The man who took offence at Mayor Byrne

At the Australia Day celebration at Yorkeys Knob, I was delighted to have John Hawash come up and introduce himself to me.

John is the Palestinian-born Australian citizen who took offence when Mayor Kevin Byrne dressed up as Yasser Arafat only days after the Palestinian leader died in the Middle East in 2004. At the time John was reported as saying, "I am shocked, especially after the death of Mr Arafat which is a really high concern for the Palestinian and Arabic people".

A Palestinian born Australian citizen, John is a great bloke who runs English St Paint and Panel opposite the Brothers Leagues Club.

A clear choice for the Cairns region

Well done to the Cairns City Council staff and the community organisations who organised the celebration events for Australia Day yesterday.

Lots of people attended the Yorkeys Knob breakfast and at Edmonton later in the afternoon and I was able to meet and talk to dozens of people.

There is no doubt about it: 15 March will be a clear choice for the people of this region.
Community members do not want to continue the develop-at-any-cost attitude of the Byrne council. The do not want houses creeping up the hillslopes and they don't want old Queenslanders bulldozed and concrete boxes in their place with airconditioners in every room.

The locals want to be listened to, they want more tropical building designs, they want the environment looked after and they don't want the character and heritage destroyed.

Locals will be heard in a Val Schier council; and respected too.

Heritage and Character

Last night I attended the Heritage workshop at Gordonvale; a gathering facilitated by officers from the Environment Protection Agency and the Cairns City Council.

It was good to get a clearer understanding of the state heritage listing process. I had never previously seen a complete list of the places in Cairns on the Queensland Heritage Register so that was interesting. As was the list of places in Gordonvale and Babinda on the Local Heritage List. I took the time to listen to the locals who were busy reminiscing and recalling special childhood places in the Gordonvale, Aloomba and Edmonton areas.

It's important that more people know the places on the list and understand the process of heritage listing and what it means. The consultants were able to dispel fears that a listing means that a building or place can't be changed. The best solution is for buildings to be adapted and used in other ways and there is assistance to enable this to happen.

At the last election my team was really strong on promising that character precincts should be established (character wasn't even mentioned in the Unity team policy document!!) and it's good to see that council officers moved to do this over the past few years. In some cases it was too late, as too many development approvals had changed streetscapes and there were not sufficient old buildings to justify a precinct being declared.

We have lost so much in Cairns; eg, the Barrier Reef Hotel is the sole remaining pub from the renowned Barbary Coast waterfront area. Townsville has done a much better job than Cairns in preserving their old pubs and a Cairns 1st Council will work to preserve what remains of our heritage.

Time to take the cash out of politics

I sent the article below to several of our current Cairns City councillors and received a reply from Cr Paul Freebody: "I must take the time to congratulate you on your sense of humor!" No Paul, I am quite serious.

Time to take the cash of out politics
David Humphries
18 January 2008, Sydney Morning Herald

Jack Lang was on the mark. In the human race, he advised, always put your money on self-interest; you can be sure it's the only starter always trying. Lang's aphorism, forged in the cauldron of political fisticuffs and intrigue back when he ruled NSW, is no more true than in his chosen field.

I mean this not as some cheap throwaway to cynicism about politics, where altruism has remained remarkably resilient in the face of overbearing pressure to view every action and inaction in terms of personal or party advantage.

However, occasionally the political master class is presented with an opportunity where self-interest is served by doing the right thing, where levelling the race track not only serves the national good but its own, too.

One such opportunity is repair of the mire that is our laws governing electoral donations, and their associated link to the ever-spiralling price of effective competition in election campaigns, now costing taxpayers and candidates perhaps $100 million each federal outing - the equivalent of $7 for each vote on offer.

Antagonists to reform say that politics is a free market, and that those who best convey their message are entitled to triumph. That, of course, is a self-interest argument because democracy is underpinned by two notions: equal access to the market and the right of each voter to be regarded as equal in the outcome of elections, not just in participation in them.

Outcomes are uneven because powerful lobbies - business, unions, media, single-interest groups of all makes and colours - get to be heard over the rest. Sometimes this is because they are well-organised, articulate, resourceful, determined, and these are not characteristics that government has any role in dismantling.

However, there is one area where government can and should square this ledger.

How? Canada, a nation that shares our political heritage and structures, is a good lead. It limits donations from corporations and unions to $1000, pegs election spending and, like 40 other countries (including the US, but not Australia) prohibits foreign donations.

It limits to a relatively paltry sum advertising by "third parties" - lobby groups, individuals, companies and others at only arms length from the political machines they endorse. The big, direct spending by unions and big business in last year's federal campaign comes to mind.

If any voter thinks they need the same propaganda pushed down their eyes and ears 50 or 100 times for them to make a considered choice of candidate, it surely reflects a paucity in their understanding of policy cause and effect, not the need for advertising barrages often built on glib misinformation and always on self-interest.

It is in the self-interest of minor parties to advocate change. That does not mean Lee Rhiannon and Norman Thompson, of the NSW Greens, did not correctly identify the link in big donors corrupting the political process when they penned an article for the online magazine New Matilda in 2006.

"Access is power, and money brings access to politicians in our country," they wrote. "Ordinary citizens don't have this access, and this leads many to feel alienated from the workings of government."

