AT a recent council meeting, Councillor Burnside delivered an extraordinary and uninformed diatribe against certain members of the community.
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Under the Local Government Act, Deputy Mayor Burnside, along with other councillors, is required "to provide leadership and guidance to the community" and "to facilitate communication between the community and council".
Instead, behaving nothing like a leader, he poured scorn upon those constituents who seek to formally engage with council on the matter of HuntFest. And he did so in an unbridled, highly intemperate fashion.
At the very least, he has shown contempt for the more than 900 signatories to a petition of local residents that calls for an end to HuntFest. In a democracy there must be room for civil debate on issues of difference. Outbursts of this kind are more suited to a pub than a council chamber and do nothing but work against our democratic values.
And on the matter of the claimed $900,000 cash flow into the local economy over the two days of the event, if we assume, say, 100 local businesses shared in this largess, it would mean that, on average, they each received $9,000 - in just two days. Really?
Peter Cormick
Deua River Valley