“I won’t be one of

In four months the first amalgamated Sunshine Coast Regional Council stands down along with its high profile mayor, Bob Abbot.

Mayor Abbot spoke with HT editor Michael Berry about his retirement from office and his views on the next mayor and council.

HT: The council election is in March but we don’t yet have a strong field of candidates for mayor of the Sunshine Coast. Are you going to be a hard act to follow?

BA: I don’t think we’ve seen the real players put their hands up yet for council seats or the mayoralty. I think there will be some strong players come out, people who have been sitting on the sidelines watching what’s going on; those who have a genuine belief in the future of the Sunshine Coast … an approach that is not the traditional develop-at-any-cost mentality.

HT: Given the unique complexity of this place now, shouldn’t the mayor come out of Council?

BA: It is preferable that the mayor comes out of Council, for continuity and knowing how the place works. But it’s not compulsory.

HT: So, what’s the profile of the person do you think we need as mayor?

BA: Other than completion of the Town Plan, the planning for the Coast has been done. So the sort of person that I think we are looking for is someone who has a set of those mistakes. But I am disappointed that we lost control of Caloundra South and that we didn’t get the Planning Scheme out to the community by the end of this term.

HT: So if we aren’t looking at a former councillor for mayor, is it an ex CEO, a management specialist?

BA: No. I think the person I would be looking for is someone with genuine passion for the future. Someone who can really articulate what the vision is, and indeed what the community has planned for in the last four years, and how to start to deliver that. You’re probably looking at somebody who has significant experience in service delivery. Someone who is capable of understanding large project management. They are the sorts of skill sets you need.

HT: Will it be tough in the next term for a new mayor to get Council working … staffing levels reduced, where people will work, where council departments are located to rationalise council buildings?

BA: How Council will operate in future is a discussion that still needs to be had. We’ve got planning in place for the Maroochy Town Centre and part of that planning is some sort of headquarters for the regional council.

I don’t wish to speak ill of the Gold Coast but unlike most other cities in Australia the Gold Coast doesn’t have a recognisable, workable city centre or CBD. The planning kills that rotate around delivery. A number of opportunities will require a considerable amount of effort to deliver and the public transport strategy based around light rail is a classic case.

Those issues will require a lot of technical know-how from a new mayor.

HT: Is there anyone on Council that you see as mayoral material?

BA: No-one has put their hand up yet …

HT: … But I am asking you as the boss, as someone who knows what it takes to do this job … is there someone on the current Council who could do it?

BA: I think there may be one or two but I am not sure they have all the skill sets that they are going to need. Often, the experience that councillors have had in running the council the way it’s always been run may not be there for the future. That being said, the willingness to change and the passion to make the change for the benefit of the future of the Sunshine Coast is there on this Council. Whether the skill sets are there to match them or the individuals can skill themselves up to do that, we would have to wait and see.

HT: And if no-one talented puts up their hand, would you change your mind about standing?

BA: Oh no. It’s over for me. It’s 30 years and apart from the Town Plan, I think I have delivered everything I said I would deliver. My last goal was to complete the Planning Scheme … deliver it to the government and advertised in the community before the end of this term. But that’s no longer possible. And it’s probably my only disappointment. I have no regrets of things I have done in 30 years of local government. I’ve made mistakes but I’ve learnt from of Maroochy Town Centre is exactly that for us.

HT: With four months left, what are your priorities for winding up the work of this Council?

BA: I’m working with the CEO to ensure that the values that are inherent in all of our policies will be up front and easily understood by the next Council.

HT: When you are not here anymore, will you be looking and commenting on how the new Council handles those policies?

BA: No. I am not going to be one of those mayors who can’t let go. If the mayor or the council or councillors want to ask me questions or give comment I will do so from my experience, but otherwise I won’t be a commentator on the next council.

I think for example, there has been a strong community message in response to our losing control of Caloundra South that this is not the kind of community that will not stand by and accept rape and pillage in this area. I am confident they will vote for someone with significant passion for the vision for the future, and a Council that has those sorts of values and I am confident the community will hold that council to task on achieving those goals.

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, we are told by the right wing commentariat, is not in fact a Labor government at all; it is a Green government under the control of the crazed zealot Bob Brown. He is the real Prime Minister of Australia; Julia Gillard is merely Brown’s bitch, as some of the less tasteful placards describe her.

The proof of this is the carbon tax; Gillard may support it now, but it was really Brown’s idea. Brown is using his numbers both in the House of Representatives and the Senate to force the Labor majority to adopt Green policies. This is political blackmail, undemocratic and utterly unethical on both sides.

