Sartor seizes council powers - another nail for democracy

The SMH reports that the NSW state government has voted ex-council-powerbroker now Minister for Planning Frank Sartor what we might call Total Power when it comes to development planning.

Sick of having to stack local branches across the state, win local elections and deal with local people who actually live next to the repulsive eyesores developers are hocking these days, the ALP has decided to vest all planning power in the State government. Councils can either accept developer bribes at the local level or else the (at least) $1.3 million in campaign donations developers made last year will kick in instead and a panel of industry puppets will decide the matter. This is allowed any time the minister decides councils are underperforming because they are going too slow or refusing to accept the state government's own policy of 'urban consolidation'.

The is obviously stupid and flagrantly corrupt. The president of the Local Government Association, Genia McCaffery, said "We live in a democracy, and in a democracy we elect people to make decisions and at least these people are then accountable at election time to the community who lives with their development decisions."

The one significant power local government ever had has now been taken out of their hands. A friend of Roland's, Nick, writes "Actually, the state govt has always been able to dismiss councils as they did Sydney back in 2003, now it's just easier to override individual decisions. It makes me wonder why we bother electing them at all. A mayor is really not much more than a school captain."

What this ultimately means for me is that I have a clearly identifiable reason for always putting the ALP second last on any ballot. I don't even know if I'd rank them above One Nation or the Christian Democrats anymore, at least the right-wing minor parties were able to demand some small concessions. One the other hand it's pretty clear that neither Labor nor Liberals believe in even a charade of democracy anymore. Oh for the Democrats. The real issue these days is not about Left vs Right, it's just a desperate need for genuine democracy. The key issues are freedom of information, one person - one equally weighted vote, decentralisation of power (more in local governments and less in federal and state), freedom of speech (Howard recently had a website shut down that parodied his own but offered an apology for the Iraq debacle under internet laws designed to fight fraud and identity theft) and so on.

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