PORT Stephens ratepayers are entitled to wonder if their council is losing the plot.
Last September this newspaper warned that the Port council's behaviour was becoming alarmingly reminiscent of that displayed by Cessnock council during its worst period of dysfunction.
Almost a year later the situation has not improved.
This week's appalling "shouting match" between hostile councillors was merely the latest instalment of what has come to resemble a very bad soap opera.
Mayor Bruce MacKenzie, no stranger to conflict or controversy during a long and sometimes tempestuous career in business and local politics, has labelled the council over which he presides as "the nastiest" he has ever been involved with.
Councillors outside the mayor's ruling faction complain of being "frozen out" of decision-making and of being excluded from "closed-door" meetings with developers.
Since the council was elected, more than 20 complaints about councillors have been made under the code of conduct.
This rivalry and animosity between opposing blocs of councillors and the aspersions being cast on some council staff have created a poisonous climate in which the administration of public affairs can only suffer.
Controversy over the extraordinary financial losses the council tolerated on its white elephant Samurai resort, arguments about commercial real estate dealings and the confusing morass of data and opinion that surrounds the aircraft noise issue form a worrying background to budgetary problems that threaten to affect services to ratepayers.
Worse, however, are the unresolved allegations of inappropriate dealings and decisions in a variety of areas that suggest a growing lack of public confidence in the council's ability to be properly accountable. Constant sniping, insults and innuendo directed by councillors against each other can only serve to reinforce impressions of a council that is spiralling out of effective control.
Councillors should be aware that, by demonstrating their inability to do the job they were elected to do, they are inviting outside intervention.
An absurd result
NSW Education Minister Verity Firth has labelled as "absurd" criticism of her department's handling of school building projects that have caused 93 pupils with autism to be evicted from their classrooms.
On the contrary, what is absurd is that a department that likes to present itself as sensitive to the needs of disadvantaged children has permitted such a distressing situation to arise.
Given that big, expensive new buildings at Tighes Hill and Shortland - funded by controversial federal stimulus cash - were going to displace so many children, better arrangements should have been made to minimise stress and disruption.
Now it is aware of this case of collateral damage from its spending program, the federal government should step in and solve the problems it has inadvertently created for these vulnerable children.
Email a friend