To be effective, any new movement in Wollongong will have to make full use of the existing resources for community engagement as are presently provided by the Neighbourhood Forums.

As presently designed, the Neighbourhood Forums would be barely adequate if we had elected Councillors – and since we do not, the workload on representing our communities is comparatively enormous. There was never any real resourcing provided for Neighbourhood Forums by the Adminstrators.

Note that WCC is committed to an external review of Neighbourhood Forums in February and March.

As a matter of the highest priority we should be seriously thinking about what we – as people-in-community really need to make these forums serve our needs, in partnership with a Council which has no democratically elected Councillors until the end of 2012.

The State government has consistently insisted that there will be no elected Councillors in Wollongong until September 2012. Therefore we need a real alternative for handling community business without further delay.

In thinking about what we need by way of effective Neighbourhood Forums, we must also give careful attention to the timeline by which new empowered Neghbourhood Forums must be implemented during the first half of 2010. Otherwise we will be, once again, fobbed off by bureaucrats who agree verbally but fail to take timely action.

The present Neighbourhood Forum arrangements leave all the power in the hands of the State appointed Administrators and the WCC General Manager – a bureaucratic set-up which can never translate community concerns into good local government decisions. They will be most resistant to changing this as the arrangement suits them perfectly – but does so at our communities expense.

It will take a real effort from active people in our communities for the Administrators at WCC to take seriously any real changes to Neighbourhood Forums which will empower people-in-community.

* YOUR LIFESTYLE IS IN YOUR HANDS

* A COMMUNITY MOVEMENT

JOHN HATTON AO, FORMER INDEPENDENT STATE MEMBER FOR SOUTH COAST AND CORRUPTION FIGHTER HAS CALLED FOR A MEETING OF RESIDENTS TO FORM A NON POLITICAL COMMUNITY MOVEMENT BASED ON SHARED COMMITMENT TO OPENESS, ACCOUNTABILITY, TRUTH AND CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN GOVERNANCE.

IT DOES HAPPEN IN SYDNEY, MILDURA AND GREATER SHEPPARTON. WE CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN IN WOLLONGONG ON A NON – PARTY POLITICAL BASIS

THIS IS A MEETING FOR YOU TO SHARE YOUR VIEWS AND LISTEN TO OTHER IDEAS ON VALUES AND WAYS OF MAKING THE COMMUNITY VOICE BE HEARD AND IMPLEMENTED. COME TO:

FRATERNITY CLUB FAIRY MEADOW
on THURSDAY 4TH FEBRUARY 2010
@ 7.00.P.M – 9.00P.M

On behalf of the Organising Committee
Contact: Simone – 0405053176

Approximate location map:

John Hatton has called for committed people to organize a public meeting in Wollongong on Thursday week (4 February) as part of a new movement to be based on values and process.

Outlining his vision at a public lecture at Wollongong University on Wednesday 27 January John Hatton listed key topics for determination at the meeting to include:

• What processes can we put in place to empower our communities?
• Where do we go from here?
• What do we do about corruption?
• How do we de-centralise?
• How do we change the face of the city?

The answer to these question must come from people in our communities – and the Wollongong public meeting on Thursday 4 February is the place to make the start on this task.

John Hatton said the meeting should not be organized by any existing group but be genuinely independent from the outset.

He explained how what is happening in our communities as a failure of process.

There is a need for a new community based movement which is inclusive of all parts of our communities; is founded on integrity and respect; and which genuinely empowers our communities in governmental decision-making processes.

Time and venue to be advised via the media.

Meanwhile, google up a term used by John Hatton “communitarianism”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communitarianism

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/communitarianism/

26 January 2010

Hon K Keneally
Premier, NSW
GPO Box 5341,
Sydney NSW 2000

Dear Premier Keneally.

Local Government Elections Wollongong 2010.

I am writing to seek help from your leadership for the speedy restoration of local government democracy in Wollongong, during 2010.

I see this in terms of a human right as stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“Article 21
1. Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.”

Even at the local government level, the denial of this right in deed and in spirit is, frankly, un-Australian.

The Local Government Act, as I read it, provides for the option of having both Administrators and an elected Council.

