Audacious display
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Comments made in the media by Ian Hitchcock and David Lambert last week regarding council amalgamations need to be addressed.
We predicted, correctly, that the meeting on May 9, advertised to discuss amalgamations, would be on council bashing, and so it was.
The loony idea that Batemans Bay residents would see value in their town being hived off and placed at the rump end of Shoalhaven Shire was always going to be a hard sell.
When the reasons for amalgamation were discussed, it was really just to punish the Eurobodalla council for not sharing the hard right views of the meeting organisers.
The idea was promptly abandoned and they moved on to air their list of grievances, mostly anecdotal or on outdated issues, many relating to state government regulation.
The outcome?
“A small delegation of respected and recognised community and business leaders” (David Lambert, Letters, Bay Post, May 15), including David Lambert and Ian Hitchcock, will visit council with Bega MP Andrew Constance to tell council where it has gone wrong . . . an audacious display of ego.
These people instigate new organisations as we would have hot breakfasts: the Eurobodalla Business Group (anyone know the names of the executive of this group?), Concerned Citizens for Amalgamation and anti-rate rise activists (with no offer of an alternative).
They are now ERA “advisors”, after having nothing to do with the establishment of the association.
These people simply have no respect for the democratic process.
The ERA had been a broad church with diverse and moderate views but has now lurched to the hard right and does not want to reform the council but rather it is hell bent on its destruction.
Councillors Peter Schwarz and Neil Burnside