Mayor's Column

Like it or not, good local government requires good working relationships with both state and federal government, which is why recently I attended the Regional Cities and Country Mayor’s meetings at NSW Parliament. 

These forums are excellent for promoting our regional interests and I had the opportunity to engage various ministers and portfolios on a range of matters, including Local Government, Police, Health and Premier Chris Minns. 

In my year as mayor, I’ve deliberately set Bathurst up with good access for future engagement with the NSW and the Australian Government, with federal minister meetings to come in the next few weeks in Canberra with our regional NSW Joint Organisation. 

Over the past year as Mayor, I acted on community calls for greater transparency and accountability, particularly by bringing back monthly Policy Meetings. This effectively doubled the opportunity for public question time as a trial period, so the newly elected Council post-September will have to consider if this should remain. 

Financial consolidation of Council’s budget has been the main theme of this term, and I have successfully re-focussed Council’s attention to urban planning for our long-term future. Bathurst remains a growth city in a growing region, despite decades of cost-shifting onto Councils like ours, and I believe our most important challenge will be how to best manage our growth over the coming years as Bathurst pushes past the 50,000-population mark as is projected. 

Given this term of Bathurst Regional Council is about to end with the coming election on Saturday 14 September, I’d like to acknowledge my fellow councillors for their efforts and energy in endeavouring to making Bathurst a better place, and, particularly recognise and thank all Council staff who keep our community ticking in so many critical services, from water to waste and everything in between. 

Yesterday, two hundred years ago, on 14 August 1824, martial law was proclaimed by then Governor of New South Wales Sir Thomas Brisbane. This 1824 Proclamation of Martial Law was the first instance in Australia’s history of legislated community-scale military violence by the British Empire against an uprising of Aboriginal people, as is recorded in New South Wales colonial legislation. 

This Proclamation was a military response to the resistance warfare that occurred between 1822 and 1824 around the Central Western New South Wales township of Bathurst, named in 1815 in honour of the then 3rd Earl Bathurst, Secretary of State for War and Colonies at the time. I note the recent history series of articles by Dr Stephen Gapps in The Western Advocate help shed light on this often-over-looked period in Bathurst’s history.