What do you love about the Kyogle region?
It’s diversity, and it’s natural beauty. It’s not called the ‘Gateway to the Rainforest’ with spectacular natural beauty with the World Heritage-listed Border Ranges National Park, Toonumbar Dam, nearby Mount Warning, many creeks and rivers, breathtaking lookouts, as well as the rolling hills and verdant paddocks that make our region so beautiful. With so much national beauty it’s hard to know which wilderness area to choose. It’s has a country lifestyle but it’s big enough for most people’s needs, though small enough to keep that friendly and safe country vibe. Whether it’s our friendly communities, the services and facilities, the charm of our small villages, the sports and recreation availability, the arts and creative communities or its relative affordability, the Kyogle region has so much to offer it’s hard to know where to start and stop.
Why are you putting your hand up for the Kyogle Council?
I want to make a real, positive difference for people. I have a lifetime of skills, knowledge and experience directly relevant to local government and I want to see our council move forward to a more functional, collaborative and cooperative body that works hard to all our residents and ratepayers.
I want to be part of a Council that:
- puts the residents and ratepayers first;
- is truly open, honest, transparent, respectful and effective;
- knows how to work together as a team for the good of our communities
- works with other levels of government to ensure our needs are heard, understood, and addressed;
- honours the past, celebrates the present but is ready for the challenges of the future.
This is why I’m running for Council – to do the best I can and improve on what we already have to offer. I know what we need to do, to make our area the best it can be, now and into the future. I want to be a voice at the table when making decisions that affect our communities. I’m honest, have high standards of integrity and a willingness to be part of a high performing team. I want to be the voice that people know they can trust. I keep my promises and I won’t let our residents and ratepayers down. Our communities matter. Let’s be heard again.
What relevant skills or experience do you bring to the position?
When it comes to government, I have a life time of skills, knowledge and experience to bring to Council and the commitment be an effective representative. I’ve worked in the government sector for nearly 40 years a lot of it representing people from rural and remote communities. I worked to ensure that key decision makers knew the full implications of the decisions they were making for areas outside the capital cities.
I’ve worked in areas diverse as air transport, aeromedical and air rescue operations, rural and remote education, community engagement, drought and exceptional circumstances, biosecurity, climate change adaption and mitigation, regional development, regional service delivery, farm debt mediation and growing tourism to name just a few. Because of my skills and knowledge in the area I was also a state representative to the National Research Network -– part of the Commonwealth Government’s former Standing Committee for Regional Development.
I can bring all this knowledge and experience to council together with an extensive list of contacts all supported by undergraduate and post graduate qualifications. This means I can hit the ground running and be an effective representatives from day one without the need for a long, draw out period of training.
What do you see as Kyogle’s role in the regional housing crisis?
This is a challenging question. Here we have to decide if we want the convenient lie or the inconvenient truth. The housing crisis isn’t regional. It’s Australia wide and it’s be caused, in significant part, by a chronic underinvestment in social and affordable housing by successive governments over many years. Covid, and the subsequent interruption to the global supply chain, in combination with shortages of skilled labour and materials hasn’t helped. It isn’t going to be fixed overnight.
The Federal government funds the state government to address the issue of housing and homelessness. Kyogle Council can do its bit by working with our funded service providers and the peak representative bodies like Northern Rivers Housing, the Northern NSW Youth Homelessness Service and the Department of Communities and Justice as well as our smaller local providers to try to ensure that the area’s needs are well known and understood by decision makers at the state level.
We can lobby and advocate for better housing and new, innovative housing options like tiny homes and pod villages but it isn’t a complete or immediate solution. So long as demand exceeds supply, housing will be in great demand and more than not beyond the reach of average income earners.
For those in receipt of some kind of benefit, the situation is even more dire. Kyogle Council can also work with other councils and peak representative bodies like Local Government NSW, the Country Mayors Association and the Northern Rivers Joint Organisation to try to have the issue addressed as quickly as possible but you can’t fix quickly an issue that’s been years in the making.
Do you think there is a role for local councillors beyond roads, rates and rubbish? If so, what is it?
The idea that Councils are just about roads, rates and rubbish is very 1970s. A quick look at the Local Government Act 1993 sets out a range of functions for council well beyond that of roads, rates and rubbish. Add to the list swimming pools, libraries, waster transfer stations, recycling centres, aged care services, various forms of community assistance grants, the conduct of key dates of significance, advocacy and lobbying, environmental management, financial management, the development of long term strategic plans and community strategic plans as part of the state’s planning framework, sewerage, and water supplies to name just a few. All these and more fall within the purview of local governments today.
What isn’t obvious is why local governments often have very many additional functions to perform while dealing with the historic underfunding of the sector in combination with cost shifting by the state government which has seen councils short changed in the areas of waste levies, rate exemptions, regulatory functions, the emergency services contribution and funding for libraries with the result that LGNSW estimates that this has cost the sector a total $1.36 billion per annum and an additional cost to rural ratepayers of approximately $590.80 per year.
The role of councils has expanded far beyond the ‘roads, rates and rubbish’ concept but what hasn’t kept pace is proportional funding to ensure that councils are able to deliver the full range of services for which they have been tasked.
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. 
