Who are you and where do you come from?

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I have lived in my current address at Butterwick for over a quarter of a century, where my now adult children were raised together with countless animals.

In my role as a surveyor, I have walked over nearly every part of Port Stephens at some time, no matter how steep or how swampy.

I have been there with ropes and abseiling gear, or thigh deep in swampy mud.

As a scuba diver, I have also spent time beneath Port Stephens viewing some of the best kept secrets in the world when it comes to amazing dive locations.

I have played sports at nearly every sporting venue in the Local Government Area.

These include soccer, cricket, baseball, and touch football.

I still play cricket on Saturdays for the Port Stephens Pythons and veterans cricket on Sundays.

I have played veterans cricket for NSW in the National Titles, and it is my intention to try and get picked in the Australian Team.

I am also an avid skier, camper and 4-wheel driver and enjoy being active.

I am also a Justice of the Peace.

Was there a particular impetus for your involvement in local government?

Shortly after I was first elected to Council I was asked to attend an awards night for the Rural Fire Service in the Mayor’s stead.

I was sitting next to Peter Blackmore, the long-time mayor of Maitland, and he turned to me and said, ‘What are you going to speak about?’

Since the event was in our LGA, our representative was supposed to give the address and I had about four minutes to figure out what to say.

I spoke of the role of volunteers in a community, like parents who run school canteens, and sports club secretaries.

And then the next level of that, which is SES and RFS volunteers who risk their lives for people who they will never meet and never hear say ‘Thank You’.

Giving that speech, I realised that was the same kind of motivation I had in becoming involved in Council, as a way of giving back to my community, a community that has been extremely good to me.

I just seemed to have a knack and skill for getting things done.

Some people fight fires, others get involved in administration.

As for why I’ve come back to it, the short answer is I get driven mad by the public to get back on there because a lot of people felt that I was making a difference before.

Has it been a natural extension of your career and other community involvement?
That’s exactly what it is.

Over the years I’ve been President of the Pre-school Association, President of the P & C at Seaham, I was President of the Cricket Club for quite a while.

I’ve always been heavily involved in doing something to give back to the community.

What do you believe is the key to an effective Local Council?

Actually identifying properly what are the concerns, and identifying those ones that are concerns a council can actually deal with.

For example, when it comes to housing you hear the term “Housing Crisis” every day.

Council can’t do anything about immigration or population growth, those are the responsibility of Federal Governments.

But what Council can do is provide housing for those people who are in need of it at the moment.

We need to actually understand what the problems are that we can deal with, and then deal with them.

What unique qualities and/or perspective do you bring to Port Stephens Council?

I’m the kind of person that can see through a particular issue or situation to not only the solution, but also the road that we have to take to get there.

I’m particularly good at navigating the way through difficult issues.

That’s born out of a certain degree of natural ability, but also out of decades of experience

In addition to running my own business and being on council for nearly a decade, I have been on multiple boards where members present problems and we need to find solutions.

Do you feel there have been any particular demographics of the Port Stephens community that have been under-represented, or issues that have gone unaddressed, to which you would like to draw attention?

Roads.

We need to understand what has contributed to the state of our roads and address it properly.

After six years of really dry weather we had fairly solid roads and had been able to build and upgrade, but in February of 2020 it started raining and we’ve had above average rainfall ever since.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that in this term of council we’ve got to play catch-up.

We need to pull back on other forms of infrastructure like new amenities blocks or playgrounds and put that money into roads because we all use them, all the time.

We also need to keep sight of the fact that the state government has given targets for new houses that we need to be building each year.

What feeds your soul, or fuels your passion?

There’s two parts to answering that.

One is that I really do get phone calls and emails and get stopped in the street all the time by people saying ‘Get on Council!’

The second is that once I agreed to do that, it’s just in my DNA that if I’ve got a job to do I’m going to do the job as best as I possibly can.

Is there anything you would like the wider community to better understand about their Council?

I wish everyone would look at the population growth chart, because it is scary.

The population growth rate of Australia sits at about 1.7 percent.

That doesn’t sound like much, but that means between 1965 and 2013 both the world’s population doubled and so did Australia’s.

If nothing changes it means that Australia’s population will double over 24 years along with the world’s, and then double again over the following twelve years.

The problems that people think might be the biggest in the world like poverty and climate change are actually second and third.

You can’t fix either of those until you deal with the number one biggest problem, which is population growth.

By Lindsay HALL