Okay, now pan to Macquarie Street in Sydney, where the new coalition premier, Barry O’Farrell, has a huge majority in the lower house; there is no question of him having to do deals to form a government. But in the upper house, as is almost always the case in both state and federal governments, he lacks an absolute majority. So, to get his industrial legislation passed he has to agree to water down and possibly even abandon his own support for ethics classes in schools.

So who’s running the state? Is O’Farrell Fred Nile’s bum boy? Well, hardly, and the right would never dream of making the comparison. But it is worth considering in the context of the growing controversy about the standards of the media and the way politics is reported in Australia. If we are to have a debate about the ethics of the media, let us also have one about the ethics of the politicians. And a reasonable place to start might be to consider the tenet: Politicians should consider proposed legislation fairly and honestly upon its merits.

Don’s View...

This would not rule out party unity; once the discussion had taken place in the party rooms, the majority decision would still be binding. But it would rule out Fred Nile. He is treating the industrial legislation not on its merits but as a lever to pursue his pet obsession. And he is doing so by threat and ultimatum, clearly immoral and, one would have thought, unchristian.

His conduct is probably no worse than that of many single-issue independents in the past (another religious fanatic, Senator Brian Harradine, comes to mind), but there is a particular irony in that he claims to be acting in the cause of truth and morality. Instituting a code which would include the clause suggested above would probably not make the Niles of this world behave any better, but it might at least alert the voters to their transgressions and their hypocrisy.

The problem is of course that, as many of our more rational politicians have pointed out, you can’t legislate for virtue and decency and those who try invariably become a cropper. Take the case of government advertising. One would have thought that a minimum requirement should be that government advertising should tell the truth; but this is not so. Indeed, the High Court of Australia specifically ruled out the requirement in a test case brought by the Australian Democrats some thirty years ago. And if truth is not necessary, clearly neither are impartiality or even rationality.

But surely if we are to spend taxpayers money, it should be on advertising something that is actually happening, not just a political proposal? Not at all. John Howard spent several fortunes plugging the GST long before the legislation had even been drafted, let alone passed by parliament; it was simply a policy the Libs were pursuing. And even the most well-meaning reforms to the process do not last. Kevin Rudd promised to introduce stringent new controls, but as soon as he got into serious trouble with the mining tax, threw them out again: if the miners were not going to play by the rules he was buggered if his government was either.

And then there is the perpetually vexed issue of ministerial conduct – is there any point in trying to control it? Well not if the Howard government was any example. In 1996 Howard came to office promising the strictest, most ethical set of standards ever to be imposed on any ministry anywhere. And indeed, it was pretty tough – so tough that in the first few months Howard had to sack a couple of junior ministers for rorting their travel allowances and a senior staff member who got caught up in the process.

The political cost was high, and somehow the much vaunted code drifted into abeyance. Other more senior ministers involved in blatant conflicts of interest and share dealings specifically forbidden by the code escaped unscathed; after all, Howard explained soothingly, they hadn’t actually broken the law – or if they had they hadn’t been caught. And the code was only to be taken as a set of guidelines …

Well, perhaps a set of guidelines would be better than nothing; at least we would know when the politicians broke them. The media, of course, already have several such codes, and from time to time the press council or independent outlets such as Crikey and Mediawatch alert us to the breaches. But unless something on the scale of the News of the World scandal erupts, no one takes much notice. Australians don’t really expect ethics from their media and the more the pundits rant and posture, the lower they fall in public estimation.

And while the politicians aren’t exactly models of rectitude either, the media have played a big part in dragging them down. When the radio stations put nutters to air with calls for the murder of the prime minister and her colleagues and when their pack leader Alan Jones is allowed to advocate drowning Julia Gillard and Bob Brown in a chaff bag, things are unlikely to improve.

Fortunately the really dangerous people don’t listen to them – at least not yet. The Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik did not even give Jones a mention in his list of political mentors; he preferred far more respectable sources, such as John Howard and Cardinal George Pell. He may have been a homicidal maniac, but he wasn’t completely silly.

Mayor Bob Abbot predicts closer links between Local Governments and the Commonwealth

Mayor Bob Abbot is a board member of the Australian Local Government Association. He returned recently from the national congress of local governments in Canberra where the heads of the three major political parties jointly supported a closer relationship between the federal and local governments, effectively by-passing the states.

Mayor Abbot told the Hinterland Times that this tri-partite support was now leading towards a referendum question at the next federal election in recognition of local government in the Australian Constitution.

