18 June

Bathurst’s councillors still wrestling with the issue of revenue. I encourage everybody to go to the iPart website and have a look at the special rate variations approved for just about every Council in the State over the past 15 years, many even larger than what was proposed for Bathurst, and many have done it multiple times.  Bathurst is one of the best run towns in the country, and it’s managed to do that without significant rate rises over those 15 years. You always hope facts will change an argument, but I know from experience that they won’t. Much easier to give the Council a kicking, and to drum up votes doing that. That’s the Trump method. Tell people all the time that their institutions are corrupt and incompetent. People will sign up to that bullshit every day of the week, because we live in a kidult culture of complaint. The best solution would be for the federal government to provide a lot more money to States and local government, who provide nearly all of the services the Australian community uses. But federal governments would rather indulge in ridiculous fantasies like buying nuclear submarines. Think about those submarines every time you drive into a pothole that there’s no money to fix .