Unity the challenge for next Clarence mayor

TIM HOWARD

Maintaining unity and discipline in the next Clarence Valley Council will be a major challenge facing whoever becomes the next mayor in two weeks time says local election analyst Craig Howe.

Mr Howe, a former deputy mayor on the council and an enthusiastic pundit at election time, said the leading contenders for the role, incumbent Peter Johnstone and newcomer Ray Smith were kidding themselves if they thought they had support locked in at this early stage.

He said from his experience of running in council elections the phones of all the successful candidates would be running hot from now until the mayor vote on October 17.

“Their phones will be running hot and they’ll be getting offers and be promised the world if they if they support this or that candidate,” he said.

“I can remember from council elections I was getting phones calls all the time, with all sorts of offers and I don’t doubt the same would be happening now.

“In fact I know from talking to a couple of people it’s already started.”

And Mr Howe said the contest for mayor may not remain a two-horse race.

“There might be others

“And even if either Peter or Ray get up, they basically have a council split fve-four, whichever way it goes.” just waiting to see who actually does get on the council,” he said.

Mr Howe said he was not convinced Mr Johnstone, who was mayor for the last 12 months of the previous term, was experienced enough in the job.

He said from his frst outing, the fery meeting at Grafton in front of a packed, placard-wielding gallery, he had not been convincing.

“I know Debrah (Novak) likes to throw her hat in the ring, but at the moment she might be waiting to see if she’s elected.”

Ms Novak said she had not made a decision and would wait until the councillors had been elected.

“I haven’t given it any thought as I don’t know if I am even elected yet,” she said last week.

“The bottom four can change dramatically on the back of the distribution of preferences and postal votes.

“That’s what happened last time with Peter Ellem and Steve Pickering.

“Ellem was bumped out and Pickering came in from position 11 or 12 to take position 9.”

Mr Howe said the personalities in the mix at the moment would make the next council a challenge for whoever was elected as mayor.

“There are people in there who just don’t like each other,” he said.

“And then you have people coming in, like

“I know he had a rugged start to his term, but he put his hand up for it,” he said.

“You’ve got to assume he knew what was on the agenda. You’ve got to own it.”

But he said the alternative at the moment was also an unknown quantity, despite his extensive experience in local government.

Lynne Cairns, who we know already have a gripe with some people on council.

“Ray was a general manager for a long time and you’d think he’s across all the rules and regulations,” he said.

“He’s sat in enough council meetings to know what’s involved running a good meeting, but as we saw with the last council, that doesn’t guarantee a good outcome.”

But Mr Howe said change might be the best way forward for the council.

“After the last council, where everyone seemed to want to be boss, going a new way might bring the stability the council needed.

“Basically all that gave us was a mayor with about two year’s experience on council and a deputy mayor (Jeff Smith), who’d had enough and didn’t stand for re-election,” he said.

Mr Howe said how the preferences fell would be decisive, but said it was so hard to predict because not many candidates used how to

If you or somebody you love is reaching a major birthday or wedding vote cards.

“Increasingly people have been ignoring them, to the point where many candidates didn’t bother, but it did give you an idea of a potential make up the council,” he said.

“You could see who each councillor might be wanting to work with.”

He said voters making their own choices made preference fows more diffcult to predict and encouraged other groupings.

“You’re hearing things like votes supporting female candidates for example, that make it harder to say where the vote might go.”

The distribution of preferences for the Clarence Valley Local Government election began at 12.45pm on Monday.

If possible it will be included in this edition of The Northern Rivers Times. If not check online at https:// thenorthernriverstimes. com.au

TIM HOWARD

A former high school teacher and Clarence Valley artist is about to launch an exhibition he claims will be a frst in art education.

Artist, teacher and sports coach Graham Mackie has put together an exhibition of artwork from students he taught during his his 23-year teaching career from 1974 to 1997.

Mr Mackie, as he was known during his time teaching art at Maclean High school between 1981 and 1997 said he was curating a unique and unusual art exhibition which brought together his former HSC art students who are now professional or practising artists in their own right. On display will be their current works as well as a number of Year 12 art major works from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

Mr Mackie started