Just Rename Australia Lala Land

Local government is pretty simple - rates, roads, and rubbish.

Local residents pay their rates and in return, local governments ensure potholes are filled, bins are emptied, and nature strips are mowed.

The task doesn’t call for world changers. On the contrary, the job requires people who are prepared to dedicate themselves to ensuring the basic essentials of life get done.

Fill holes.

Empty bins.

Trim lawns.

It’s not sexy, but it’s important.

Increasingly, though, local government seems to be attracting incredibly mediocre people with equally incredible delusions of grandeur. 

Local Councillor is fast becoming the career of choice for people who boast the talent of Homer Simpson, and the ego of Julius Caesar.

Take Melbourne’s Yarra City Council, for instance. On Tuesday night they released an 81-page Climate Emergency Plan.

Why serve inner Melbourne suburbs when you can save the planet?

The nine Yarra City Council members are recommending local residents adopt a vegetarian diet.

The report says …

“It is widely understood that a shift to plant-based diets is critical in responding to the climate emergency.”

Pity it’s not more widely understood that a shift from local politics to guardians of the galaxy is not in the councillors’ job description.

This is a mob that can barely fill a pothole but now dare to tell you what you can fill your stomach with.

As well as demanding local residents forgo meat, the council is determined to get them out of cars.

The Climate Emergency Plan includes a goal to increase the number of people travelling by scooter to 20 percent by 2027 and 40 percent by 2032.

None of this will make a scrap of difference to the weather, but that’s not the point.

It’s just a lot more fun pretending to save the world by bossing around the people who pay your wage, than it is to actually do the things ratepayers pay you to do.

And if it really HAS fallen to the People’s Republic of Yarra to save the world from a climate Armageddon, well God help us.

These guys first declared a Climate Emergency back in 2012. And they’re only just now thinking maybe we should use scooters?

They’re tackling the climate emergency with the same urgency they empty bins - which is to say, not much at all!

The Climate Emergency Plan also pointed out that deforestation was a major problem which is interesting since this is a council responsible for Collingwood, Richmond and Fitzroy!

Talk about a misappropriation of ratepayer funds.

Speaking of funds, the Yarra Council is recommending residents change their superannuation and banking over to companies that avoid investments in fossil fuels.

As if you’d take investment advice from this mob.

Back in March the city’s council members required security guards to protect them from outraged residents furious at being slugged with a bin tax.

The council’s chief executive Sue Wilkinson said the bin levy was required to secure the council’s long-term financial sustainability. 

Now you, like the good people of Yarra, might have imagined that rates would cover essentials like the removal of rubbish. Well, they used to. But these days, one’s rates are more likely to cover the Woke adventures of activist councillors. 

Those Climate Emergency Plans don’t just pay for themselves!

And last year the Green wokerati occupying city hall formed a Rainbow Advisory Committee that determined the LGBTQ “pride” flag flown atop the city’s administration building was insufficiently inclusive.

So, along with the original Pride Flag, council members decided to hoist the Philadelphia Pride Flag, the Pride Progress Flag and the Intersex-Inclusive Pride Flag.

But of course that raises the question … how to afford all the extra flags and poles?

Well, what are rates for, if not to fund the politically correct escapades of small men and women who dream of flying big Woke flags?

As for the bins, they can empty themselves. 

Don’t worry about the stench of uncollected garbage, see how the rainbow flags fly. So much diversity. So much inclusion. You can pay a levy to have your rubbish removed if it really bothers you.

It gets sillier.

Back in 2021, a week after Valentine’s Day, the Yarra City Council decided to fly an Aromantic flag in honour of all those who experience no romantic attractions. If you’re not romantically attracted to anyone, Yarra Council hears you, and sees you, and believes you.

And in 2019, the council insisted on flying an anti-nuclear flag to mark the anniversary of the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima. 

Next time you vote at a local government election, be sure to ask candidates their flag policy because you can almost be certain they’ve put more thought into that, than they have your bins.

I wish it were only Yarra Council that was completely derelict in its duty.

But like I said, councils right around the Australia are now sheltered workshops for people with tiny minds and grandiose visions.

Last year the Gold Coast City Council blew $2m on 97 yellow and grey light poles along the M1 motorway that, when lit up, were meant to spell ‘Gold Coast’.

Except that as motorists flew past the poles at 100km/h the sign was completely unintelligible. 

The 97 poles quickly became a landmark for hoons doing burnouts on the highway, leading police to demand council turn the lights off at weekends.

So the only way to appreciate, let alone understand, the $2m sign was to stand a way off to the side of the highway in a paddock, in the dead of night, but not on weekends.

You have to wonder if Gold Coast residents were ever ambitious for a $2m sign on the Yatala highway welcoming drivers from Brisbane. 

Or was the sign just another expensive exercise in local government self-pleasuring, funded by ratepayers who were simply hoping for fewer potholes and someone with a whipper snipper to cut the grass?

Now if City of Sydney Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, was running the Gold Coast, she would have reduced the M1 speed limit to 40kmh, making the  sign visible.

Throw in a couple of Yarra Councillors to ensure people could only move between Brisbane and Gold Coast on scooters while waving pride flags and tut-tutting hamburgers and, you’d pretty much have the perfect city.

City of Yarra, City of Sydney, City of Gold Coast … just name them all Lala land.