Reform Wollongong City Council

We can thank the NSW ALP for the invasion of parking meters in the Wollongong CBD area.

These unwanted parking meters have caused enormous problems for local businesses and a host of lesser annoyances for a great number of people.

The people of Wollongong did not request these money machines to be placed in our streets. This is not the Wollongong way. Wollongong people have our own culture and our own way of life – and this does not involve parking meters. Nor are parking meters appropriate in a multifocal city of our kind, where we have many different local centres.

It has often been said, during the resulting debate about installing parking meters, that they would never have been possible if we had an elected Council. That most people would agree with this is a real admission that some unelected people sought to bypass the democratic will of the people of Wollongong. As a result the parking meters are the embodiment of bad faith.

These parking meters were forced onto our communities as a result of the ‘alien’ vision of life. The alien vision which the three Administrators brought with them when they arrived here from other places.

Thinking that parking meters worked elsewhere (and there is more that a suggestion that even this is not correct) the Administrators – after having made an initial gross misjudgement – have persisted with an attempt to tough it out.

Clearly the three Administrators thought parking meters for the CBD were a good idea – since no one else did and they alone were calling the shots!

But we must look passed the major failings of the three senior technocrats.

Knowing nothing of the local culture, their limited world-views were empowered by the workings of the NSW ALP government when that government unfairly dismissed our non-corrupt, honest and hard working elected Councillors (which also included some ALP Councillors). The NSW ALP Government appointed these Administrators. This allowed the world-view of three non-Wollongong people to completely override the views of the vast majority of us Wollongongians.

The NSW ALP Government has consistently refused requests to restore democracy to the Wollongong City Council, even if that required having some form of interim period in which any reforms recommended by the ICAC inquiry could be bedded down with an advising Administrator present as well.

While it is clear that the immediate burden of blame for the parking meter fiasco rests at the feet of the three Administrators the longer term blame rests entirely with the NSW ALP Government.

Remember that when the NSW State election comes around.

And when the Council elections finally do restore democracy to our city – vote for those who will remove the unwelcome legacy of the Administrators by removing the parking meters.

Such is the real spirit of our city.

Bruce Reyburn
Coledale