From Ian Smith
19 April 2013
I’ve skimmed the whole ‘draft exposure’ bill, and read a lot of it in some detail, just once so far. Forget White-Paper-full-document.pdf on the gub website, it’s a puff piece. Read the whole bill. Even without considering what it doesn’t as yet ‘expose’, it’s not hard not to see it is a blueprint for dictatorship by this government, the minister and his appointed minions at a level not seen in Australia for generations.
Local government? Dealt with, if need be by the minister declaring a ‘sub-regional’ panel of his choosing. One example: no CSG? No council.
The BPN press release, like O’Farrell’s media release, does not mention the environment AT ALL. Fair enough in one way; it primarily reflects urban and suburban concerns, and from that perspective I can’t disagree with any of the points raised, but the notion of assumed representation by this new organisation makes me very nervous, were anyone to assume it reflects the views of all of these ‘more than 350 community groups’.
There really doesn’t seem to have been time for all these groups to have been consulted before the first PR since publishing of this draft bill, or surely at least one of the eNGOs involved (is there a list?) would have noticed the lack of environmental – let alone ecological – concerns this Bill attempts to trash, bypass or render ineffective, against which human heritage buildings and the like are very small beer indeed.
Like the recent decisions not to permit Boral the benefit of assumed ‘negotiation’ with eNGOs, attempts to file any of the hard edges off this bill will only be claimed as ‘consultation’ with the people. I think it’s a trap that’s very easy for those assuming representative status to fall into, as if winning a few inches off the mile by which this bill fails could be any sort of ‘win’. So I urge extreme caution in appearing to accept such representation in purported negotiations, especially without the level of community consultation that these press releases themselves seek of those assuming authority over ‘the State’.
The NCCNSW checklist is fine as far as it goes, given the ‘score’ is clearly 0 out of 15, but now what? Do people really think that any sort of attempts at negotiating concessions with this government is going to make the slightest difference to either the intent of this bill – 1970s growth at every expense and 19th and earlier 20th century centralised control – or its pending execution by the ‘dark blueshirts’, riot squads et al, as seen ramping up just weeks ago at Glenugie and Doubtful Creek.
Unless we design and implement an entirely different FORM of government of the people and by the people than this sham democracy designed by the ruling class to make the peasantry think they have some sort of say half a millennium ago, and get on with that very bloody soon, we’re stuffed, and no amount of clicking here and tweeting there can help in the least.
cheers anyway, Ian
= = = =
