The Journey into Council Bureaucracy
Follow the money by Reuben Rose
At the end of everything, you realise it’s all about cash!
Council rates have been rising and services getting worse! So, some friends and I have decided to do something.
My last week has been taken up trying to negotiate my way through the bureaucracy of standing as a candidate for the local council elections. Five friends and I who live in the Snowy Mountains region, decided that with the local council delivering worse services and charging higher taxes, we could either complain or stand for election to help “fix the council”. It is easier to complain, but we thought we had to attempt to be part of the solution. So myself and five others in the Snowy Mountains area have decided to run for election to the council and the election date is 14th September, 2024.
Australia is probably the most over-governed country in the world and may even be able to teach a thing or two to the European Union bureaucrats. There is a federal government, then state and territory governments, and then a series of local governments, which deal with things like roads and rubbish (trash).
Local governments are responsible for different city areas and large rural areas. My local council area, the Snowy Monaro Regional Council, covers 15,162 km2 with 10 urban areas. This is an area about ¾ the size of Wales in the United Kingdom! Eleven councillors represent a voting community of about 15,000 people.
In the last few years, council services have become worse but rates on local homeowners and landholders have increased. Some like-minded people have come together to stand for positions on the local council and the elections will be held on 14th September.
Battling the Bureaucracy of Nomination
We commenced the attempting to complete nomination process almost three weeks ago. The whole procedure reminded me of the wonderful scene from the wonderful New Zealand film, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, about a 12yo boy and his foster father, on the run from the authorities. Toward the end of the film, the two fugitives encounter Psycho Sam:
Here is the dialogue between Psycho Sam and the boy, Ricky Baker who discuss the challenge of the government and bureaucracy:
Sam: “That’s a typical government - always trying to step on the little guy just for living his life. It never stops either. That’s why I can’t go back -not gonna be part of the machine. Form fillers.”
Ricky: “Form fillers ?”
Sam: “That’s how they get you. Anything you want to do in life, you have to fill out a form. And they’ve got forms for everything. You fill it out, it goes upstairs, and then they make you fill out a new form just to confirm that it was you who filled out the first form. And if you ever want to stop and want to stop filling out forms, well, there’s about five different forms for that….”
We six had to fill out forms and then get the forms witnessed by a Justice of the Peace to certify that it was us who filled out the forms. Then the forms had to be sent in to the authorities for verification that it really was each of us that filled in the forms. Then there were more forms to complete to say that we wanted to run as a group and then at the last minute, I had to drive all over the region to obtain signatures on yet another form to verify that we indeed wanted to stand as a group of candidates. It was a complicated process and the main conservative party in the state was unable to follow the steps and failed to have their selected potential councillors nominated at all. Heads have now rolled in the Liberal Party headquarters but fortunately we are well removed from the chaos.
Standing as a group allows electors to vote for a group rather than having to complete a complex numbering system where you have to put numbers beside the names of around 60 candidates in a preferencing system that almost no one understands.
So - we have embarked on a journey into 3 weeks of campaigning. At this stage, we’re not planning any Trump like campaign events because we can’t afford bullet-proof glass! However we are trying to contact our friends and concerned people around the region so that people have an opportunity to vote for change.
There is widespread dissatisfaction with the council and the council’s own survey shows that only about 3% of ratepayers are “very satisfied” with council services.
Figure 1. Survey results demonstration the level of satisfaction with council services for the Snowy Monaro Regional Council
We will keep readers up-to-date with our journey into the local election process and hope that we can get some of our group of candidates elected.