By SP Cllr Stephen Jolly
The Council meeting tonight was dominated by some bread and butter issues concerning the lives of local residents. One issue was the threatened closure of the Collingwood Community Information Centre.

Council unanimously passed a strong motion offering more cash to support this vital service (see previous email/posts from SP on this) and calling on the State Government to follow suit.



Two Collingwood public housing tenants and CCIC Co-ordinator Kellie Nagle addressed the Council meeting and asked Council to support the public meeting on Thursday, which we did.



I made the point that public housing residents are a key part of our community and the closure of this service will isolate residents and deny them job, training and education opportunities, counselling and induction services and more. An alienated and isolated community will eventually run the risk of reacting as public housing tenants did in France last year. A dollar spent today by the State Government to keep this vital service alive will be hundreds of dollars saved tomorrow. Watch this space for more on this ongoing battle…

2. Child Care

Residents addressed the Council meeting to support more Council and/or not-for-profit communty run child care in Yarra. This was during a debate over a council officers report on the future of child care in Yarra. While 80% of child care in Yarra is Council and/or not-for-profit communty run and there are plans for extra places, the ever growing demand makes it imperative for Council to step up its support for child care.



This year we are to spend $950,000 on child care (only 6.9c a day per rate payer) while we spent about $1 million on a lift in Fitzroy Town Hall and $5 million in other refurbishments in the same building.



I argued that the community would support a redirection Council funds towards extra support for child care in Yarra.



ALP Cllr Paul D’Agastino argued that some Councillors were on an ideological path of opposing private child care in principle. I said that if there was no choice but private, then so be it. However that is not the case in Yarra. We have plenty of potential community options, plus Council itself. Unfortunately private run centres have been shown to put their bottom line before the needs of children as best seen by the refusal of ABC Learning to co-operate with an investigation elsewhere in Melbourne over an incident where a child ‘escaped’ from one of its centres. The $88 million they are expected to make this year would, if Council or community-run, be put back into the sector rather than the profits of shareholders.



This debate will continue this year. We must not take the Port Phillip Council path. They have just increased their child care fees by up to 71%!

An amendment support by the Greens and Socialist Party to more openly call for more Council and not-for-profit community-based child care in Yarra was defeated by the ALP and independents. Their amendment was less precise on what child care we wanted for Yarra. These differences will come out more in the months ahead, meaning the community needs to get organised and involved in this debate as they did last year.

3. Salta development

Several Richmond residents addressed Council about the impending massive development around East Victoria St that will make even the Banco development in Smith St seem small. Residents complained about the lack of warning for an upcoming consultation meeting of this issue. I pledged to help organise a joint Council-Community action group to deal with Salta and their backers.

4. Kurdistan

I moved a motion that condemned the Federal Government for banning the Kurdistan Workers Party - the first time they have moved to ban a political as distinct from a so-called terrorist organisation. This was passed despite ALP Cllr D’Agastino arguments against, where he quoted Federal Attorney General Phillip Ruddock’s statement on the issue as reason to reject the motion!