Hervey Bay Gossip

I can understand that a car might be part of the employment contract for a senior employee on the Fraser Coast Regional Council.

I can’t understand why Councillors on the same council should be supplied with a car at ratepayers expense. We already pay them a bucket load of cash so why should we also supply a car for them to swan around in?

And I really can’t understand why, when a Councillor is married to a senior employee of Fraser Coast Regional Council … and said employee is off on two years leave … both Councillor and employee should have a council-funded car each.

In these difficult times I’m sure that there are plenty of people in Hervey Bay who are struggling to afford just one car.

You can read the full story of this crazy situation here on the Fraser Coast Free Clarion

… some perspective

So our elected Councillors thought that they were worth a lot of money and so they voted to pay themselves the top pay rate. So what does that mean in terms of the common working man?

Well the base pay for one of our Councillors is $75,940 a year … or $1,460.39 a week … or $36.51 an hour (based on a 40 hour week).

The base pay for our Deputy Mayor is $85,430 a year … or $1,642.89 a week … or $41.07 cents an hour (based on a 40 hour week).

The base pay for our illustrious Mayor is $120,230 a year … or $2,312.12 a week … or $57.80 an hour (based on a 40 hour week).

Now if you were an employer and were asked to pay an employee amounts like that you would expect to get a heck of a lot of productivity from that employee or otherwise you would just be wasting money. If you were purchasing something worth those amounts of money you would hope that you be getting value for the dollars you were spending.

I leave it up to you to decide whether the ratepayers here in Hervey Bay and the rest of the Fraser Coast region are getting value for money - or will ever get any value for money -  that we’re paying our Councillors.

By now, if you’re a resident of Hervey Bay or the area covered by the new Fraser Coast Regional Council, you will know that The Chronicle’s favourite man Mick Kruger will be the Mayor for the next few years.

What may not be quite so apparent is that Mick really does not have much of a mandate from the people. It seems that poor Mick couldn’t even get close to getting 50% of the vote - a point that’s not lost on yet another local blog - the Fraser Coast Free Clarion.

It’s a local news blog that certainly is worth reading.

Tomorrow it’s election day here in Hervey Bay. We’re faced with the task of electing councillors to the Fraser Coast Regional Council who will truly represent us instead of merely rubberstamping every development application that appears before them.

I suppose like a few other Hervey Bay bloggers I should be giving some clues on who to vote for but I’m not even going to touch that today. Instead I’m boing to give you a to something that is completely unrelated to elections, councillors, and crappy newspapers that as one-eyed as Lord Nelson.

What you will find at the other end of this link will really amaze you.

Sometimes it’s a wise thing not to crow too loudly when you score a victory - especially when you confuse winning a single battle with winning the entire war. The Chronicle certainly made a lot of noise on Saturday about the demise of Strewth but perhaps all that noise might have been just a little premature.

Strewth may have gone but in it’s place there are now two more and a well-established blog from Maryborough has also taken up the cudgels in the fight for a little transparency in local government in Hervey Bay and the Fraser Coast.

Not only do we have Strewth Reloaded as was mentioned here on Saturday but we also have Bring Back Strewth and Perspective so Nancy (and your mates) if you can’t beat ‘em why not be bold … be brave … even be a just a little fair dinkum and join in the conversation. Start adding your comments to those blogs and be prepared to defend what you seem to consider to be your god-given right to develop Hervey Bay any way you see fit!

Now that shouldn’t be too hard should it Nancy? After all you are a professional journalist so you should be able to run rings round the riff-raff who post on those blogs that you dislike with such intensity.

Sadly, if the blaring headlines on today’s Fraser Coast Chronicle is anything to go by Strewth definitely has gone … but perhaps not quite as far as the Chronicle would have you believe.

You see nothing goes away for ever on the Internet and someone has take the time to resurrect much of Strewth from the various pages of Strewth that Google cached and you can find it at Strewth Reloaded according to an anonymous email we received overnight.

It was interesting to watch the impact that Strewth had on various aspects of life here in Hervey Bay. Those who were opposed to it were very careful to rubbish it without actually pointing people to it and some of those suggested that Strewth was nothing for them to worry about at all.

However if Strewth was so insignificant then why is the front page of today’s Chronicle emblazoned with the message that Strewth has gone for good? I’ve seen smaller headlines announcing a war that what the Chronicle used to announce the demise of Strewth.

Strewth might be gone but I doubt that that’s the last we’ll see of real citizen journalism here in Hervey Bay and on the Fraser Coast.

Blogs have been around the Internet for several years now and some are very well-known around the world and have a considerable impact on the people who read them and the subjects that they deal with. But blogs that deal with life at a local level are perhaps less well-known and certainly don’t have the same impact.

For sometime now Strewth has been seeking to have an impact on life here in Hervey Bay by exposing what its author and supporters consider to be the poor management of local resouces by our elected representatives on Hervey Bay City Council. But how effective has that impact been?

Well there’s no doubt that Strewth has certainly ruffled some feathers and our current Mayor and the local paper have had something to say about it … but at the same time they’ve been careful not to refer to it by name. Perhaps they thought that they needed to attack the credibility of Strewth without adding to its impact by actually naming it so people who didn’t know about it couldn’t find it.

Despite that the reach and impact of Strewth has been growing and now even people who might not otherwise read a local blog are reading Strewth. I was talking to a candidate for the upcoming Fraser Coast Regional Council elections last night and he mentioned that he is now reading Strewth so that he can see what the important issues for electors are going to be at those elections. He also wants to see both sides of the various issues that he will be confronted with if elected.

When you think about it that goes to show you just how important Strewth is becoming to Hervey Bay. With only word-of-mouth marketing Strewth has become required reading for people who would never have thought of reading a blog before.

I’m not sure that there are many - if any - other local issue blogs that could claim to have such an impact on their communities in the way that Strewth is having an impact on Hervey Bay.

Nominations have now closed for the Fraser Coast Regional Council and Strewth has a full list of the candidates who will be standing for election next month.

You can find that list here.

Sadly the list of Mayoral Candidates is not all that impressive.