The Minnamurra Progress Association held a candidate forum on Tuesday 3 September to provide residents the opportunity to speak to the councillor-candidates that seek to represent them.

In attendance from alphabetical order of Group A to Group H; Cameron McDonald, Alan Smith, Matt Brown, Imogen Draisma, Melinda Lawton, Michael Cains, Gail Morgan and Mark Croxford. 

All councillor-candidates touched on the fraught housing situation across the local government area. 

Preservation of the natural environment opened up each of the candidates addresses, Melinda Lawton raised the importance of the Minnamurra River, “we have a duty to protect these waters,” she said. 

Community members present verbalised their concerns for building small properties on small plots of land. Mike Cains stressed the importance of preserving our landscapes, but the need for sustainable development is ongoing, an outlook many candidates shared.

“We also must acknowledge that young people, seniors, and service workers also have the right to live in affordable housing,” said Cains.

Matt Brown echoed this notion, “we need a diversity of homes, which we don’t have at the moment.”

Imogen Draisma also noted the composition of housing stock in Kiama is heavily skewed towards large plots of land with multi-bedroom homes. Homes that aren’t suitable for many Kiama residents, “I’m a young renter myself. We need two bedrooms, we need one bedroom.”

Cameron McDonald addressed the residents core concern for housing that Kiama will be urbanised, “[the community] don’t want to see urban sprawl, they don’t want to see our green rolling hills turned into condominiums.”

Gail Morgan provided her stance on development in the municipality, with calls to end high rise development, “we’re calling all the horrible high rise development that we’re planning for central Kiama. We’re calling it infield, that’s a lovely euphemism.”

Another topic heavily discussed was the financial position of Kiama Council, and how this will be resolved in the next term.

Financial stability and revenue management came into question. All candidates recognised the poor management of the Blue Haven Bonaria site.

“Two years of backwards and forwards. Do we sell it? Do we not? It gave a signal to the market that turned it into a fire sell,” Alan Smith said.

Draisma said a priority will be “getting back into black”, and the council cannot “survive on rates alone”, with all candidates in agreement that revenue generation will need to be a first concern. 

“If we cannot live within our means, we shouldn’t be putting our hands in other people’s pockets,” Croxford said. 

Croxford continued by discussing the dire state of affairs the council was left in when the previous term of councillors were sworn in.

“We inherited a situation that no council should ever have to inherit,” Croxford said.

Fresh faces on the ballot paper said they want the future council to be a professional one.

“I’m not a politician, I stand in because I was tired of seeing the dysfunction that was the previous council. I watched your meetings. They were shocking,” Alan Smith said.

“The first thing is to make sure that the next term of council is a professional council… one where people aren’t focused on petty squabbles but rather getting on with business of council, of getting things done,” Cains said. 

Incumbent Councillor Mark Croxford addressed the comments of dysfunction in the previous council chambers as a result of other councillors refusing to come to agreements.

“In the previous term of council, there were far too many who were not willing to compromise,” Croxford said.

Residents of Minnamurra pushed the candidates to share their views on the offshore wind farm project, Cains and Smith expressed their distaste for the sight of wind turbines, however, Smith noted it ultimately lies with the federal government.