The Act states:

255 Governor may dismiss mayor and councillors

(1) The Governor may, by proclamation, declare all civic offices in relation to a council to be vacant if:

(a) a public inquiry concerning the council has been held, and

(b) after considering the results of the inquiry, the Minister has recommended that the Governor make such a declaration.

(2) The Governor may, by proclamation, declare all civic offices in relation to a council to be vacant if the Independent Commission Against Corruption, in a report referred to in section 74C of the Independent Commission Against Corruption Act 1988, recommends that consideration be given to the making of such a declaration because of systemic corruption within the council.

(3) If the Independent Commission Against Corruption makes such a recommendation, all civic offices in relation to the council may be declared vacant under subsection (2) without the holding of a public or other inquiry concerning the council. However, the making of such a recommendation does not preclude the holding of a public or other inquiry.

256 Governor may appoint administrator or order fresh election

(1) By the same proclamation under section 255 or by one or more subsequent proclamations, the Governor is:

(a) to appoint an administrator of the council for a specified term, or

(b) to order the holding of a fresh council election,

or both.

(2) The Governor may, by those or other proclamations, make such further orders as the Minister recommends are necessary in the circumstances.

A BOTH-AND HEALING APPROACH

The proper and appropriate course of action between 2010 and September 2012 (when the next scheduled local government elections are planned) is to have both an elected Wollongong City Council and an Administrator.

This will restore a better degree of balance between the human rights of the citizens and residents of Wollongong and the obligations of responsible government.

It will also enable our local communities to participate fully in addressing present needs and to be part of planning for our social and economic future, in a time of increasing uncertainty.

On the question of costs of a 2010 Council election, we did not have a local government election last time, and are now owed a catch-up one in return for the payment of our taxes and rates.

Yours truly

(signed)
Bruce Reyburn
brucer@reformwcc.info

cc. Hon B O’Farrell, Leader of the Opposition; Hon Sylvia Hale, MLA; Paul McLeay Minister for Illawarra, Greg Pearce Shadow Min Illawarra.

www.reformwcc.info

Here’s an idea for those of us whose Admin side is over-developed at the expense of our creative side:

We need to engage with creative people – creative people who, while concerned about what they see happening to life,  presently would not attend Admin dominated meetings, etc  – and ask them what sort of arrangements they think would improve creative input into local management of community business.

A key to achieving this is to create a context where they would feel empowered to speak their minds and share their insights and thoughts.

I think a lot of the modern forms of organisation work in the other direction – making creative people less likely to actively participate.

Gaining their input could save us Admin dominated types some of the effort of trying to imagine what new arrangements we need to re-balance life in our communities.

The need to make full use of our analytic/admin and creative/arty sides (both sides of our brain) is of the enduring points which emerged from the Uni of Wollongong lecture i attended.

This was purely co-incidental – and we need to recall that many of the things which have contributed to our ways of life have begun as ‘co-incidences’ which have been recognised as having an important role of play when looked at in a new way.

The ‘modern’ forms of organisation are largely dominated by the analytic/admin side, hence the reliance on the rituals of meetings (when real decisions may be made elsewhere) and of reports and graphs etc which can serve to obscure hidden agendas. “How to lie with statistics” is a very dated book now.

This is how decision-making becomes dangerously unearthed.

People are going to have to become more involved in local government matters over the coming decades as the present crisis, resulting from the domination of decision-making by Admin, becomes more directly apparent in our local lives. We have to “re-centre” power and decision-making back into the core of our lives to regain a degree of balance, and this will require a lot of change to the existing arrangements.

“Empowerment” alone is not the answer. We have to empower parts of life which have been systematically silenced during modern times. If we merely ‘empower’ those local people with an overdeveloped Admin side of their Being, we merely create more problems.

An important part of the lessons to be learnt from the shortcomings of ‘the modern’ is we all have to change.

But how can be find ways of bringing our creative sides into better balance with the powerful hold over things now enjoyed by life’s self-proclaimed “Administration Department”? I have pondered this in regard to local governance matters for some years.

