Congratulations and thank you Graham Brown for your positive input into the changes with our local council area. I agree that we have a great future in this area if the community gets behind the new council and looks at it as a great opportunity, instead of listening to, and taking on board, the negatives we have been hearing so far from our previous “leaders” and the media.

We live in a beautiful area that has missed out on so many opportunities to be great. We now have an opportunity to start afresh with new ideas and new people – maybe we have been too complacent, letting opportunities pass us by, but by embracing the new we can grow an exciting new region, for those who live here, those who visit and those who wish they lived in an area as beautiful as ours.

Why is it that negatives are so easy to make news headlines – maybe our Manning River Times could adopt some of Graham’s collection of natural attractions we have and give us some front page news that is positive and uplifting for the community about those attractions? Some positive backing for the new council area from the media would also be a positive idea, after all, it is what the majority of people in the Manning area believe, they just don’t make as much “noise” as the negative.

Stop comparing us with Port Macquarie – if you haven’t visited there for some time you may not realise that it has become a very large city and one would expect them to have many more facilities than we have in Taree. Unfortunately Taree has been allowed to “stand still” and we know that is not possible – if you are not going forward you are going backward. 

Our future is in our hands, we are the ones who will in time elect our councillors – let prospective candidates know from the start that we expect great things from them, to make our region standout from the crowd as a great place to be.

Section 51 of the NSW Constitution Act 1902, which is the Act that gives our parliament the jurisdiction to make legislation about local government, starts off with, “There shall continue to be a system of local government for the State under which duly elected or duly appointed local government bodies are constituted with responsibilities for acting for the better government of those parts of the State that are from time to time subject to that system of local government.”

If, at the time of NSW transition from British colonial status to sovereign state, its foundational legislation confirmed the continuance of duly elected local government, on what basis can the current NSW government exceed it by ignoring the status quo of duly elected local governments?

Even if the NSW Government sacked councils procedurally in accordance with the Local Government Act, can that deed be valid if it contradicts the express or implied provision of the State’s Constitution?  Show me where my questions are misguided.

When someone dies there is normally an executor and if the executor is unwilling or unable to act, or if the deceased was intestate, an administrator can be appointed.  In our case, our elected councils are dead because the NSW Government executed them, then the executor appointed administrators without will annexed.

What is the will of the people? It is a living one when citizens vote at elections and honour all our forebears who fought and died for democracy. The result may be elected representatives who we may not always like but what we feel about them is always relevant. Whether we like or dislike an unelected administrator of a council is not relevant because now we have no power. We are now peasants and serfs.