THE PM WAS particularly very strong on constitutional recognition for local government, mainly in relationships and partnerships. She wants local government to work directly with the federal government across a broad spectrum of issues. She mentioned conservation issues, economic development and growth issues like planning infrastructure.

Tony Abbot’s focus was on a fiscal relationship with local government. He wants to cut the states out of some of that funding round. He is concerned about the siphoning off of Commonwealth funding by the states that is meant for local government services.

Bob Brown also had a positive outlook. He wants to develop relationships between the commonwealth and local government on conservation issues and economic issues as it affects the development of agribusiness, of enviro business and waste management strategies.

So, I don’t see any real resistance at a federal level. Along with this tri-partisan support, there is a clear message coming from local government that we have the capacity to deliver on some of the things they want done. We just don’t have the financial capability to do it.

It started some time ago with Roads to Recovery and that was a Howard initiative that created an enormous amount of go forward in our communities. We would be somewhere in the vicinity of a billion dollars behind the eight ball in our roads had we not had that relationship over the past 5-6 years. All parties have made a commitment to keep that going.

So, the Australian Local Government Association has been running a strong, four year campaign with support from all local governments, and more than 50 per cent of local authorities have signed off on a yes campaign for a referendum question. There has been a commitment from the government with support from the conservative side of parliament for a referendum question at the next election and we’ve been working on the development of a yes case.

The talk is of two referendum questions. The aboriginal question regarding their recognition in the Constitution. We see that as a positive move, and we think it’s a question that Australians generally want put to referendum. In the end, getting money directly into local communities is fraught with danger without constitutional recognition of local government. Constitution recognition will be valuable to all councils. Keep in mind, the Commonwealth draws in 72% of the country’s tax wealth. We drag in 3%. So, we have the capacity to deliver on the ground and they haven’t.

With nine months to go before the next local government election, Mayor Bob Abbot is on a mission to consolidate the legacy of the Sunshine Coast’s first amalgamated council. Regardless of whether or not he will stand again as mayor, he wants the community to recognise the importance of Council’s completed Corporate Plan. Bob Abbot spoke with HT editor, Michael Berry.

THE MISSION I am on is trying to get this planning policy framework completed. I am not doing what I am doing to get myself re-elected. What is important is getting the work done and that’s where I’ve spent most of my energy. And by the end of this term people out there will understand the conceptual value to their future way of life.

Do you think the general population understands the importance of all these planning policies? Don’t they connect more with on the ground issues like water, too much development, lack of transport options and so on?

In hindsight, I may well have put some of the energy that I have put into this planning framework into some other things… the operational matters of Council, the day to day things of Council. But that’s the Nero fiddling while Rome burns syndrome.

Those documents will leave a legacy from this Council that you will never see again. The only way that this won’t hold sway in future years is if the thing gets totally changed. These are all documents of substance. They have all been ticked off by the community. They all have the values that we hold dear.

But a new state government and a new council could see these policy documents discarded couldn’t they? Isn’t that the sad history of bureaucracy and government?

I don’t think so. The Planning Scheme is informed by the policy framework that we have been working on during this term. That Planning Scheme now goes to state government for a state interest check in July. Hopefully we will have it back to advertise in the community by September or October. That is a significant document for foundation building … to guide the Sunshine coast to the future. The Community will get a second chance to comment. It is probably the single most powerful document in a statutory sense and its been built on the strength of our policy framework.

Never underestimate the community.

Never underestimate their understanding of the big picture, and knowing what they want in the future. You have to ask, will they elect people who want to change this planning scheme, because the only way you can change that document is to go back to the people.

That’s what locks it in.

One would have thought your relationship with the Labor state government would have been more supportive given your political leanings. But in media terms it hasn’t appeared that way has it?

Well, I have never been a party member, but if people see me as a left leaning person, then I am happy to wear that label. But at the same time, my relationship with individuals in the government is very professional, and there’s nobody in the Cabinet that I can’t talk to, one-on-one, because they know what I’m going to do and they respect me for it.

Sure, they’re still struggling with issues like affordable housing, transport, and climate change – issues that Council has already established policies on.

But look. My relationship with the LNP shadow members is exactly the same as it is with the Labor ministers. They knowwhere I stand and I treat them with respect and I expect it back. And I get it.

It’s the old … show no fear or favour. When you start the personality bashing that’s when party politics is at its worse and I don’t have to worry about that because I don’t do it.

I accept you don’t play politics but elected office is about legacy. If your legacy is a plan for the future, do you think people out there are happy enough with that?

I know what you’re saying. You do all this planning but how do you make it work. Where are we at the moment?

