Being elected to local council is an extraordinary honour.

You stand before the community, take an oath, accept the responsibility entrusted to you and briefly experience the exhilarating delusion that you may now be in charge of something.

It passes.

I arrived at council knowing very little. After nearly four years, I estimate that I now understand approximately 10 per cent of what would make me the Councillor I want to be.

On a particularly good day, in an area I have studied carefully, that may rise to 15 or even 20 per cent.

This places me at a significant disadvantage to people who attended one council meeting, read half a Facebook post and achieved complete mastery of municipal government before lunch and gave me shit about one Council decision.

Fortunately, I do not appear to suffer from Dunning–Kruger syndrome? (If you don’t know what that is click here to find out a little secret – if may change the way your see the world?)

I remain painfully aware of how much I do not know. It is an inconvenient condition in politics, where confidence is often considered a perfectly acceptable substitute for competence.

At first, I assumed Elected Members governed the council.

Adorable.

I soon discovered that Councils are supported by an administrative machine that existed long before any particular councillor arrived and has already worked out how things are done, why they are done and why your suggestion cannot possibly be considered until it has been referred to a committee, examined by another committee and returned eighteen months later as a recommendation to continue doing what was already being done.

I asked questions.

Then I asked again.

Then I discovered one of the essential skills of public office: asking the same question in six different ways until somebody finally identifies the precise person I apparently should have asked in the first place.

My colleagues and I have not always agreed. The Mayor, the Chief Executive Officer, the general managers and I have occasionally looked at the same issue and arrived at different conclusions.

This is known as democracy.

On social media, it is known as corruption, incompetence, conspiracy or Tuesday and a myriad of other names, I, the Mayor, the other elected Members and our competent members of Administration have been called.

Nevertheless, when difficulties arrived, and they certainly did, we kept working. Sometimes we found ourselves standing in the middle of the storm asking the traditional local-government strategic question:

“What the……!”
“You’ve been doing what….!!!!!!!”
“How did this happen….????”
Where do go from here…..?”

The answer was generally: everywhere, immediately, with insufficient money, incomplete records and a community understandably wondering why it had not already been fixed.

Then the State Government postponed the council elections.

The Electoral Commission, whose specialist field is elections, advised that the election could not proceed as expected. It is reassuring to know that even highly specialised organisations occasionally struggle with the one activity, their one job, mentioned in their name.

Consequently, those of us who won the earlier popularity contest remain in office longer than originally advertised.

There is, however, an important lesson in all this.

When the next election eventually arrives, do not merely complain about the council you have. Put your hand up.

Stand for election.

Bring your knowledge, your criticism, your solutions and preferably a comfortable chair, to pre-read your 200-1000 page agendas, and because the meetings can be lengthy.

I have lived a life of service guided by the principle:

“No good deed goes unpunished.”

So, despite having now discovered exactly how difficult the job is, I may put my hand up again.

Not because I have earned the position.

Not because I deserve it.

And certainly not because local government is an efficient pathway to peace, financial prosperity, popularity or uninterrupted sleep.

I may stand again because walking away would waste the knowledge I have gained, the work still unfinished and the opportunity to do better. Because it would mean walking away from an Administration and group of Executive Leaders who have not just rebuilt but have in the process rebuild themselves and all those around them. And, mostly because our Mayor is known as one of the top 5 Mayors in the State; and she, yes a she, is 35 years old and in her first term and already done more than the previous 2 terms of her predecessors.

But, don’t worry about that? All ‘tall poppies’ will eventually get torn down by the rumour, innuendo and lies told about her, mostly be the uninformed, the ignorant, the bias and people in our world who don’t want to see it fixed, they just want to complain and be a victim of the infamous ‘they.’ At least the community, well a few can say, they were responsible for creating the government they deserve…..

But the same challenge applies to everyone else.

Do not throw away the opportunity to serve and then complain that nobody suitable volunteered.

Otherwise, after the next election, you may receive precisely the council you deserve. You may find, as it appears some of you have already, that you are being governed by your inferiors? And, you could do a better job. It’s just that you don’t?

I know one thing.

I tried and continue to try, and will try again. What have you done today to put your ‘skin in the game’…. I would suspect a ‘like’ a post or typing a comment from the safety of your keyboard.