The last meeting of the Ballina Shire Council saw another rancorous discussion about whether the local community awards ceremony should coincide with Australia Day.
A young man named Riley Chapman said he was ‘immensely compelled’ to give a deputation in support of the status quo, from the perspective of a person with Indigenous ancestry.
Mr Chapman spoke about ‘our wonderful mayor, Sharon’ before reading a prepared speech explaining his reasons for supporting the existing arrangements, describing any attempt to change the celebration date as ‘an inherently political invention’ and an attempt by some people to ‘virtue signal their way to the top’.
He went on to say ‘the Australian people see through this deceitful attempt to undermine the celebration of our nation due to past historical wrongs no one alive today committed.’
Wardell’s Cr Nigel Buchanan said he found all this ‘very refreshing’, and said he supported keeping the ceremony date on Australia Day.
Debate
Cr Jeff Johnson spoke against, describing the existing date as a divisive day. Rather than ‘one people, one nation’, he said ‘we are many people in one nation’.
Conflating two separate issues, Cr Rod Bruem then said the recent No vote in the Voice referendum clearly indicated what people’s views are, and said there should be no change to the date of the awards ceremony unless there was a change to the date of the national holiday at a federal level.
‘We don’t need to keep debating this multiple times every year,’ he said.
Cr Simon Chate said the discussion had nothing to do with moving Australia Day, but with changing the date of the awards ceremony to one that everyone could embrace, such as the day of the holiday itself (which falls on Monday 27 January in 2025).
He noted that other councils had been flexible around this issue, and that utilising the Monday public holiday would allow more people to actually attend.
Cr Phil Meehan said there was no point having a debate for the sake of having a debate. He thought it was more important to stop paying thousands for guest speakers from outside the community when locals could do the job.
Cr Jeff Johnson suggested the awards ceremony could happen during Local Government Week, but this idea found no support.
Cr Rod Bruem then gave a long speech about the history of Australia Day, noting in passing that commemorating the day convicts arrived in Australia was ‘something of sadness to some people’ but that didn’t mean anything should be changed.
There was then a discussion about adding an additional category of business people to the awards, although as Mayor Cadwallader pointed out, they were already eligible for awards, and had won them in the past.
Cr Eva Ramsey said she thought the awards ceremony should be held on 26 January in 2025, which would free up the Monday holiday for people to celebrate Australia Day ‘in their own ways’.
Cr Eoin Johnston had a buck each way in his speech, saying he could see the point of changing the date of the speech, but would go with the staff recommendation to keep the status quo in any case. ‘We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t,’ he said.
History lesson from Cr Buchanan
Cr Nigel Buchanan then made a speech about Captain Arthur Phillip being ‘renowned amongst the Aboriginal community for being kind’, forgetting that time when Phillip was speared through the shoulder at Manly for his behaviour at Sydney Cove.
Cr Kiri Dicker said she would like to attend the community awards and celebrate the good work that local citizens do, ‘but I’m not going to do that on the 26th of January because it’s against my values and it’s divisive…
‘If it wasn’t divisive. You wouldn’t have hundreds of thousands of people all over the country, protesting against it,’ she said.
Cr Rod Bruem dismissed this, saying moving the date of the awards ceremony was ‘just another attempt to try and kill off Australia Day.’
He said Cr Dicker’s remarks questioned the values of those councillors who do attend, including himself. Kiri Dicker said she was not implying that, ‘all I said was it’s against my values.’ Cr Rod Bruem said this was virtue-signalling.
Cr Dicker then attempted to link the Australia Day motion with progress on council’s Reconciliation Action Plan, which she said had stalled, but other councillors rejected this idea.
Ballina Council ultimately voted by majority to maintain the local Australia Day Awards event on 26 January.
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With local government meeting practice across the state returning to confusion following the NSW Legislative Council's recent decision, Ballina Shire Council's last meeting included a lot of unanimous decisions and an argument about the remnants of the Big Scrub, in which Mayor Cadwallader used her casting vote to squash Cr Simon Chate's motion. Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) has approved Ballina Shire Council's application to increase its general income through a permanent special variation (SV) of 26.25% [in rates] over four years, from 2026-27 to 2029-30. Byron Greens members could expect to be asked to take the future of the Richmond River further south into account when choosing a candidate for next year’s state election. Local business owners in the Alstonville and Wollongbar townships are being encouraged to take the time to read through Ballina Shire Council’s draft plans, which are currently on exhibition. The Lennox Kinvara Action Group is calling for email submissions to Ballina Shire Council to stop the development of thousands of houses in a sensitive, flood-prone area, as the full scale of what's planned becomes better known.
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