I use the surfing analogy. We are just in front of the wave and we’re paddling. The wave is going to pick us up in the next five years. It’s how we lift up onto that wave and how we go with it that is important.

So my primary focus for the next six months, quite apart from my announcement in August about whether I will stand again for mayor, is to get this policy information around, once the Planning Scheme is ticked off; to ensure that the people of the Sunshine Coast understand that the past four years of planning will deliver them a solid foundation for the future.

“Housing is almost unaffordable now for a large percentage of this community”

AT COUNCIL we don’t have a housing affordability policy, we have an affordable living policy because we know full well that the initial cost of the house is only one segment of the long-term cost of living. You can buy a cheap house a long way from everywhere and long term find it more expensive to live. Depending our your circumstances you may need to weigh up whether you would be better buying a more expensive house in a suburb where you won’t have to spend money driving and where all the other costs – electricity, water, travel, education, and even daily shopping – could be less.

But I agree that houses have to be affordable and I agree with the principle that a mortgage or a rent should not take more than 30-35 per cent of your gross household income.

We can have influence within the planning scheme on how that sort of housing is provided in the future – we can look at smaller lots or have covenants over the way they should be built and allow for different size footprints. There is also the positioning of subdivisions, where they are – whether they’re close to a highway, close to rail and so on.

I get concerned about just using the price of the house as the indicator of affordability because it doesn’t take in those affordable living factors. The problem is that all happens in the open market, and it’s the market that sets the price of houses.

But if you had something else in the market that gives people choice then you can start to manage that market. One of the things that used to happen years ago was controlled rents. When the Housing Commission was in full flight in Queensland they managed large lots of housing at a set price.

I’m not saying that’s the right model, but it brings into the market considerable competition for the overall cost of living. Controlled rents allow people to live in a place for some time, possibly to save money and later get into the ownership market. But at the moment they can’t do that because about 95 per cent of rentable properties are in the hands of private enterprise. And while the market sets the rent, there’s no ability to control the supply.

I think there is enormous room for controlled ownership of large blocks of housing put in the management of say the Sunshine Coast Housing Company or the like, where those rents can be managed to create some competition tension in the market. We need to control some of the excesses we see coming from the market. If people have access to cheaper rentals then the market is going to have to meet that competitive tension.

We must have living affordability in our community, particularly for those people on fixed incomes who provide employment in service industries – hospitals, schools, emergency services – so they can continue to live and work here.

One reason that the Palmview development was so critical is that it’s just across the creek from the planned new hospital. We wanted a direct, non-motor car link to the hospital so that people could live at Palmview and work in what will be a significant business precinct and a new Kawana town centre without having to drive a car. We signed that infrastructure agreement with the developers with them knowing full well that this creator of jobs was a massive selling element for them, because we were creating affordable living.

We can also provide affordable living in the Maroochydore town centre environment where the residential component can go up, in median rise component blocks instead of out, onto small residential blocks.

Housing is almost unaffordable now for a large percentage of this community. I think that the ultimate replacement for what used to be the old Queensland Housing Commission should provide a bit of competitive tension in the housing market.

Rick Baberowski

Everyone wants to live in paradise, and in recent years the Sunshine Coast has been the focus for those wanting what they see as the best of all worlds. The reality is that all communities are a fine balance of infrastructure, economic activity and controlled growth. This particular paradise is beginning to feel the pressure of too much growth too quickly. In the following two articles, Coast mayor Bob Abbot and councillor aspirant, Rick Baberowski confront the issues that threaten the good life on the Sunshine Coast.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING has recently become the hot issue on the Sunshine Coast. This touches a nerve because it reminds us that despite our own problems we still have responsibilities to provide housing across the social spectrum and for our children and their children. The Caloundra South development of a planned 20,000 dwellings has fuelled heated debates around the 25% ‘affordable’ housing component.

It seems clear that affordable housing is just one part of a deeper problem. We continue to attract more new residents to the Sunshine Coast than we create jobs. For years, we have had a succession of reports and ABS statistics that confirm that we are structuring into the Sunshine Coast less employment, lower incomes, and higher housing prices than state averages. This situation guarantees housing stress.

Regional Housing affordability depends equally on three factors: prices, cost of living, and jobs. Each of these factors must be adequately addressed or we risk creating a situation in which residents are forced to compromise their lifestyles or bring in money accumulated elsewhere.

The state government’s affordable housing strategy aims at the price factor. The core mechanism is the Urban Land Development Authority (ULDA), which is designed to rapidly increase land supply and control development costs to bring down the price of housing.

