An offer for the Bendigo council to consider
Mayor Marg O’Rourke’s “Letter to Rural Residents” in the local papers is designed to encourage feedback from rural residents to ensure their voices are heard in council decision-making.
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A step in the right direction. (The same case could be made for non-rural residents).
This well-intended attempt to reach out to rural people provides more accessible and convenient ways for them to speak to council, but is unlikely to significantly improve the response rate.
Why? It will be too officer controlled. Lack of confidence and apathy will also play a part in a low response.
Attempts so far to provide resident input into the community plan via an online survey and other mechanisms have met with limited success.
My estimation is less than 1 per cent of the population about 1000 people – have made some form of contribution; mainly the articulate, more confident community members, often associated with special interest groups, with some councillor input.
I believe even those contributions were heavily steered by the officer-controlled survey’s content.
Hardly representative, and a stretch of the imagination to say it is really a community’s input into the “Community Plan”.
Most residents were not involved, particularly the less well-off.
As part of council’s next Community Plan, myself and Ted Coleman would be willing to help develop an improved simple, user friendly, community focused survey, to elicit ideas and spending priorities from a wider range of residents.
A search for the best ideas. To encourage a high response rate we would be prepared to put up $2000 in incentives.
Maybe council could also throw in a few discounted or one year rate exemptions?
We have experience, having developed the idea of, and pressed for, an Independent Council Review.
That review led to around $11 million in “savings, deleted expenditure and costs avoided”, along with “considerable operating efficiencies and improvements in services and systems” (Implementing the Review, July 2016).
Come on councillors, take up the offer and challenges.
I applaud the new councillors, in a promising start, by pushing back on overwhelming officer influence in decision-making.
Michael McKenzie, Strathdale
Why should LGBTI people get special treatment?
Greater Bendigo City Council, when asked for comment about policies relating to LGBTI issues, responded that there aren't any specific policies – and quite rightly, because surely people are not defined by their sexuality, any more than their hair colour or any other preferences?
We should not be dividing the community up into groups, tribes.
We should be finding our common ground as Bendigo residents.
And there should not be preferential treatment for this or any other high profile group.
A group that seems to shout the loudest while proclaiming their rights over everyone else's.
Helen Leach, Bendigo
Farewell to John Clarke
John Clarke was more of a guardian of democracy, free expression and speech than any politician.
Scott Ramsay, Strathdale
It’s a matter of trust
The former Queensland premier and now head of the Australian Bankers Association lobby group, Anna Bligh, laments the "implosion of public trust" in the banking industry. It is just like when ex-politicians take lucrative jobs as lobbyists for the private sector.