We need to reform the ‘unearthed’ decision making by balancing the the need for handling community business in a responsible way by the admin side, with a complementary part which allows us to tap into our creative side – in order to give voice to those all-important parts of life which are systematically factored out by the admin brain. It is not enough to merely empower the Admin side at the local level, we have to empower our creative sides as well (or all is lost).

A POST-MODERN DESIGN AS AN INTERIM MEASURE AS WE MOVE INTO NEW TERRITORY

So far, the best i can come up by way of design (and working within existing constraints) is:

1. a Council with democratically elected community representatives and making decisions on local issues as guided by Ward based Precinct Committees and Neighbourhood forums. Councillors deal with major business, freed of some their present work load by:

2. a new form of Council organisation based on:

(a) Formal Precinct committees (part of Council), which may be Ward based, and whose members are elected and provide conflict of interest statements etc. These to be part of Council and to have some decision-making powers (especially in relation to spending priorities); development approvals and be assisted by dedicated support staff.

(b) Informal Neighbourhood forums, highly localised (within ‘walking distance’ for most people in the same way as the ‘local’ pub used to be a gathering place for the exchange and sharing of information) open to all, and not run on the modern meeting model but in far more relaxed ways which allow adults to talk freely (as a ‘forum’ suggests) and to form a degree of consensus on matters of concern (which is communicated to the Precinct Committees and Councillors).

A key objective has to be to empower the creative side of our Being – and not merely to fine tune the analytical side at the local/micro level – since the analytical side of the brain (when it operates without being balanced by the creative side) is a key part of the problem.

And when we have something like this in place and bedded down – when communities are better connected with life’s decision-making processes – we can see what the next steps may be as we head towards 2050.

Note – This is just a quick sketch – needs a lot more discussion on how to balance out the dominating admin side with our creative parts of Being in the arts of living and dealing with community-life business.

Fine tuning:

1.      15 minute lecture with handout
2.      30 minute Workshop with sample / not compulsory questions
3.      15 minute report back
4.      Provide an extended forum elsewhere if there are those interested in developing particular
issues.

regards

R.

(Sounds good to me – Bruce)

UNIVERSITY LECTURE – A NOTE ON FORMAT

I reckon if we are to form new ways of community empowerment, we need to explore some ways of doing this in these learning situations as well.

As the lectures in POL340 kicked off we were informed that the two CEOs were to talk for 45 minutes each, one after the other. Gad! Time permitting, questions at the end.

This guest speaker approach is also used for other public lectures. I have grown to hate this format with a passion = it makes us passive recipients of information and ignores our mental attention rythmns.

It is especially annoying, i find, when it is used in a ‘group-mind’ situation which could be very productive otherwise – if only we had time to share our thoughts and move on them.

The 45 minute lecture format becomes a kind of ‘broadcast’ which automatically privileges the egos of the guest speakers at the expense of the collective wisdom, talent and hard-won experience of the far larger number of people attending.

Group-mindedness is sacrificed.

A kind of inertia sets in, and then it is very hard to claw back any critical momentum. So much ground has been lost to the listeners due to the linear unwinding of the narrative it is difficult to raise important points – and the context is completely changed at the end of a long talk, where cultural conditioning sets in and we go into “thank the speaker” mode.

I think there is also a sense on the part of the guest speaker that they need to become an entertaining and informative story teller and who feel they must fill the whole available time with the sound of their own voice.

Question time is usually the first thing to be sacrificed for some other purpose (usually poor time management by whoever is in control). And I note that part of the subsequent question time of the public part of the lecture was given over to public relations with the arrival of the local television station (although I had left as they arrived).

However, this said, for enrolled members of the course, there was an hour of tutorial to follow, so that would allow for information processing. I cannot comment on how effective that is.

BETTER USE OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES

There appeared to be a very clunky microphone system in the UoW lecture theatre for people to ask questions. I had no microphone near me and it looked like a major task to get near one. I reckon some of the old hands had positioned themselves at the start of the lecture to be able to commandeer the microphones, to ensure their voices would be heard.

I wonder if there may be some better use of new technologies to link people – such as providing participants with the means to type their ongoing comments onto a screen which could be displayed for all to see as the event unfolds?

A big twittering sort of thing, where the privileged position of the quest speaker is ‘supplemented’ with the points of view of those listening, and shared with all.

