Maitland Council Draft Community Strategic Plan

Public access speech for and on behalf of Maitland Business & Professional Women

24 June 2008

I have to say from the outset that I was a little disappointed to read the "Staff Response" to the BPW submission. BPW are not suggesting that the process of governing is an easy one. Far from it. But I trust and hope that the response is an integrated response from Council as a whole, including environmental and social officers, as distinct from the proponents of the Draft Plans.

The fundamental problem with the planning process seems to me to be the disjunction between theoretical objectives expressed in the fine words -- like "identify(ing) the community's main priorities and expectations for the future and (planning) strategies and achieving these goals" ( DLG Options Paper p12) and "responding to their community’s various needs" ( DLG Options Paper p 10) -- and what actually happens in practice.

The "responder’s" reference to Wollongong City Council's community consultation program is interesting. Being costly isn't the same as being effective. The "new feedback/consultation mechanism" sounds terrific, but is useless if you don't have an Internet connection or aren't computer savvy. The responder also says Council "has in place mandated community consultation and feedback procedures for all strategic and corporate planning activities, for residential property development proposals and customer service requests": you will note that each of these areas focuses on the interests of individual stakeholders and not the community; you should also note that what Council says it has in place does not include feedback procedures for determining what the Department’s Options Paper implies is most important, namely "where their community is going and what it wants" (Options Paper p 11) or "the community's main priorities and expectations for the future" (Options Paper p 12).

The reference to Wollongong City Council is also both timely and apposite because the recent problems there focus on another difficulty with Council’s preferred Option 3. Look at where "autonomy in responding to the community's various needs" and "encouraging elected representatives to play a leading role in developing long-term plans" got the residents of Wollongong! The utility of this approach depends on the quality and integrity of council staff and elected representatives, and the Wollongong experience suggests that we should view these features of the preferred option with scepticism if not downright suspicion.

The preferred option also does away with mandatory planning and reporting in social and environmental areas (Options Paper p12) and leaves us having to trust Council to "develop adequate monitoring and reporting frameworks". We don’t want a "can-do" Council as far as growth, development and furthering the interests of individual stakeholders goes, but which isn't identifying and addressing the real social and environmental problems that are supposed to have at least an equal footing in the Community Strategic Plan.

The most astute of the responder's comments about the "Maitland character" is the observation that we run the risk of simply becoming part of the lower Hunter urban sprawl. We already have. Dormitory suburbs abound and continue to blossom. BPW members often express concern that the continuing carving up of productive rural land for suburban sprawl is a good example of planning going awry because it will exacerbate the sprawl, it will diminish our social and environmental capital and it will come to be seen as a long-term disaster when we realise we have built over our own food bowl.

The one important concession that the responder does make, and that I would like to highlight for posterity, is that "Any planning decision has the potential to affect social capital and human and community assets." The responder concedes that and says Council has an "appropriate" "current suite of strategies", so it will be interesting to see whether they are used to good effect having regard to the acknowledged consequences of planning decisions.

We suggest that Council's current suite of "scrupulously developed frameworks", as the responder describes them, is obviously not really achieving anything when children as young as 10 are sleeping on our streets, and when statistics indicate that Maitland has high levels of social disadvantage and domestic violence and lower than average education levels. Social capital and human and community services need to be quantified and included in an assets register as an essential foundation to achieving the social and environmental goals the Department is spruiking, and to facilitate proper planning decisions by our next Council.

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