The role of local government from the inside and out was the topic of discussion at a Hunter Community Forum meeting at City Hall on Wednesday night, May 1.
A litany of common public grievances - from state plans for higher housing density around key regional rail stations to the future of Wallarah and Blackley ovals at Broadmeadow to the 2021 rezoning of land for low-density residential development near the Newcastle Link Road at Wallsend - was broached at the meeting, which heard from notable local speakers and a visiting mayor.
Shoalhaven Council mayor and Greens member Amanda Findlay, who revealed that she will be stepping down at the end of her current term, spoke on the efficacy of local government as the next round of council elections approaches in September.
The long-serving councillor, who was elected mayor of the Shoalhaven LGA south of Wollongong in 2016 after serving on council since 2008, said she hadn't told her constituents that she was stepping down but said the fact of her departure was "a healthy thing for democracy in Shoalhaven".
"I'm standing down. I haven't told my community that. Well, most of them know anyway. It's the worst secret ever," she said. "I've got a councillor who's celebrating 50 years of continuous service on Shoalhaven council in four months.
"He's turned up, he's committed, and he's done what he's done for his community. But I would put it to people that we should be looking at limited tenure because, around that capture as well, there is a risk for elected members to start acting like bureaucrats."
Cr Findlay spoke about transparency in local government and urged the modest crowd that filled the Hunter Room at City Hall to rise above the "not if the negative".
"There are big battles that you now have in your hands, and that is avoiding the noise of the negative people and those that want to take people down and want to turn candidates off," she said, "Without your council hearing your voices ... you have no say in being able to hold those people to account.
"It's really important that we find ways to ... change government to make it more inclusive.
"In our council, there are 13 who sit around the table, and I can tell you that brains trust - it may be a mirror of the community - but it's not a true reflection. We need the true reflection (and) we need to keep the door open."
The forum also mourned the death of prominent Hunter academic and Indigenous rights champion Lyndall Rya, who died Tuesday at 81.
Professor Ryan was recognised internationally as a leading scholar, particularly of colonial frontier massacres in Australia. Her work shed light on the history of Aboriginal people and Australian feminism.
John Hunter Hospital senior staff specialist, longtime Labor member, and one-time lord mayoral challenger Ross Kerridge, who ran an ultimately unsuccessful move to unseat Nuatali Nelmes for preselection in February, spoke philosophically on the role of elected government. Better Planning Network boss Christine Berlioz and urban forest planning advisor Ian McKenzie spoke respectively on high and lower-density planning throughout the city.
Paul Scott, the University of Newcastle communications lecturer and Newcastle Herald columnist, emceed the forum, which was attended by Newcastle councillors Charlotte McCabe, Elizabeth Adamczyk, and Katrina Wark.