NEED FOR BETTER FORMAT – TO ALLOW PROGRESSIVE DECOSNTRUCITON OF THE PRIVILEGED NARRATIVE

it really concentrates the mind of the speaker when they are given twenty minutes to get their main message across, with the remaining time being used for well coordinated participation by way of questions and discussion. I know it is a hard call, when so much information must then be left out.

Not only does a 20 minute talk actively engage us, it allows for systematic deconstruction of the narrative being spun by the speaker, and keeps things on a much tighter track from there on.

There was a real need for such questioning in the case of both speakers.

For example, they never provided any information of the formal structure of their organisations in terms of the role of the community in the formal decision making process of their respective Councils.

I am none the wiser, after hearing the CEO of Sydney Council, if that Council has the same kind of Precinct Committees as have been used in North Sydney (pioneered by that true champion of community involvement Ted Mack, when he was Lord Mayor).

Yes, the Councils of the two guest speakers were “all ears” we learnt as they painted themselves in the glowing colours of community engagement – listening to everybody. But that can’t be the end of the story – who and what is systematically excluded in order for Council staff and elected representatives to just cope with the result of community consultation.

Whose world view is empowered, whose sidelined? Hard issues, i felt, were avoided.

Without this basic information of their respective Council’s decision-making processes, I found it difficult to assess the weight to be attached to the claims being made by the quest speakers about ‘community participation’.

There was no means of asking a question during the presentation which would have allows this basic info to be part of the mix of what we were being asked to digest.

We really do need to learn to move towards a group approch which will allow us all to actively participate as Beings in our own right – and not be reduced to passive extras in the fantasies of others.

But, that all being said, it is terrific that this course is taking place over summer at the University of Wollongong. Some fine tuning is all that is required, and a move away from long lectures which provide a platform for the guest speaker but render us passive in the process.

Any fine-tuning ideas, anyone?

Dear Premier Keneally,

Wollongong Local Government Election 2010

In the absence of any compelling evidence of systemic corruption on the part of our non-corrupt Councillors, the people of Wollongong have been wrongly deprived of our elected Councillors. It is now time for you, as Premier, to take timely action to right this most serious of wrongs

On my reading of the Local Government Act it is possible to have both Administrators and an elected Council. This both-and approach should be implemented as an interim measure between 2010 and the next scheduled local government election in September 2012 to ensure that any real reforms are properly bedded down.

As taxpayers, we did not get our local Council election last time. There was no refund on our taxes. You owe us one!

Please tell us what you now propose to do to restore our elected Council in Wollongong in 2010.

Bruce Reyburn
www.reformwcc.info

(Send your own message to the Premier at http://www.premier.nsw.gov.au/contact

Hi J.

My project for the last year or so, with the reformwcc.info website, has been to
encourage a community conversation about how to reform Wollongong City Council so it
actually better serves the real needs of people who live in Wollongong.

In very broad terms my reform vision, for what it is worth, has:

1. a Council with democratically elected community independents holding the balance of
power and making decisions on local issues as guided by Ward based Precinct Committees
and Neighbourhood forums.

2. a new form of Council organisation which is re-centralised into our local communities
based on:

(a) Formal Precinct committees, which may be Ward based, and whose members are elected
and provide conflict of interest statements etc. These to be part of Council and to have
some decision-making powers, and be assisted by dedicated support staff.

(b) Informal Neighbourhood forums, highly localised (within ‘walking distance’ for most
locals) open to all, and not run on the modern meeting model but in far more relaxed ways
which allow adults to talk freely and form a degree of consensus.

With the unfair dismissal of our non-corrupt Councillors – and the trashing of our
democratic rights to be represented at all times – i have added the need for a Council
election in Wollongong in 2010. So far, without any success. Need a lot more people
lobbying for this to happen.

COMMUNITY REFORM AGENDA – NEED FOR UPDATING

See also the link to the Community Reform Agenda under “Agenda” at the top of the
reformwcc.info website which provides some more detail about reform, and also in relation to
amending the Local Government Act.

This reform agenda is now dated and in need of updating by those who would like to see
our communities having a real say about what happens in the places where we live.

cheers

Bruce