REZONING:The right to know

Moreton Bay Council votes no confidence in MP Lisa France 

You may recall that last week  The Caboolture News  reported Mayor Sutherland's comments to the effect...
"For many months there's been a lot of misinformation, a lot of politically motivated [actions], a lot of skullduggery, a lot of half truths," over the issue of the rezoning.. 

This time around we get:
Councillors voted unanimously in this morning's Coordination Committee meeting, chastising the MP for "ongoing dissemination, via various media and social avenues, of what the Council considers to be incorrect or misleading information around Council's proposed planning scheme."
Rhetoric aside, what WE KNOW is that the Moreton Bay  Regional Council has been very keen NOT to explain anything to the communities most effected by these proposed changes. Who takes responsibility (or be blamed ) for factoring in a sea level rise may indeed be salient but that does not excuse the underhand and arrogant way that council went about its changes to the plan.

And its clear that council has learnt nothing from the backlash.Absolutely nothing.Instead of addressing community concerns and entering into an open and ongoing dialogue with those effected we get  complaints of  'skulduggery'. 

What the councillors are complaining about -- that's all of them, including our own -- is that the democratic process of debate, assertion and counter assertion in any number of public venues is not to be entertained. They are  informing  us collectively that they are not accountable.

Rather than address in  detail Lisa France's supposedly "incorrect or misleading information" they have chosen to complain about the  existence of information they do not control or agree with.

That doesn't necessarily make France correct in whatever she may be saying,  but it sure relegates the rest of us to  the sidelines on a don't-need-to-know-basis.