When the state government took control of the Caloundra South development from council and passed it to the ULDA, it became one of the authority’s 14 current projects. The ULDA aims for different levels of affordability across its projects. In the Caloundra South development, 25% of properties are slated to be within the ‘affordable’ range, for families earning $41-94,000 per year. However, some commentators have questioned whether these dwellings, some of which may cost up to $540,000, are really affordable for Coast families trying to live a decent lifestyle.

The precedent set by at the first ULDA-managed site in Fitzgibbon Chase, near Brisbane, suggests that the prices will be within a more reasonable range, of course with tradeoffs between house-size and price. For example a small 3-bedroom townhouse is currently selling for S355,000. We can expect Caloundra South to deliver similar prices. However, these prices will still not be affordable unless buyers have a consistent and comfortable ability to pay. The state government approach risks simply exacerbating the Coast’s problem by increasing housing supply and therefore encouraging new residents, without adequately improving job supply, and not addressing cost of living pressures.

Communities must only redouble pressures on the major players on issues related to cost of living. For example, council and the state government will need to agree on a regional transport strategy fast. Publically, it’s being positioned as a choice between council and state plans. Council’s light rail loop concept is built around the concept of an economically self-sufficient Coast community, while the State Government’s CAMCOS main rail line connects Caloundra to Brisbane via Beerwah, which Council fears will make us a dormitory of the city. Sunshine Coasters should reject the false dichotomy. People should make the choice to work and play on the Coast because they want to, not because it has been made difficult to leave! Either way, if we are really to challenge the dependency on expensive private cars to get to our places of work, Caloundra South represents a big opportunity, but its not going to change

our car culture if effective public transport does not come before the residential development. The pressure needs to be to invest early before car dependency becomes ingrained.

Even if we can achieve relatively affordable housing prices and can improve cost of living, the most difficult part of housing affordability on the Coast and for Caloundra South is income and jobs. The core of the problem comes back to the fact that despite our attractive lifestyles, we still lack an economic identity. We need a mechanism for incentivising quality job-creation as effective as the ULDA is on property development. While encouraging, council’s recent ‘Open for Business’ economic development strategy isn’t yet convincing in its vision, scope, investment or incentives.

Addressing our affordability problems will be a trial of our character and intelligence beyond that of just making sure the developers get Caloundra South right. We must find ways to combine experience, creativity and culture into best-practice urban design, affordable lifestyles, and economic development. That’s in addition to a guardianship of the environment and the responsibility to understand our regional ecology. The high cost of living, traffic congestion and fragmenting communities have taken us way past the ’she’ll be right’ and ’sunshine coasting’ phase of cultural identity into the realm of fierce global competition for job creation.

RICK BABEROWSKI was a senior planner for ten years in Caboolture and Moreton Bay councils. He is standing for Sunshine Regional Council in Division 1 in 2012.

In the days when socialism was still an acceptable word among politicians, its proponents offered a proud and concise slogan: “From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.” In modern, economically rational, Australia, Karl Marx’s formula has required a slight adaptation: “From each, according to his disability; to each, according to his greed.”

This at least is the approach that Tony Abbott has already spelled out, and Julia Gillard has dropped numerous hints that a similar “tough love” policy will be included in a punishing budget next month.

The unemployed, especially the long-term and the young, will be the primary targets but a serious amount of stick will also be applied to the disabled, who are to be put back to work at any task of which they are capable – possibly digging their own graves. And speaking of graves, both leaders have been as silent as them on the subject of the more wealthy and articulate drinkers from the public teat, the great bulk of the population who enjoy some version of middle class welfare. And as for the seriously rich, the obscenely well salaried executive class, well, that’s just the market. No point in trying to interfere with that. To be fair, in the past the Labor government has made some desultory attempts at correction: a move to means test the private health insurance rebate was blocked by the opposition, and shareholders have been given a tad more power than they used to have – just a tad. But the huge machine erected by Howard over the years to redistribute the nation’s wealth away from those in genuine need in favour of those who conform to his own conservative ideal rattles on unchecked. Indeed, the same conservative economists who rail most publicly against the absurdity are among its principal beneficiaries. And while raking in the loot, they are happy to applaud the idea of mutual obligation, or, as it used to be called in less enlightened times, blame the victim.

Periodic attacks on so-called dole bludgers are now considered a normal part of the public discourse, but it was not always thus. Australian federation was born in the shadow of the great depression of the 1890s and perhaps the most important aspect of the covenant that led to it was the promise of full employment. All the foundations of the final agreement were laid down with this in mind. White Australia, tariff protection, the links with Britain and industrial arbitration — all had the ideal of full employment at their core. It was the first duty oft he state to provide work for its citizens; if it was unable to do so, it had a moral obligation to take care of those whom it failed.