Of course money buys access. The corrupted American lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who doled out millions in client dollars to compliant politicians, acknowledged: "Eventually, money wins in politics."

A poll of business leaders in the US in 2000 found two in five nominated beneficial legislative consideration among their motives for donating.

However, one needs nothing more than commonsense to know big donations do not come without expectations. The hotels boss John Thorpe acknowledged in 2004 that "democracy isn't cheap". Certainly the type of democracy he practises is not. During the preceding five years, in which hotel profits skyrocketed, thanks mostly to gambling accommodations by the State Government, the Australian Hotels Association gave Labor more than $500,000. Individual publicans gave more than $2 million.

When NSW registered clubs got anxious about a tax on their pokie profits, they swung their donations to the Coalition, which fought on their behalf.

As Special Minister of State responsible for electoral law, John Faulkner is drafting legislation to undo manifestly self-serving changes made by the Howard government in 2006. The raising of the threshold at which donors must be identified from $1500 to $10,000 will be reversed. The tax benefit allowed to donors will be reduced, and the use of public funding - $2.10 for each vote secured by a candidate who achieves at least 4 per cent of the vote - will be more closely scrutinised to ensure it is spent on electioneering, and not pocketed.

Closure of the electoral roll immediately on issue of the writs - rather than the previous seven-days grace - will be relaxed. This was presented by the Howard government as an attack on electoral fraud (a virtually non-existent malady), but was in fact an attempt to limit enfranchisement of the young, whose votes favour Labor.

And the use of taxpayer-funded propaganda will be limited by Auditor-General oversight. Over its term, the Howard government spent $2 billion, mostly aggrandising itself at our expense. As it got more desperate the spend escalated.

However, that is it, "at this stage", Faulkner says. It is not enough.

At the risk of me appearing naive, a new federal Government willing to tackle perceptions and realities of how big donors unduly influence decision-makers would be a fresh statement of true national leadership.

The Government has within its legislative authority the ability to shame opponents into compliance, to drag the states similarly into line, and to restore some public confidence in the process intended to serve the public. In so doing, it might just enhance its standing as honest broker, and serve its self-interest. Now, there's a quinella worth betting on.

A disaster waiting to happen

Well, the monsoon trough has moved down, the wet season is here, we've had some moderate rain and what do we have? Floods, all over town.
I went down to Gordonvale last weekend to listen to and commiserate with the people in Riverstone Road who had a torrent of water go throught their houses; homes which had never flooded previously.
Some of the people in Gordonvale have long memories. They remember the town flooding after Pyramid Estate was first built resulting in the building of the Hemmings Creek drain. They recall how subsequent developers have been allowed to use the drain for excess runoff for which it was not designed. They know that CEC are continuing development from the Pyramid Estate through Meringa and on the old bullock paddock with drainage going into creeks which flow directly into the heart of the 'old' town.
They tell of the saga of the Johnson Park drain back in Mulgrave Shire times when Campbell street flooded when the high tide backed up Mackeys creek. They tell of how the previous and current councils have ignored the drainage problems of new development in favour of developers.
They reckon many of these drainage plans are drawn up by engineers in southern centres who have no idea of the wet season in this area and the amount of run-off or how the creeks are affected by tidal rise. They think that developers consider the costs to do the job properly are too high even though they know the consequences. They'll be long gone when the problems occur.
The residents are worried and they have a right to be. We haven't had a decent wet season in years, the developers have continued building at a rapid rate and we are a disaster waiting to happen.
We have got to pause for a bit, reflect upon the increased turbulent weather that we know will be a consequence of global warning (on which Kevin Byrne, alone, thinks the jury is still out).
We have to plan better, take account of local knowledge, stop trying to make creeks flow in the opposite direction and respect that we live in the tropics and not a suburb in Sydney or Melbourne.
At council meetings other councillors often roll their eyes when Cr Jeff Pezzuti wants to ask questions about drainage again and again. Jeff asks those questions because he knows the land and he knows the power of the water.
The developers have not been made accountable in the way they should have been and the ratepayers of Cairns are going to be paying for their mistakes for years to come.

Tropical Design

One of the things that people talk to me about all the time is how disappointed they are that so many of the houses in new developments are poorly designed and look as if they have been transported north from more temperate climates.
It is possible to build affordable tropical houses; I know because I have come across a small number when doorknocking.


A new Cairns Regional Council of Cairns 1st candidates will make decisions in line with our vision (go to menu bar)and will do everything we can to ensure that housing is open, cool, comfortable and energy efficient.

Back in Cairns

I have just arrived back in Cairns after spending 3 weeks in Tasmania helping my brothers with the big task of sorting out the property where my mother lived. Lots of wonderful memories but a big emotional wrench for me to drive away from the family home that I have lived in, laughed in and loved all my life.
It will now be full-on planning, meeting people and campaigning for the next 9 weeks and 5 days til the 15 March local government election.
The Cairns 1st candidates - Richie Bates, Mark Buttrose, Kirsten Lesina, Diane Forsyth, Paul Matthews - have been getting positive feedback that residents want a change; they want fresh faces, new leadership and more real engagement with the community.
We promise to give that to all residents and I look forward to meeting numerous people over the next weeks and listening to and talking about the issues that concern us.