City of Port Phillip, SMBA and Cr Frank O'Connor had obviously planned a multi-coloured spin session for the Forum, packed with powerpoints and consultants.
What was actually required was an opportunity for the community to finally be allowed to put their questions and for the SMBA to be answerable for their past activities.
What we got was self-serving spin from the SMBA, self-promotion from expensive consultants, legal basics from council's lawyers, and pro-SMBA bias from Council officers, all delivered with a patronising arrogance that beggars belief. (Especially when the community is actually better informed about the process, the requirements, the legal issues, the flaws, the history, the politics and the status quo than the SMBA.)
As there was no facility for the community to speak (other than a 20min question session relegated to the end of the 3 hour night), an impatient crowd had soon had enough, and the meeting quickly descended into comments from the floor. Forced to abandon their script, the SMBA and Cr O'Connor set their expensive consultants aside and attempted to field angry questions from the community.
80+ people showed up, and in a show of hands over 80% of these VOTED AGAINST this useless, ineffective, unmeasurable, undemocratic Special Rate Advertising Levy. (This number would have been higher had Cr O'Connor allowed the request for a vote to occur when it was originally called for, and before many attendees had left in disgust after over 3 hours.)
So much for democracy.
Cr O'Connor advised that despite the overwhelming opposition, he would still accept a request to proceed and would consider restarting the Special Rate if asked to do so by just 8 people of the SMBA.
There are many questions that were not asked, because there was no time or facility for the public to ask them. How will Council ever be fully informed of the REAL issues if it insists on making no time for REAL consultation.
There should be another Forum held, this time one that the community can be properly heard at, instead of being forced to call questions from the floor. How about adding us into the top of the Agenda?
That would be REAL democracy.
