Australia’s local Councils generate over $45 billion in revenue each year. In the article we quote from below, Dean Hurlston, President of Council Watch – website at at https://www.councilwatch.com.au/ , notes that activists perceive the Councils as honeypots, and have descended on them to get them to push political agendas.
These have to do with Environment, Climate Change, Sustainability, LGBTQIA+, and Indigenous Reconciliation.
This has nothing to do with the traditional role of local Councils in dealing with local roads, rubbish, parks, street cleaning, roadside slashing and weed control, gutters, footpaths, parking, planning and building permits, libraries, art centres, maternal health services, youth services and the like.
Dean Hurlston says “I have long been a proponent of big companies having a corporate social responsibility lens. Companies must consider their social impact and ensure they actually treat people well, that they do not discriminate, that they treat us all with excellent service and no labels.” However, the process has gone too far, and he calls out the weaponizing of politically correct (woke) causes in three areas: Greenwashing, Pinkwashing and Blakwashing.
Greenwashing
Greenwashing (by companies, Councils and governments) pushes the impression that the organization’s products are environmentally sound. It makes an unsubstantiated claim to deceive consumers into believing that the organization’s products are environmentally friendly or have a greater positive environmental impact than they actually do. If ANY Council purchases overseas carbon credits using ratepayers’ money, that’s Greenwashing. Schemes that are untested, unproven, and cannot be seen as anything other than paying to “seem to be doing stuff” and feel better.
They do not at all address the “stuff of climate change”; rather, they deny the real issues in sustainability and climate impacts.
Pinkwashing
Pinkwashing is an attempt to benefit from purported support for LGBTQ+ rights, often as a way to profit or to distract from a separate agenda. It is proven the moment we start putting rainbow stickers on buildings or accrediting services as “LGBTQIA+ Pride Certified”.
Now, to the Councils: First, we are not facing an epidemic of entry refusal to LGBTQIA+ people in our Council Pools and Libraries, and second, Councils do not have a LGBTQIA+ violence or discriminating problem they are trying to solve. There is absolutely NO DATA at all held by Councils that there is even an LGBTIQA+ discrimination or violence issue to be solved. Councils have long been a safe place for any LGBTQIA+ person!
Blakwashing
Blakwashing is the practice of benefiting from supporting indigenous causes as a way to make an organization look “indigenous friendly”.
Many Brisbane suburban trains and buses are covered with Aboriginal artwork.
Blakwashing is continued through the tiresome Welcome to Country bullshit (Qantas really irritates with this) and indigenous renaming by Councils and state governments of streets and landmarks faster than you can say Referendum.
The City of Darebin in inner Melbourne’s north has this on its website:
This is replicated in many, many places. Some examples are frankly over the top. Dean Hurlston quotes the latest iteration of the Welcome to Country by Yarra Council (behind the “goat cheese curtain” in Melbourne’s inner east):
“Yarra City Council acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people as the Traditional Owners and true sovereigns of the land now known as Yarra. We acknowledge their creator spirit Bunjil, their ancestors and their Elders. We acknowledge the strength and resilience of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung, who have never ceded sovereignty and retain their strong connections to family, clan and country despite the impacts of European invasion. We also acknowledge the significant contributions made by other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to life in Yarra. We pay our respects to Elders from all nations here today—and to their Elders past, present and future.”
What this amounts to is this:
All this does is peddle a virtue signalling sop to the indigenous community. There are real problems of abuse, alcohol, drugs and unemployment in indigenous communities, and these tokenistic “actions” do nothing to help any of it.
They don’t lift any indigenous person out of poverty or abuse or give them safety. Instead they make many white people “feel good” about themselves, looking like they are doing something, when they are not. It’s disingenuous and frankly foul.
Here’s a double whammy on Blak and Pink washing from the Brisbane CBD.
Out of Touch
Too many Councils have become a bureaucracy more and more out of touch with what we need. It’s hard to understand how the pothole you complained about a year ago, that wrecked your car and many more, cannot be fixed because we supposedly have a crisis to fix in local indigenous issues. Of course, it is not indigenous issues that are preventing the potholes being fixed: they just sound sexier and more “do-gooder” in their impact. NONE of this washing does anything for the actual resident. It doesn’t increase or improve the services delivered.
These washing topics have created cottage industries of suppliers and accreditation models – yep, the Aboriginal industry – that all take money away from core service delivery. This is a deliberate tactic. Follow the money. Follow the grandstanding. Follow the distractions.
The Green/Pink/Blak dollar is very powerful, but it is a total scam.
Lessons from the UK
In the UK, the role of Local Government is to promote the wellbeing of their community. Councils must have a long list of strategies that show how they will promote said wellbeing. This very broad remit allows them essentially to do any and all things lawful. This includes a raft of “washing” activities.
The UK local government industry is in financial crisis. All this washing and lack of focus has financially ruined them. Out of 317 local Councils, eight have gone bankrupt, and the total is expected to reach 10% or more.
Nottingham City Council has issued a Section 114 notice, which means halting spending on anything that is not required by law. Birmingham council does not know exactly how many people it employs and where they fit into the organization.
In Victoria, and also other states
It is alarming that in Victoria (where Dean Hurlston lives), and in some other states, Local Government Acts have been changed dramatically, to make the role of Councils to promote wellbeing, peace and order – motherhood objectives devoid of specific content. The legislation has removed the role of genuine service providers and replaced it with those broad brushes we see in UK legislation.
Councils are arguing here that they do not want ANY form of defined role, and they want the right to be anything they decide to be. That is idiotic. Australian Councils are on the same path as the UK system where bankruptcy is becoming common, all because they want to be everything to everyone, but lack the financial resources to be unconstrained in their globalist agenda and pursuits.
what can you do about it?
You can push back, get involved, tell them to STOP all the time and effort on these things, because you do not want to hear it – you expect them to act ethically not tell you how they will. We must lobby Councillors or replace them.
You can turn up to Council meetings, watch them online, write to Councillors and refocus them on THE BUSINESS OF COUNCIL – the roads, the footpaths, the green space, the rubbish collection. You know, the stuff YOU want them to do.
You can also elect Councillors in the next Council elections who think like this and refocus the bloated globalist thinking bureaucracy back on to LOCAL issues and LOCAL problems.
You can DUMP the current cohort of Councillors who think the role is to play nice little social lecturers.
And finally, to recap: The website for Dean Hurlston’s Council Watch is at https://www.councilwatch.com.au/
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