indigenous language is a modern invention built out of what was believed to be used by a small group of plains people before white settlement. The languages spoken in the hills behind me were not the same. The didgeridoo was not known here. It comes from an entirely different part of the country. Traditional basketry comes from an area more than one hundred kilometres away and well outside the council area. All these things cost money, money collected from rates, but they sound good.

The Mayor has also claimed credit for the solar power initiatives and the battery scheme. It has cost taxpayers a great deal but is said to be in line with claims about climate change and the moves to net zero. It is the sort of move which is popular among those with two incomes and children at school. Our Mayor also went off to the climate change conference in South America at our expense. 

These are just a few of the things for which the Mayor has managed to get councillors to vote. I have no doubt we will hear more about these "initiatives" and how "successful" they have been. 

I saw the previous Mayor in the shopping centre a short while back. He doesn't think he will try again. He has failed to win back the position twice now. He knows he is up against a powerful cohort of the Mayor's supporters. They tend to be left wing zealots. They will tell us that "roads, rates and rubbish" are important but they believe that "educating" people about "indigenous culture" and "the environment" are more important. Their streets are being repaved and their footpaths are being repaired. When the community bus does not run through lack of volunteers to drive it then the elderly can "get a taxi". They have views about the proposed housing development on the land owned by the organisation which runs sheltered employment. For them it is simply a matter of those who live there now finding rental accommodation "somewhere else". 

Our country is outrageously over governed. We do not need pseudo-indigenous names and activities. We need help for the intellectually disabled who will have nowhere to go in the area they know. We do not need to rename roads. We need roads without potholes.