At the outset of this campaign, I said that there were three broad areas that I want to tackle in Council. A new approach to urban planning and design. A more activist approach to local government. Greater transparency and scrutiny.

Local government performs an impressive range of jobs and services, for what is, in the end, not a bad price, the cost of your rates. But things can be better. As citizens and as communities, we are entitled to expect things to be better. We need to tackle what I think is a complacency, a malaise, a ‘business as usual’ approach, that infects government decision-making.

Planning decisions need to do more than deliver developer profitability through suburb-building without neighbourhood shops and footpaths, without public transport, without attractive community spaces, without targets for affordable housing. That sort of planning is a debacle. It is planning for subdivision, not for communities.