And full employment meant full employment; as late as 1972 Gough Whitlam could campaign on a platform which insisted an official unemployment rate of just 1.5 percent was unacceptably high. These days the accepted wisdom is that a rate of five per cent indicates, for all practical purposes, full employment. And the current figure is just 4.9 percent. So what are we getting so excited about? Well, partly because that figure represents the percentage of the workforce actively seeking jobs; there are quite a lot of adults who aren’t. And partly because it does not include those who are only employed part time or as casuals who would like to work longer. It should be remembered that John Howard’s government redefined full time work as meaning just two days a fortnight. The accepted estimate is that there are some 2.6 million Australians who are either not working or want more of it, and that’s a lot of foregone revenue before you even start paying benefits.

On top of that there are about 800,000 on the disability pension, many of whom would be happy to take at least part time jobs. So yes, there is a problem. But there is no obvious solution, because there are few if any jobs available. There is certainly a serious shortage of skilled labour, but the people we’re talking about aren’t skilled. And there are employers looking for unskilled or semi skilled workers, but they don’t want either the old (probably a bit past it) or the young (inexperienced and unreliable), let alone the disabled. And they particularly don’t want unwilling workers thrust on them under Abbott’s various plans. Just as the army welcomes willing volunteers but hates the idea of conscripts, civilian employers would far rather pick up enthusiastic backpackers who want to make as many quick dollars as possible than reluctant layabouts who will do as little as they can get away with. Abbott’s policy is basically an attempt to jam square pegs into round holes because it makes him look tough and macho. We can only hope Gillard does not attempt to outmuscle him next month.

The Greeks had a saying that those whom the gods seek to destroy, they first make mad. But with New South Wales Labor, they went the other way: first destroying the party, them sending the remnants round the twist.

Installing (let’s face it, he wasn’t really elected) John Robertson as leader is surely a sign of terminal dementia. He is, of course, deeply divisive within the party itself, but that’s the least of it. Robertson, as a leading figure in the destruction of a Labor premier, has become the public symbol of what made the party an abomination. It doesn’t matter whether he was right or wrong about electricity privatisation or whether he was reflecting the will of the party’s conference or even of the public at large. What matters is that he was a shadowy union warlord who overthrew the elected head of government. End of story. He could be a wonderful, sharing, caring person, fond of animals and children and a model of public and political rectitude; he could be a combination of Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela, soldier, scholar, statesman and philosopher king. But he is Sussex Street’s candidate, and that makes him rat poison. He will, of course, never become premier; but until he and all his works are wiped from the face of the earth, Labor will not be electable in New South Wales. And the 2023 election should be a possibility. Not a moment to lose.

Mayor Bob Abbot assesses his chances as Council nears the end of its first term.

You have a year left as mayor of the Sunshine Coast. Will you be standing again? I will make up my mind by August this year and I’ll make an announcement in September. That’s six months out from an election. If I decide not to stand this gives people time to think about a good candidate, and if I do stand this will give other candidates the opportunity to decide whether or not they want to stand against me. I understand and recognise the needs of the Sunshine Coast and our many communities. There are some significant issues and challenges that we will have to deal with in the coming years. These matters will influence my decision about the next election.

So what are the priorities for the next twelve months?

Consolidation is what we’ve got to do in the next twelve months. I promised at the last election that I would build a foundation for this Council and, given the number of policy documents we’ve produced over the past three years, I think that is significant. Things like the biodiversity, transport, affordable living, waste management and financial management strategies and that process goes on…

But one of the repeated criticisms is that while Council is creating all these policy documents, it is ineffective in stimulating business. Well, it’s just not true. There’s been a concerted campaign from a segment of the business community that continues to put that pressure on for their own motives. The reality is that this Council has put about $120 million dollars through its tendering services process as of the last budget, with another $60 million to go. We work very closely with chambers of commerce in establishing their high profile. We’ve spend a lot of money promoting the business expo and have developed a business strategy that’s been critical. At the same time as we’re doing all this, the GFC hit us; something we had no control over.

One of the high profile critiques of the Council has come from the developers who claim land development on the coast is being held back. Where does the calling in of the Caloundra South development and Council’s judicial appeal fit into this critique.

What Council is challenging on Caloundra South is not the development but the process under which the state government took the development out of the local community. We believe it is the right of this community to elect the council that will be dealing with that development in the future. But while it is under the control of the ULDA, we don’t have that right. We believe the government’s decision was taken improperly and we’re challenging it on a judicial review.

