Helicopter View

At dinner last night I was speaking with my eight-year-old daughter who gave me a brilliant idea. I will create a new city – pack up my family, find some uninhabited land, and start my city there. The rules will be simple – there will be …

NIMBY. It is alive and well across the State and possibly one of the reasons that the Minister for Planning, Brad Hazzard, is considering changing the rules when it comes to final approvals for Development Applications (DAs). The Minister would like …

Balance. In all sorts of realms, finding balance is a difficult thing. Balance in work and play. Balance in how you treat different employees and different children. Balance in the amount of sport on TV you watch compared to the amount of reality sho…

The concept of planning and budgeting is a concept that creates one of two extreme reactions. Some people start frothing at the mouth with the excitement of opening up their multi-sheet spreadsheet featuring pivot-tables Bill Gates wouldn’t und…

One aspect of local government that I have always admired is that I feel it is the purest form of democracy. Allowing for a few technical qualifications (Australian citizenship and not currently in prison being two), any adult can stand for election …

I am writing this column on the evening of ANZAC Day so it is impossible to sit down to write a column about my helicopter view and not be overwhelmed by the emotion of the day. Before I speak about some of that emotion, I want to think about the won…

The term lobbyist will often conjure up an image of a shady character doing unscrupulous deals behind closed doors to generate more money for a cigar-smoking tyrant sitting on his island in the Bahamas. Maybe there are some lobbyists that act in that…

At 27km in length and up to 4km wide, the Tasman Glacier in New Zealand is that country’s longest and largest glacier. The glacier is currently reducing in size by up to 822m each year. In 1973, there was no terminal lake at the base of the gla…

I have heard a variety of views about city growth in my time on Council and what it would mean for Dubbo in the long run. Generally, most people are keen for Dubbo to continue to grow and attract new and improved facilities and services, but one of t…

I well remember a training session that I attended way back on 4 February 2004. It was a pre-election seminar for anyone that was thinking about contesting the upcoming Council elections. Peter Sutton, former Deputy Mayor of Dubbo, spoke at the three…

Many people would be aware of the fact that Council has a huge number of working parties and committees that allow the community to participate in the decision-making processes of Council. Councillors are also represented on a number of external comm…

Ahhh – the halcyon days of the past. A time when governments had chests full of money and they handed it out to anyone that put a cogent argument to them and bought them dinner. Many people would have me believe that to receive a government gra…

Why do governments exist? It is a deep philosophical question that people answer with a huge variety of alternatives. Some people believe governments exist to protect people from themselves; others believe they exist to provide a sense of order in th…

Dubbo is a thriving tourist hub with cultural, historic and landmark significance that attracts visitors from all across the world. If you mention Dubbo outside our City it’s more than likely someone has heard of it. This is where you come in. …

A friend of mine in Sydney considers himself lucky – he only wastes five hours a week commuting to work. The average commute time for Sydney employees is 4.8 hours meaning the average person wastes 6.24 weeks a year sitting in a car listening t…