My memory tells me that the large number of Green councillors in Byron Council today is not a new thing. Memory however is a strange thing. It does play tricks on you. My memory tells me that the Greens in Australia began with impeccable environmental and community-based ideals.
Bob Brown and Ian Cohen both put their bodies on the line for their beliefs. Floating the Franklin in a rubber raft or grabbing the bow of a moving warship with one hand, while holding onto your surfboard with the other, convinced some of us that the Greens put their beliefs into action. In my memory Greens take action, even when it threatens their personal survival. Action which immediately expresses their core beliefs. They invariably sought endorsement from the party membership and the local community for their actions. That sealed the deal for my memory. Go Greens!
But, memory does trick you, or maybe the Greens have tricked me, or maybe the memories of today’s Greens have tricked them. Tricked them into believing that they should be more concerned about land development than saving the environment, more concerned about corporate power and their own power than local power; more concerned about their own personal political futures than environmental, grass root and local community issues. The issues that originally defined them, but for all of their years in Council their solution to the rising costs of local infrastructure maintenance and creeping development (driven mainly by forces from outside the Shire either from visitors, tourist agencies or developers), has been a poor one. Without referencing the ideals that launched their party, or the local voters who put them in power, their solutions have invariably been (typically after being swayed by unelected influences) to make the local community pay for it.
Pay either by lost public amenity through the support of poorly conceived developments, or by direct charges to local ratepayers for service demands mainly from non ratepayers. Pay to park in visitor-congested mayhem, even if you are a ratepayer – is this what they mean by ‘think globally and act locally’? Think of the traffic mess of Jonson St in Byron that has followed the Mercato approval. The precedent of high-density building is now being replicated up and down Jonson St, with the ensuing traffic problems and demands on water and sewerage. Remember Byron Council bought into the false corporate message: ‘…it will be the first regional shopping centre to achieve a 5-star green rating!’ The developers made their money and walked away to leave the community to wear the mess. Where are the open spaces and community enhancements that were inferred by the 5-star green rating? From recent comments in The Echo, similar endorsement of poor developments are still being supported by our Green council. In all of this my local road over the last 20 years has fallen away from a well-kept single-lane tarred road, into a third-world war zone lost in potholes, washed out verges and overgrown bush. My rates however have gone up and up.
These problems in process and outcome have existed for the whole time the Greens have been a force in Council. Yet they still exist. Will the Greens, again in their ascendancy, now attempt to resolve these local community issues? Will they alleviate ratepayer cost pressures and respect local community and environmental needs in their resolutions? They are required, in more ways than one, to think globally and act locally, remembering that local ratepayers voted for them. Will they endorse Green principles and put their bodies on the line to achieve them?
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. 
