On 23rd June 2010 some of us attended a local council meeting to question council on what it was doing and what it intended to do about live exports through Kwinana.
In response to questions the Mayor made some rather concerning comments, such as: "Council has been working hard behind the scenes on this issue - Council has not even discussed what it should do or made a decision on what to do - Council will not get involved (like Fremantle Council) in the live export versus chilled carcase debate."
How the mayor can tell the meeting what Council will be doing at the same time as admitting council had not even discussed the issue let alone made a decision is beyond me.
So I waited for the minutes of the full meeting of council to be published and sure enough the comments made at the meeting did not appear in the council minutes and as has become the norm of late the minutes, were doctored with spin.
So I decided to request the tape recording of the council meeting, something we have done many times in the past. The community has for many years been entilted to this under Freedom of Information (FOI) and after paying a prescribed FOI fee to council.
The request was refusing by the CEO's assistant claiming that those tapes are only for her record and she now stores them on her computer rather than cassette tapes as was done in the past, therefore I could not obtain a copy of the record of the meeting.
So Kwinana Council has now removed another way of communities and/or community members keeping council honest.
In my view it seems that Kwinana could be coming, or has already become, a dictatorship.
No doubt Kwinana Council and its Councillors will continue to brand me "negative", that is what they do in an attempt to discredit those who dare speak out.
2 comments:
Greetings Steve
No doubt you will recall the major international study published in July last year on seagrass destruction in Cockburn Sound which now ranks with Chesapeake Bay in the US as one of the worst on the planet.
The study warned that seagrass destruction leads to global warming, coastal erosion, extinction of fish and other aquatic species. “There has been a switch of the causes in Cockburn Sound seagrass destruction from primary production to industries,” said co-author Prof. Kendrick of UWA. “Even one percent of seagrass destruction is of serious concern.”
It appears that chewing the arse out of Momma Nature is the prime objective of industry and the double dippng cowboys who heap one insult after another on this state's environment whilst feigning good governance and the administration of 'stringent regulations.' Huh?
Save me a dance at the Doomsday Ball, guaranteed to come our way in the not too distant future.
The above comment should have been posted under the blog post http://steve-kwinana.blogspot.com/2010/09/environemntal-management-of-cockburn.html.
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