You’ve got a number of developers on the Coast that try to take advantage of the times and push the envelope beyond where it should go. It may be alright for us to make a decision now in tight times that will create a few jobs. But in five years time when times are good that becomes a precedent for doing things in the future. And that’s one of the real problems that this council has had with its planning scheme – trying to get round some of the precedents that have been set by previous Councils.

And what’s the feeling inside Council… that you’ll win?

I would like to think that justice will prevail. There have been considerable hurdles for us throughout this process. But in the end this council is right in challenging that decision long-term. At the beginning of this new amalgamated Council, it was said that staffing levels across the three previous councils would be reassessed after three years. That time is now. What is the situation?

We still have the job guarantee in place until June. There has been some natural attrition over the past three years, where jobs vacated have been individually assessed and not automatically filled. We also established a voluntary retirement scheme in the last twelve months, and some staff have already taken this up. We started this term with nearly 2,800 employees and we’re now have about 2,400.

How will the average person in this massive municipality go about assessing the performance of this first amalgamated council. I have always said to councillors that getting re-elected is merely a by-product of making good decisions along the way. My longevity in this business makes me understand that the community is fairly forgiving providing you’ve got consistency in your long term processes. If the community sees you flip-flopping and changing from one side to the other they’re more reticent to support you. They will forgive you one or two bad decisions if overall you’ve made good ones.

I genuinely have no fear of my ability to win the next election. Even now.

IT WAS A FITTING climax to Labor’s tumultuous parliamentary year. Julia Gillard finally brought off a big win with

the passage of the Telstra legislation, but hostile commentators were still able to spin it as a defeat.

Sure, she secured the necessary votes – just; but only by grovelling to the Greens and capitulating to the independents, most notably by agreeing to release an edited summary of the National Broadband Network business plan to pacify Senator Nick Xenophon. She has shown weakness and damaged her government – or so we read in The Australian.

Well, just hang on a minute. Certainly Gillard had to negotiate her way out of the corner into which her uncompromising Communications Minister Stephen Conroy had backed her; Conroy’s pig-headed insistence that everything about the NBN was immaculate, perfect, untouchable and beyond criticism would have been silly politics at any time, but in the context of minority government it was clearly suicidal.

Obviously the government could not give in to the endless opposition demands for one inquiry after another, but it had to be prepared to provide a certain amount of information in return for support. This is precisely what Gillard did and by doing so she showed the kind of leadership Labor has desperately been seeking for months. It may have involved a small technical backdown, but so what. The bill was important, and, as Gough Whitlam used to say quoting the protestant French king Henri IV, Paris is worth a mass.

In fact the idea of splitting Telstra into its wholesale and retail arms as a means of stimulating genuine competition in the telecommunications industry has been around for more than a decade; it was first proposed by Paul Keating but successive ministers, while acknowledging that it was a good idea, let it lapse because the opposition from Telstra was just too great. It may have been thought that Gillard, after her celebrated surrender to the mining industry, would have shown similar timidity. But the move was a necessary step in pushing ahead with the NBN, and the NBN has belatedly become her government’s standard of reform.

And this was where the opposition’s spokesman, Malcolm Turnbull, was wedged. The splitting of Telstra is an important reform in its own right and the Liberals, as the party of free enterprise, should have been unequivocally in favour. And in fact Turnbull said he was; he backed the bill. But … it was inextricably entangled in the NBN process, and his brief, as articulated by his leader Tony Abbott, was to destroy Labor’s NBN. Not analyse it, scrutinise it, amend it or seek to improve it, but destroy it.

And so the Telstra bill had to go as collateral damage. The same logic would suggest that any measures which could be seen to contribute to the progress of the NBN should be similarly opposed, including industrial harmony, national prosperity and fine weather; it will be interesting to see how far Abbott and Turnbull are prepared to take the process.

Any qualms of conscience they might retain will be alleviated by the knowledge that they have backing from a source even less scrupulous: The Australian’s campaign against the NBN seems to be becoming even more obsessive than its vendetta against the Building Education Revolution. Is there a reason for this? We know, of course, that Rupert Murdoch allows his editors and commentators total independence but does the Sun King perhaps have business ambitions of his own that the NBN might impinge on? Is he after a piece of it or would he prefer a network of his own?

Perhaps The Australian’s editor in chief Chris Mitchell, who has been so fearlessly independent in his paper’s coverage of the TV anti-siphoning debate, might care to comment.

So the Victorian domino has fallen. Labor’s hegemony is cracking, and with the

prospect of certain defeat in New South Wales and probable defeat in Queensland it appears that the glory days are just about finished.

