The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) defines corruption as an ‘abuse of entrusted power for private gain’. These gains are not always monetary. They are primarily status, an essential component in the social interactions of our community.
Male competition in particular strives for recognition and throughout the animal kingdom males display and fight to gain status. Female competition is often dampened by the need to ensure the survival of their offspring and consequently their community and their environment.
This competition for status can be observed wherever one looks. It is particularly noticeable within the communication of the Byron Shire Council. Most of the people in our community have evolved above the desire for high status and understand that the survival of their offspring, their community, and their environment is paramount.
Fight for Mullum hospital site
The 2015 request by the community for facilities and services in the community-owned Mullumbimby hospital site for aged, disabled, disadvantaged, and vulnerable people has been ignored.
Some of the Byron Shire councillors apparently find little opportunity to increase their status by agreeing with their community and prefer to gain additional approval from those above them in the status hierarchy.
Byron Shire Council has proposed that the community land will be converted to a private investment property so that the ultra-powerful and wealthy can rid themselves of the traditional owners, both original Australians and the present mix of families, by attracting wealthy potential buyers to Mullumbimby and consequently forcing up real estate and cost-of-living expenses.
The Mullumbimby hospital site must be protected by the community and kept for the community. Useful as an additional community food garden to feed poverty-stricken local families instead of an exclusive power base full of business investors buying up the locality.
Who’s using who?
At the upcoming local government election remember that we have had three individuals that immersed themselves in the Greens political party winning approval to successfully run on a Greens ticket before abandoning the party to enhance their right-wing agenda to help approve massive urban developments for the extremely wealthy and powerful on floodplains covered in critically-endangered ecological communities.
A false-Greens party councillor turned independent, Rose Wanchap, successfully worked to establish the West Byron floodplain megadevelopment and stated that surviving koalas can be exhibited in a koala enclosure on the new estate. The previous Greens Byron Shire mayor, Simon Richardson, approved the Wallum development in Brunswick Heads for the NSW Northern Regional Planning Panel (NRPP) and the current mayor and former Greens councillor, Michael Lyon, added his stamp of approval.
Previous success
The Byron Shire community successfully protected the last surviving sacred lands of the Bundjalung including the Arakwal National Park and the Billinudgel Nature Reserve. The latter protects the most important, and last, surviving pair of bora rings where the first Wandaral ceremony was undertaken that established our original Australian law. The Bundjalung Elders Council Aboriginal Corporation documented the beginning of the songlines law that protects the land and its people as it expands from north Byron Shire and covers the continent.
The publication Spirits in the rocks, trees and mountains of Bundjalung Country records that Yarbirri travelled north, Mamoon travelled west and Birrung travelled south following Simpsons Creek through the last wetland wildflower plain at Wallum, which the previous and current mayors have approved for extermination.
The democratic Australian law was colonised by the foreign law of nobility where the rich and powerful own everything and demand respect from the commoners. The ongoing colonisation process is still in full force.
Protecting our life support systems
Ecological collapse is rapidly occurring, resulting in a planet-wide extinction event and climate catastrophe as the last of our essential planetary life support systems are exterminated by the rich and powerful. Their success means that we will always remain in extreme homeless poverty as they amass ever more power. At the election booth vote for true members of the community, Bundjalung and long-term Greens and others that will protect us from the horror of the new Gold Coast that they are establishing in north-eastern NSW.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
