When a tree is not a tree, but a war club.
488,000 dollars, 102 trees, 4 car parks and 1 councillor who embodies exactly what is wrong with Shoalhaven Council and how it is hurting our community.
by Cat Holloway
It should have been a moment to celebrate a windfall.
It could have shone a positive light on collaboration between Council and State government.
It would have been just what the doctor ordered, with Shoalhaven Council again under investigation, about to be formally handed Performance Improvement Orders, and possibly a destiny of administration.
But no, Shoalhaven Independents Group Councillor Denise Kemp came out swinging - bristling, belligerent and itching for a fight.
Kemp filed a Notice of Motion questioning the 'Process and Implementation' of the $488,000 Greening Our City Grant provided to Shoalhaven Council, and sparred with Our Future Shoalhaven advocate, Digby Hughes, during yesterday's Public Forum.
You can find plenty of detail about this interaction in Stephen Prothero's Eye on Shoalhaven blog and growing Facebook group, suffice to say, the minor drama left no doubt as to why community members are reluctant to engage with Council.
Clr. Kemp believes she is doing the right thing, standing up for the 72 people who voted for her in the last local government election.
At least that’s how she spins her often aggressive and usually irrelevant questioning.
But Kemp may have watched too many 80s legal dramas and cheap horror flicks where tree branches come to life, entangling innocents in their roots, when she should have read the Office of Local Government’s (OLG) code of councillor conduct - or at least the summary of key points on Spark Shoalhaven's Instagram.
Because staff recommendations (in this case, grant applications and announcements) are grounded in scientific research, legal advice, policy alignment and technical analysis, councillors who depart from that advice are expected to articulate their reasons to avoid the perception or reality that decisions are motivated by politics or self-interest.
Let's clear away some deadwood to see this week's Public Forum exchange for what it really is: Politics.
It is not about town planning, fiscal responsibility or community consultation.
It's not even about shade trees, heat mapping or beautifying bleak car parks.
It is about the obsessive, bloody-minded public hatred of anything green or left by a loud, extreme club of local activists and campaigners for the far right.
You've probably seen a few names repeatedly pop up on an unfriendly Facebook thread near you: Maureen Ruiz ('People come before killer trees'), Jacqui Burke (Make Australia Great Again) and Ken Barr (TRUTH: that's MY opinion and I'm ENTITLED to it) to name a few.
Progressives eyeroll and scoff at their peril, though, because like it or not, social media does have influence, despite it being so lacking in veracity that it resembles the B-grade sci-fi from whose womb it was untimely ripped.
That influence is not only asserted in Facebook fights, it is also discussed privately by people (several I know of) who have experienced physical threats or direct abuse in the name of political debate, to such a degree that the police are alerted, lawyers are assigned, and psychologists step in to provide support.
This is not democracy in action; it's a cultural disease.
I have spoken to some conservatives who are as disgusted by radical right tactics as they are in disagreement with progressive left policies.
Meanwhile, environmental urgency, embraced by the majority, regardless of political allegiances, is, tragically, collateral damage.
Spark Shoalhaven
Enduring political posturing in the context of State and Federal elections is bad enough, but we should expel it from Council operations.
Ethical and capable leaders would nip it in the bud, not amplify it to exploit community division for individual power or notoriety.
Of all the fishy betrayals that Mayor Patricia White and her Shoalhaven Independents Group councillors have slapped against voters, the capitalised claim of 'NO POLITICS IN COUNCIL' smells worst.
If the NSW Electoral Commission had disallowed the word 'Independent' in the name of this registered political party with close ties to the Liberals, Nationals and, now, One Nation, would the blissfully unaware people of Shoalhaven (not typically burdened by behind-the-scenes details of local government) have elected individuals so saturated in agenda that they make the previous Greens Mayor look pastel?
Would Shoalhaven's ratepayers have had to literally foot the bill for Mayor White and her SIG seven's mission to reverse every Green/Labor decision of the previous council?
Would we have paid the unknown hundreds of thousands of dollars for Mayor White to oust her original CEO, Robyn Stevens, delay the staff restructuring and install a more aligned collaborator in James Ruprai?
