This morning at a ridiculously early hour (OK, it was seven o’clock), I was interviewed by Tess Connery for the 2SER-FM breakfast show. I’d been called upon to talk about the first day of 2SER, which began broadcasting on 1 October 1979. In April that year I’d returned to Australia from a two-year gig with the United Nations in the Maldive Islands, scored the job as station manager and been given six months to get Sydney’s educational radio station on air.
One of the many volunteer broadcasters we recruited was Tony Wellington, a pleasant, capable and impressive young man. When he pitched me that he should present a weekly program of progressive and avant-garde music, I was happy to agree. And, from the first week the station was on air, with flair and knowledge he hosted Elbow Room every Tuesday for a couple of hours from 10pm.
Tony moved on to other things and so did I and it was more than 30 years until we met again. That moment came after Ingrid and I purchased a holiday unit at a Noosa resort. Thereafter, whenever we came to Noosa, Ingrid and I met up with Tony and Judy. At the time Tony was an aspirant Councillor for the newly formed Sunshine Coast Council of which Noosa was a reluctant part. I kicked some money into his election campaigns. Tony was an artist and photographer of talent and he could write a bit. He also published an online newsletter called The Noosa Gumshoe that even I, a man who likes a bit of scurril, regarded as scurrilous. But, back then, I thought it was factual.
Gumshoe purported to offer revelatory information about collusion and cronyism in local affairs. And most of the people it referred to were characterised as stupid or venal or both, with commentary like “while Noosa Biosphere members like to crow about their volunteer status some are featherbedding themselves” and “largely faceless people committed to shoring up their own positions of power”.
So Ingrid and my introduction to the politics of Noosa was this narrative of a small group of bold visionaries battling gamely against an entrenched and malign local ethos. Not long after our reunion, Tony was elected to Sunshine Coast Council in a bitter contest against incumbent Lew Brennan. And then, in 2013, Ingrid and I retired from our respective careers in Sydney and moved to Noosa to live the good life.
After we settled in, through Tony we met Noel Playford and Michael Gloster, voted in the referendum that returned a local Council to Noosa and got to understand from our conversations with Tony and his pals that Noosa was under siege from developers and their proxies. We voted in the first election of the new Council in 2013 but were not at that point politically engaged. Our interest was more curious than participatory.
In our new domicile – not so new really as we’d been coming to Noosa on holidays for more than 20 years – Ingrid sought to make her retirement productive and we both joined the Noosa Parks Association. Soon Ingrid, skilled in the ways of organisations, was invited to become honorary secretary. This eventually led her to represent NPA on the executive of the Chamber of Commerce. And then – late in 2015 – Tony and NPA president Michael Gloster, separately but presumably having conferred, encouraged Ingrid to run for Noosa Council at the March 2016 election.
After some deliberation, in which I had no part other than to support whatever decision she made, Ingrid agreed to stand and around November 2015 we began to organise her campaign and gathered together a 60-strong team to give us a hand. Ingrid, like most other aspirant councillors, ran as an Independent. It was a role she took seriously.
We decided to avoid future conflicts of interest and self-fund the campaign, knocking back all donations including $500 offered by Michael Gloster. But, during the campaign, trouble brewed as Ingrid began to articulate her platform – which included three main focuses that generated newspaper headlines and hostility from mayor Noel Playford.
Principal amongst these was a commitment to reform the much-reviled Noosa Biosphere Reserve Foundation, the NBRF. Ingrid also announced a desire to reorient Noosa Council to a more positive approach to ratepayers and to free up zoning limitations to enable more modern mixed use precincts. It soon became clear that, in espousing such policies, Ingrid had greatly irritated Playford, who strongly criticised her on the front pages of both local newspapers a few days out from the election. The NBRF had been his baby. His baby would not be called ugly.
For my part, the more I met and spoke with people around Noosa, the more I began to realise that I’d been spun some pretty specious yarns about the nature of the Shire and its residents. I reflected on the motives of Tony and his chums and began to recalibrate my views of who was who in this particular zoo.
During the campaign I still had not formed a definitive assessment of what made Noosa tick but in the months following Ingrid’s election, I found people who had been described as self-seeking or incompetent to be, for the most part, decent and likeable and wondered about the reasons for the deep loathing of them that had been expressed to me.
I particularly mused on a remark Gloster had made in conversation. “I’m the Noosa gatekeeper,” he had told me, “and I decide who comes on the park.” It was a statement alive with ego and aggression. Thinking about that comment over subsequent weeks, I began to realise that Noosa’s problem – the sheer weight of its conflict – lay with this exclusive, controlling and ultimately unreasonable and undemocratic view of who should control Noosa Shire and how this control should be exercised.
The surface rationale seemed to be that only this very small group of ‘controllers’ could be trusted to protect Noosa. But, on examination, this attitude seemed not only to be wrong but self-serving. I was also disturbed by its closed-mindedness, negativity and hyperbole. When it came to Wellington, Gloster and Playford, it seemed it had to be their way or the downward stairway – with a trapdoor at the exit. If you didn’t agree with these men, you seemed to be classed as an enemy. There were no shades of grey. No room for argument.
As I gradually stirred to the reality of this embedded culture of loathing and conflict in Noosa Shire, I found myself on a route travelled by many others, including Australia’s pre-eminent playwright David Williamson.
But that’s a story for another time.
