CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
The NSW Local Council elections are on this weekend, and voters right across the state are now weighing up their options.
In the bush, the big issues are mostly related to economic issues, as half the nation’s country towns are seeing the majority of their youth leaving for opportunities elsewhere, and the other half are dealing with an unsustainable increase in tree-changing city slickers.
In the coastal regions, it’s much the same. How do we deal with the influx of both tourists and new residents who made an epiphany during the pandemic that the city sucks and is too unaffordable to live a normal life.
But in the city, it’s very different.
Sydney residents are grown used to the fact that there is nothing their vote can do to improve their standard of living. They know that nothing will change the stranglehold that the property bubble has on both their elected officials and media. They know that if the rubbish doesn’t get picked up on time, then it will be scavenged by an increasing homeless population who depend on the Return and Earn initiatives to survive.
They know that their pubs will continue to close at dinnertime, and that the vast majority of them serve no purpose other than to harvest wages from local tradies and pensioners with their air-conditioned neon pokie rooms.
They know that they’ll probably never see live music again unless they can somehow score a ticket to some sort of orchestral ballet production at the Sydney Opera House – and even then, the show will have to end before the millionaires living in the luxury apartments of Circular Quay begin complaining non-stop to the local police about the sounds of subdued applause interrupting their Jodi Picoult novels.
Basically, all it comes down to is which blatant criminal with ties to shady property developers is their preferred poison. A decision usually dictated by how physically attractive the candidate is.
Local hospital orderly, Gal Mayne (64), says he knows this council election doesn’t mean shit. But if he cops a fine for not voting he won’t be able to pay rent next month. And he’s already been stung upwards of 1000 dollars by the city ranger jackboots after having trouble reading the 18 different instructions on the local roadside parking signs.
“I guess I’ll go with the gelled hair lad” he said.
“He’s got quite a jawline”
“Or the macho man with the arms”
“Either that or the busty blonde sheilah. I dunno. These nobodies and their hollow campaigns mean nothing to me.”
