Bruce & the Bard

THERE are some items that have hung around the council “to do” list for far too long.

Think: the gaol, Osborne House, the saleyards.

It was good, then, that the council has finally taken action on one of those items and sold the gaol, which was costing ratepayers a small fortune to maintain.

A previous council elected to sell it five years ago before the administrators finally put it on the market last year.

Plans to similarly “privatise” Osborne House were afoot this week but the council has reverted to the status quo of continuing to run the mouldering historic house.

This issue has done strange things to our councillors.

Take Eddy Kontelj, a declared independent with family links to the Liberal Party, who on the issue of Osborne House is a passionate advocate of retaining the home in public hands.

Local government can rarely be described as Shakespearean but there were shades of Henry the Fifth’s Saint Crispin’s Day speech in Cr Kontelj’s Tuesday night plea.

The “Slovenian bard” proclaimed: “Let history say tonight that Mayor Bruce Harwood, Deputy Mayor Peter Murrihy, Cr Stephanie Asher . . . (continues naming all councillors) . . . voted in favour of tonight’s notice of motion.”

Cr Kontelj’s grandiose oratory must have been persuasive because when it came time to vote, Cr Harwood (who seems to actually favour getting Osborne house off the books) fell in line with the populist rebellion.

In the end only Cr Murrihy, warming to the role of mayoral attack dog, vented his spleen and voted against council running Osborne House for the foreseeable future.

Now that council meetings are being televised on the council website, some of us will no doubt keep watching the plot and players twist and turn. It’s not must-see TV. But, at the moment, for 7pm Tuesday it’s better than The Project and almost as good as Home and Away.