It’s worth pausing to reflect on the mass frogacide that just happened on Prince Street, Mullum, which was led by unquestioning Byron Shire councillors and Resilience NSW.
As an unwieldly, unpopular government department, Resilience NSW lost its CEO this week.
And despite all the warnings that Resilience NSW was itself a disaster, all councillors hitched their wagon to it, and so far have ignored residents’ concerns that the 60 pod homes will create more problems than they will solve.
Is it good judgment to support poor governance, no matter what?
Anyway, Prince Street residents would be familiar with the cacophony that erupts when the countless frogs get active in the area.
They and their spawn were laying dormant, innocently waiting for Spring on flood-prone railway land at the entrance to Mullum.
They were just buried and crushed alive by a ‘disaster management’ corporation John Lyng Group.
No Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) exists for this action.
Shouldn’t the NSW government pursue ‘disaster avoidance’ rather than ‘management’?
With the imminent demise of Resilience NSW last week, the state’s Fire Brigade Employees Union (FBEU) shot out a press release to say they hope it ‘is an indication that the NSW Government is finally going to start taking the role of professional firefighters and police seriously, and give our members the funding and equipment upgrades we’ve been requesting for years’.
‘The entire role of professional firefighters is to serve their communities, a role that has been made increasingly difficult by budget cuts and outdated equipment. In times of disaster, communities deserve the most highly trained and well-resourced rescue personnel possible. At the moment, the NSW Government is actually focused on closing fire stations.’
So to sum up with common sense, if the NSW government was actually interested in the communities affected by floods, it would scrap establishing bloated unaccountable corporations and instead invest in local emergency services instead of defunding them.
Late stage capitalism 2022 really doesn’t make much sense if you are interested in good governance, cohesion, empathy, equity and living on a healthy planet.
But if you are the governing one per cent, there’s never been a better time to plunder and pillage, all while blundering along and doing it incompetently.
There are similar character traits between former NSW Nationals leader, John Barilaro, and US conspiracy broadcaster Alex Jones.
Both are currently facing a public grilling over their integrity; Barilaro has been fronting an inquiry into how he was offered a cushy NYC job at taxpayer expense, while Jones lost a defamation case in the US brought by the families whose children died in the Sandy Hook massacre.
Jones had been telling his viewers that the shootings were faked.
Both Barilaro and Jones clearly believe that no matter what evidence is provided, they are never wrong. It’s always someone else’s fault. Both play the victimhood card.
Yet real victims, those who have suffered physical trauma, like losing possessions and homes to floods, for example, don’t generally behave like entitled sociopathic grifters.
Hans Lovejoy, editor
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