Time for bothering councils to get comeuppance

Spare a thought for the Aussie spirit that’s being battered and bruised by bureaucratic busybodies.

On Sunday, a group of local heroes on the central coast banded together to try and save homes near Tuggerah lakes from the coming onslaught of torrential rain that rocked NSW’s east coast, flooded towns and destroyed the power grid for tens of thousands of homes. Men and women of all ages got together and joined forces to help build sandbag barricades and dig out a much-needed channel at Dunleith Point. Something that residents have been consistently requesting from their local council representatives to no avail.

The purpose was to avoid further flooding of Tuggerah Lakes and protect the area that they love. One man in particular heard of the effort to prevent flooding and quickly brought his digger along to help out.

It was an example of Australia’s can-do spirit and mateship that so many of us still extol to this day. The idea that people from all walks of life will get together to protect the local community and put in the hard yards to get it done is something we should all be immensely proud of and should support. Being an Aussie after all is about respecting your fellow Australians and chipping in when times get tough.

Despite this, the local hero who brought his digger to the beach and helped save his local community from potentially life threatening and property destroying floods was swiftly kicked off the beach at the behest of the local council. His crime? Helping people in need.

These sorts of mindboggling edicts from local councils in a time of need are a prime example of their decline in services. Long gone are the days of councils taking care of the basics. They now send out hordes of rangers to do their bidding and they seem to be solely focused on spending half their time telling you what to do with your own property, stopping you from carrying out preventative back burning ahead of a fire season, and kicking you off a beach for trying to prevent floods. Meanwhile roads are falling apart, rubbish is barely managed, and our rates continue to soar.

This bureaucratic rot which risks tearing away at our Aussie spirit, has set in at all levels of government from Federal to State and now at a local level. It chips away at our autonomy, punishing people for daring to not only care for their neighbours, but actually doing something without jumping through whatever mundane regulatory hoops these barely elected hobgoblins have created to protect their community funded jobs.

I would have initially labelled this as an example of our nanny state gone mad, but the term nanny state doesn’t quite sum up what is happening to our great nation. A nanny wants to stop you from doing things for your own good. In Australia, all levels of government seem to want to make you pay for the right to live your life. Every nonsensical rule or regulation comes with an associated fine for non-compliance. Every aspect of your daily life involves incurring a fee, duty, excise, levy, or tax. The end result of this revenue driven nightmare is that in a time of need, the people we should promote and support for being selfless end up facing punishment for their gallant efforts to help others.

If we want to protect the Australian values of mateship, hard work and taking care of others, we need to fight back against these council busybodies. A future without the Australian spirit is just too bleak.

This article appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 14 February 2020.