Readers of this column will be aware that the record of some of the current batch of Newcastle councillors, including the Lord Mayor, suggests that they have little understanding of, or regard for, local democracy.
The most recent crisis caused by the council’s disregard for local democracy demonstrates the kind of problem that this lack of leadership creates and perpetuates.
The recent problem arose when the council released its “Birmingham Gardens Village Centre Draft Domain and Traffic Plan” for the area at the intersection of Moore St and Wilkinson Ave, Birmingham Gardens, in May this year.
The plan proposed a number of public domain improvements to the area. One significant improvement was completing the remaining missing link in the cycleway between Wallsend and the university.
However, the council officers who prepared the plan were apparently unaware that their proposal, which would remove most of the current parking (21 out of 38 spaces) available for Regal Cinema patrons, would render the cinema financially unviable and force it to close.
The Regal Cinema has become something of a local cultural icon since it was saved by a concerted community campaign after its previous closure in 2007.
It offers a unique local cinema experience, very different from the big cinema chains (if you haven’t experienced it yet, you really should, because its fame is spreading throughout film industry circles around Australia).
When the council plan was released, the Regal and its supporters conveyed their views to the council officers in no uncertain manner, via more than 2000 written submissions (a council record), a 450 signature petition, and many emails to councillors.
As so often happens in organisations and governments who want to tick the necessary public consultation boxes but don’t really want to hear, or have to deal with, what people have to say, all this seemed to fall on deaf ears.
Council staff gave no indication that they were interested in changing their plan to accommodate the massive expression of community concern about its impact on cinema patrons.
The Regal operators then applied to address the elected council via the council’s Public Voice system. This was initially refused, but was eventually granted after the Regal objected.
The Public Voice session held at Newcastle City Hall on Tuesday, 18 September attracted the largest turnout I can remember for such a meeting in Newcastle: more than 500 people filled up the council chamber, the overflow room and the corridors and foyer.
The meeting began with the council’s Labor majority using its numbers to refuse permission for the meeting to be filmed (for a possible ABC Australian Story), even though all the council’s meetings are video recorded for publicly available webcast.
As Independent councillor John Church (who voted against the refusal) remarked, “we’re a public democracy, so why shouldn’t someone be allowed to film us?”
The plan presented by council officers at the meeting was very similar to the exhibited plan, with little apparent attempt to accommodate the cinema’s concerns about the loss of parking.
Regal programmer George Merryman’s presentation on behalf of the Regal was followed by some perplexingly belligerent and bizarre questions and suggestions to Mr Merryman from some of the Labor councillors, canvassing whether the Regal wanted the council to do nothing in the area, and whether the Regal could turn a profit by changing their operating days and hours.
Some councillors, however, made pertinent observations.
Independent Councillor Kath Elliott observed that the council survey distributed as part of the initial community consultation process hadn’t even asked about parking.
Liberal Councillor Brad Luke observed that a significant part of the plan was attempting to solve a safety problem with pedestrians and cyclists (mostly university students) crossing illegally at the roundabout near the cinema, but there was no apparent attempt to understand the reasons for this behaviour, or whether the proposed plan would solve that problem.
Greens Councillor John Mackenzie also questioned whether the current plan would solve the problems it attempted to address, and noted that the council needed to find a way of doing this without compromising the cinema’s viability.
A few days after the meeting, the council released a statement saying: “The Project has been put on hold due to a number of issues raised through the Public Voice process. Further investigations and community consultation is now required.”
The real issue is how and why things came to this point in the first place.
Despite the council’s statement, there were no “issues raised through the Public Voice process” that couldn’t or shouldn’t have been known early in any genuine community consultation process.
The issues involved were relatively simple to identify (if not to solve), and it should not have required a massive community mobilisation to have them heard and dealt with through a genuine community engagement process much earlier in the project timeline.
The problem is twofold: at the administration level, it’s Newcastle Council’s chronic unwillingness and inability to cope with genuine community engagement, and, at the elected level, it’s the gaping lack of leadership from the elected council in steering the council administration toward local democracy.
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