And even though the alternatives in each case appear to have nothing of substance to offer, it is hard to deny them the opportunity to have a go. Ten years is about long enough for any democratic government to remain in office. After that, even with the refreshment provided by changes of leadership, administrations become tired.

They run out of ideas and become more interested in the trappings of power and how to retain them than in putting that power to any productive use. They become beset by cronyism which frequently borders on outright corruption. In the end their sole justification for re- election becomes “Keeping the other bastards out,” and this negativity invariably manifests itself in their campaign advertising.

It would be unwise to expect too much from the incoming governments of Ted Baillieu, Barry O’Farrell or Jean-Paul Langbroek; they are, after all conservatives whose interest in any kind of real change, let alone contentious reform, is minimal. But a period in opposition will give Labor a chance to regroup and plan a new agenda for the future, one which it will inevitably get its own opportunity to implement when the political cycle comes round once more.

This is what opposition is all about – or should be; Tony Abbot has clearly not yet realised it. The pointless filibustering over the Telstra bill is just the latest example of his failure to understand that obstructionism for its own sake is wasting his own side’s time as much as that of the government. Julia Gillard, who has regained some of her old debating panache in the last week, was quite right when she said that Abbott might have been able to get away with a campaign of negative slogans during an election, but they wouldn’t get him through a few more parliamentary sessions as opposition leader.

As his book Battlelines showed, Abbott is not totally bereft of ideas; it is just that he has trouble forming them into a coherent platform. It is time to start trying. Otherwise both the voters and his colleagues might start thinking his best is already behind him.

THE PRESSURES on the Sunshine Coast to withstand its tsunami of urban sprawl are enormous. Mayor Bob Abbot is now openly attacked by the development industry, with

the Property Council even calling on the state government to remove him. Here, the mayor reveals how he copes with the pressure.

I do understand the various pressures that have come upon us. We are an easy target and the reality is we don’t have any government members on the Coast. Also, there is a significant anti Sunshine Coast Council attitude at high levels of the development industry.

For example we have seen Stockland lobbying the Premier, and the Premier has admitted that she’s been lobbied to get Caloundra South called in. And I find it incredible that they could even admit that, at any level; that they would go against the grain of a community so strongly, and still expect to be supported in government. That was a severe and bitter disappointment to me that a government could bend to that sort of lobbying.

But you can’t walk away from the fact that the Sunshine Coast Council elections in 2008 gave a very clear community mandate, the most clear of all. And we are doing everything we can to create the foundations for a sustainable future. If one were to rely on the words of the bloggers in the Sunshine Coast Daily and some of the letters to the editor, one would think this Council had no support at all.

But if you walk out on the street with me on any given day and see the positive response we get; comments yelled constantly from across the street or from passing cars … ‘keep going Bob’. ‘Stick it up them Bob’ . So it’s the average punter in the street who wants us to keep going.

Certainly the pressure has ramped up and there has been a deliberate campaign from a particular sector of our community. But I have no fear of that. Because many of them don’t vote here and they don’t see me in the street every day. I’ve had 28 years experience in local government and I’ve got a fairly good sense of what the general community is feeling. In general terms the people of the Sunshine Coast are saying we need to fight this crew and maintain a vestige of control over our future.

Yes, the state government has taken away from Council the actual control of the planning documentation for Caloundra South, but that fight’s still on. The government has given us time to resolve the differences around Maroochydore CBD and we’re doing that, and I’ve had no indication that they want to take that over. In this case it’s beyond the capacity of the Urban Land Development Authority (ULDA) to do the job. The real concern for Maroochydore is if nothing happens.

On a positive note, pre-determined and delivered infrastructure are mainstream discussion points now. What I am seeing are members of the development industry, government departments and even political factions in government talking about infrastructure more often, and therefore convincing themselves that it needs to be done. We’ve really won that war.

Mind you, some haven’t got out of the habits of the bad old days like Stockland. But in Palmview for example, the developer is actually paying for a bus for five years for the early residents of Palmview to get them used to a regular bus system, and train them to leave their cars at home. They see that as critical to their development.

There are people who say I should just give up, but I won’t give up. For instance, I’m not now going to turn my back on the ULDA and Caloundra South. I have to make sure that what the ULDA produces is in line with our policies, and what this community has asked for in the structure plan that we advertised and got commitment to.

This isn’t about politics for me. There is no benefit for me or for the people of the Sunshine Coast for me to take a political side. There’s no point in me aligning myself and burning bridges. I need to keep all bridges open and all the lights on.