Looming election bringing vital focus to councillors

2020 VISION? But maybe a little late. The Gold Coast City Council elections, due in 2020, are apparently, finally, beginning to remind some councillors of the wider community and its concerns.

‘Terry Jackman says his Mermaid Beach community should be encouraged (that) councillors are starting to listen to ratepayers about overdevelopment.” (GCB 23/8: “Council’s no vote on building gives residents an injection”).

The council’s’ “voting down of a unit complex in Palm Beach due to mounting public pressure around over-development”, though no doubt a move welcomed by many, may seem a little tardy in manifesting listening skills. The council, unlike higher levels of governance, has a four year term.

As the Gold Coast City Council is well into its allotted time for incumbency, it would seem to many in the community that the pleasing news that councillors are starting to listen may be, if correct, belated.

Certainly this is an excessively handicapped ‘start’ for those wishing to re-enter the race, for their public employment as a councillor, in the next term.

The duty of a councillor is to listen to the whole of the city, not, as has been perceived by many locals, to have excessive regard for singular interests.

The council planning chairperson makes the statement that “when there was significant community interest in development councillors took up the fight and don’t back down.” (GCB 23/8 “Council votes no”.)

This statement needs scrutiny. Over this term of office quite a number of residents have rallied at length to guard their amenity.

Also, it should be noted that “significant community interest” is not necessarily the litmus test for the council to “take up the fight.” Rather the Town Plan, the duty to whole of city and, most importantly sustainable planning, should be the measures which elected councillors heed.

Thirdly, it should be noted that the community, often at cost in time, effort, angst and money, frequently alerts to the “significant community interest’,’ such as the local concerns re loss of amenity, negligible community benefit etc. This role should be reversed. It is the publicly employed councillors who are the guardians of these interests and the leverage to alert and defend should come from them.

It does not take 2020 vision to see that there is no certainty, at present, in the city, other than a need for planning reforms, the persistent call for perceptible real local representation, representatives who are seen and trusted to be doing just that.

SALLY SPAIN, PRESIDENT WILDLIFE Qld, GOLD COAST & HINTERLAND BRANCH, OXENFORD