Would Ruprai, while still acting CEO, have departed suddenly and made way for an unqualified and inexperienced CEO in ex-Liberal politician Andrew Constance, so intimately and politically connected to SIG that his appointment is now under a full OLG investigation?
Would the Mayor have rejected procedural oversight and community applications to personally appoint open SIG campaigners as a "job lot" of five to run the powerful Financial Review Panel?
Would we be paying for another Review of Environmental Factors over Narrawallee's dog off-leash access zones, because the Mayor and her supporters didn't like the legally-endorsed findings of the last one?
Would Council have lost the entire executive staff body and crucial senior positions such as Environmental Services Manager in barely a year?
Would we have had to pay the cost of three countback elections in one year for councillors resigning over mental health burden or assault charges?
Would the pressure and distraction of a SafeWork NSW investigation have been ordered?
Would Council be so remarkably busy lately with multiple Industrial Relations Commission hearings, which, presumably, result in payouts?
Would we need to fund a brand new $100k+ political advisor, sorry, 'Strategic Relations Advisor to help the Mayor and CEO look good?
And, to bring it back to the trees, will Shoalhaven risk nearly half a million dollars in State Government grant money - and the possibility of more in the future - to alleviate heat and improve the look of our major centres?
God forbid Shoalhaven Council should make it as easy to plant trees as it has made it to cut them down.
This Council set the tone for its term with the return and rebranding of the 20-year-old 45-degree rule that former Liberal Planning Minister Rob Stokes tagged as zealotry.
“Those who prioritise self-interest and an individual’s right above all are not conservative - they are neo-liberal extremists,” Stokes said of the contentious and emotive issue.
Spark Shoalhaven
Two-thirds of more than 400 submissions from community members, scientists, planners and aborists opposed the return of the 45-degree rule. But Mayor White and SIG councillors pushed it through anyway.
Shoalhaven is the only Council with such a rule.
During the debate, Clr Denise Kemp called critics of the rule 'ecoterrorists' for prioritising a cooling canopy to alleviate the impacts of climate change and increase both biodiversity and the financial value of our landscape.
So, here we are a year later, arguing about a Greening Our City grant, already announced in a Council press release, with a tangibly positive outcome of cooler carparks, safer streets and more inviting public spaces.
But Kemp remains unconvinced and wants ratepayers to spend more time and money on detailed reports, investigations and community consultation. She doesn't seem to realise that the Greening Our Cities project has already done that - and the community has already been consulted.
In Council’s own Community Engagement Report on the Strategic Plan 2035, published just in April last year, residents identified four priorities that stood head and shoulders above the rest of the responses: Roads, Health, Environment & Biodiversity and Green Spaces.
Kemp also wants us to be afraid, very afraid, of added bushfire risk from digging mature shade trees into a few asphalt car parks.
The real risk is that Shoalhaven’s famously beautiful coastal towns will become like some of Australia’s hottest, most unappealing suburbs, such as Western Sydney's newest housing expanses, or Perth, named the Australian city with the lowest canopy cover, after poor planning failed to control treeless suburban sprawl.
If there is anything wrong with this whopping grant, it is that we need to plant more trees for the money.
The NSW Government Greening Our City program has been running for five years. Previously, money was provided only to Greater Sydney councils.
But this round, the State Planning department identified seven growing regional areas that needed an improved urban canopy, shade for climate resilience and financial benefit.
Shoalhaven was lucky to be among those few selected.
The project website and documents include several case studies showing the success of the urban forest program. Extensive information is published there about planning urban canopy, species choice, maintenance and the crucial cost-benefit analysis of a city with trees.
Clr. Kemp could read this information with the openness and effort of a responsible councillor and withdraw her politically argumentative motion, so that Council can get on with the job of creating safe, valuable, urban tree cover and improvements that Shoalhaven residents and visitors can see, touch, feel and enjoy by next summer.
The last thing Shoalhaven Council needs right now is to turn this good nature news into an anti-woke war on trees.
